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The Retold Histories of Clemson
The Process: Making Documentary Videos in the FYC Classroom
The Retold Histories of Clemson: Three Documentary Films
Behind the Scenes”: Access, Accessibility, & Audiences
Appendix A: Assignment Prompt for The Retold Histories of Clemson Project
The Multimodal Turn
A society and its educational systems are always firmly connected to the material and technological apparatus supporting them, and this remains true as education increasingly becomes melded with video distribution networks such as YouTube (Reid, 2010). The move toward incorporating multimedia production skills into composition courses has had a long and complex history, but the direction the discipline is moving toward is clear: as twenty-first century composers, students need have at least some ability to compose in multimedia formats— in image, sound, film, video— to be considered empowered, flexible, and capable composers (Eyman, 2015; Shipka, 2011).
Scholars in rhetoric and composition have mobilized multimedia tools in the FYC classroom in different ways to initiate student rhetorical activity in relation to exigencies of civic action (Dubisar et al., 2017; Edwards, 2016; Dubisar & Palmeri, 2010; Sheridan, Ridolfo, & Michel, 2012). Other scholars specifically target documentary filmmaking as multimodal invention pedagogy. For instance, bonnie lenore kyburz’s (2019) Cruel Auteurism positions expressive filmmaking front and center in the work of composition, exploring the affective, inventional, narrative, and experiential possibilities available with audio-visual modes of composing. Additionally, Alexandra Hidalgo (2017) develops what she calls feminist filmmaking as a collaborative, activist approach to video production for rhetoric scholars and pedagogies in the video-book Cámara Retórica. Similarly, Julie Lindquist and Bump Halbritter (2019) propose a documentary film project called the Experiential-Learning Documentary (ELD) as an assignment designed to create “an ongoing, experiential literacy-learning narrative” that blends students’ affective, personal experiences and their individual literacies with multimedia tools and invention opportunities. Halbritter’s (2012) book Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Classes informs filmmaking pedagogies beyond simply outlining the value of video production initiatives in FYC classrooms. Halbritter situates filmmaking and the visual rhetoric of film squarely in the composition classroom. Halbritter asserts that “a multimedia writer teaches multimedia writing; an audio-visual writer teaches audio-visual writing” (xiii). Composing for a democracy in the twenty-first century means composing on YouTube, composing in social media spaces, and composing for a public memory that is continually renewing itself through digital media technologies—technologies that can put storytelling powers in the hands of those who formerly were not allotted the argumentation opportunities to articulate original public voices. Importantly, this population includes, or has the potential to include, students enrolled in FYC courses.
Using multimedia tools in rhetoric and composition courses necessitates a marshalling of students into participatory action, challenging students to practice and enact knowledge of rhetoric through active participation in multimedia ecologies. Here, filmmaking represents a rhetorical exercise that works to extend student multimedia production into the possibility of social change. My goal as an instructor here is to challenge students into doing and into making, initiatives in rhetoric and composition that have traditionally foregrounded literacy and the production of print-based compositions. Sarah Arroyo (2013) connects video production in rhetoric and composition classrooms with participatory culture, theorizing a method that uses multimodal composition to facilitate and nurture public participatory engagement. Arroyo refers to Henry Jenkins (2006) in her consideration of participatory culture, extending his analysis into digital video production. Jenkins defines the important changes brought about by participatory culture as allowing everyday composers “to participate in the production and distribution of cultural goods— on their own terms” (133). The participatory approaches of Arroyo and Jenkins intersect with that of Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel (2012), who privilege active learning through multimodal invention, treating composition as a distributed and social act that is always tied to the communities that bring it to fruition (xxvii).