tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post111135741408718490..comments2024-03-19T12:14:57.090-07:00Comments on hightouchmegastore: CCCC, Day One: Monumentally Interesting PresentationLisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-1111707477378466382005-03-24T15:37:00.000-08:002005-03-24T15:37:00.000-08:00I like your last argument. Certainly there's a dif...I like your last argument. Certainly there's a difference between being a passive consumer of the visual and a critical consumer/producer of visual rhetoric. <BR/><BR/>I also think we need to do a better job talking about the effective coordination of the visual and textual. Lynn is teaching Persopolis, a recent graphic novel about Iran, in her creative writing class this semester. I think I might use a graphic novel in my literature course (perhaps American lit) next year. <BR/><BR/>I think some regard the graphic novel as sub literary--but it seems to me to be a vital emerging form that, a literary form that might actually appeal to students.middlebrowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14810341455860537174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-1111533955851646312005-03-22T15:25:00.000-08:002005-03-22T15:25:00.000-08:00I so wish I had been there to see you say "that's ...I so wish I had been there to see you say "that's stupid" to Susan M. I was well into a rather snide sentence, and censored myself just there. <BR/><BR/>One point one of the acolytes made was that of course, writing was subsumed under the sign of orality, right? So to some extent hasn't writing sort of tried to subsume the visual under its sign as well? See "visual literacy." <BR/><BR/>I still think composing visually, or with attention to the visual, is another practice altogether than reading the visual, which everyone can do now, in their sleep, on drugs, upside down, while frying French fries. And I would say that people don't necessarily have that [literacy][for lack of a better word], and I would say also that the folks who have less access to the digital technology have least access to some of the tools.Lisa B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-1111515945359126792005-03-22T10:25:00.000-08:002005-03-22T10:25:00.000-08:00Very interesting. What it immediately reminds me o...Very interesting. What it immediately reminds me of is Walter Ong's book "Orality and Literacy." I was really into orality/literacy stuff at Western where I was a TA for an educational linguist. The thesis that writing is a technology that structures our cognition is interesting because we hardly bother to think about writing as an invention anymore. Ong goes on to make the argument that print culture had a similar transforming effect on the way we think. <BR/><BR/>I still remember the first day of my rhetoric course with Susan Miller. I mentioned Ong and she sort of freaked out, labeling all the orality and literacy stuff essentially racist. Her argument, in short, was that orality literacy studies (particularly the work of the anthropologist Jack Goody) was used to essentialize the differences between oral cultures (read Africa, read primitive) and so-called civilized cultures. <BR/><BR/>I think my response was something like, "That's stupid." The rest of the class watched as Susan and I argued for the rest of the class paper about whether or not orality/literacy studies was or was not racist. Good fun.<BR/><BR/>I checked out the link and I'll watch the presentation. Looks interesting. <BR/><BR/>One possible problem I have, though I still have to think about it. I recall Kathleen Yancey making a similar argument at the TYCA conference. Her gist: there's a sea change in literacy out there and English department ignore it to their peril. I do think that English departments need to attend to the way writing is actually produced and recieved in the world--by our students. But don't they already have a great deal of visual literacy? I asked Yancey this and suggested that what students need isn't visual literacy by textual literacy.<BR/><BR/>Still, I found Yancey's presentation compelling, and I am not prepared to say that the visual and textual are mutually exclusive.middlebrowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14810341455860537174noreply@blogger.com