Pedagogical Resources
16 Multimodality
Multimodal composition pedagogy is a movement away from the strict “words-on-a-page” essay writing that has been emphasized in composition classes, and towards a broader and more versatile manner of communicating in a wide-range of avenues.
To borrow from the introduction of Jason Palmeri’s Remixing Composition : A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy —
In the past few years, advocates of the “multimodal turn” in composition have been telling a very persuasive and influential narrative about the past, present, and future of composition studies—a narrative about how and why we must move beyond our historic focus on alphabetic literacy. [. . .] We can hear this story in the words of Andrea Lunsford, who argues that “where writing once meant print text—black marks on white paper, left to right and top to bottom— today ‘writing’ is in full Technicolor; it is nonlinear and alive with Introduction / 5 sounds, voices, and images of all kinds” (xiii). [. . .] Over and over again, we encounter the same refrain: alphabetic literacy is our past; multimodal composing is our future.
Palmeri, Jason. Remixing Composition : A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.
Below you will find resources to learn more about multimodal pedagogy:
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The Rhetoric of the Paneled Page: Comics and Composition Pedagogy by Gabriel Sealey-Morris
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Re-Inventing Digital Delivery for Multimodal Composing by Chanon Adsanatham
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An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing by Melanie Gagich
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Writing the Selfie: Using Selfies to Practice Character Presentation and Rhetorical Discourse by Simone Sessolo
Resource Highlight: Remixing Composition by Jason Palmeri
Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy by Jason Palmeri
Palmeri’s book interrogates the long-held assumption that writing is merely about the written word. Southern Illinois University Press describes Remixing Composition as follows:
“Jason Palmeri’s Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy challenges the longheld notion that the study and practice of composition has historically focused on words alone. Palmeri revisits many of the classic texts of composition theory from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, closely examining how past compositionists responded to “new media.” He reveals that long before the rise of personal computers and the graphic web, compositionists employed analog multimedia technologies in the teaching of composition. Palmeri discovers these early scholars anticipated many of our current interests in composing with visual, audio, and video texts.”
The following is a video from Bellee Jones-Pierce entitled “Explanation of Multimodality”:
