How might the use of technology contribute to students’ and educators’ understanding of the extent to which personal and cultural identity is woven through “literate” practices? How might educators use this knowledge to develop practices which benefit international students? These questions are explored in Transnational Literate Lives in Digital Times, in which Patrick W. Berry,  Gail E. Hawisher, and Cynthia L. Selfe, seek a broader understanding of the impact of digital literacies in a changing educational landscape. The authors cite an argument that “The global turn necessitates new collaborations and frameworks, broader notions of composing practices, critical literacies that are linked to global citizenship, a reexamination of existing protocols and divisions, and the formation of new critical frameworks in the light of a changing world.” Their study culminated in a digital book, consisting of pages of text interposed with student-produced videos. The videos themselves include text, sound effects, audio commentary, as well as still and moving images.

In addition to recommending digital media as “tools for reflection, research, and representation of literate activity,” the authors put forward an argument that agrees with Dr. Ghanashyam Sharma’s observations in The Third Eye: An Exhibit of Literacy Narratives from Nepal, stating that videos add layers of texture which may not be apparent in written representations. In the case of Transnational Literate Lives, these videos convey such factors as tone of voice, accent, facial expressions, body language, music and/or sound effects creating a particular mood or atmosphere, as well as visual clues from the background or environment in which the video was recorded. Another concept that the authors hold in common with Dr. Sharma is that literacy and writing are bound together with individual and cultural identity. Underlying this idea is an understanding that literacy is often comprehended in different ways by different people.

I chose to look at an example from Chapter 3 of Transnational Literate Lives, which explores the writing processes of three international students in an American graduate seminar. The seminar typically begins with students producing visual representations, such as the one below, showing that writing is a much wider process than just sitting at a computer.

During the semester of the study, students made the usual visual representations, but additionally they were asked to compose a short video explaining their individual writing processes. In this context, the study authors describe “video as a rhetorical narrative medium.” This phrasing serves to emphasize the importance they assign to this kind of literacy. It seems appropriate here to refer to David Bloome’s “Five Ways to Read a Curated Archive of Digital Literacy Narratives,” in which he addresses the debate between a historically-held view of literacy as decontextualized reading and writing, and alternative models of literacy, which may be expressed digitally and culturally as contesting the typical hierarchy.

I found Sophie’s movie, “Space, Time, Limit” significant in that it did not present a literal interpretation of her writing process, but rather her process was expressed through her identity as a family member and as a member of a non-Western culture. She presented the viewer with the task of interpreting how her identity was embedded in, and how it flowed, through her writing process. It is evident from this example that the use of video narrative gives international students the opportunity to express themselves through their cultural identities in a Western academic setting. I suggest that this can be seen as parallel to an accommodationalist stance in academic writing. In this approach, while keeping international students within the framework of an assignment, educators give them room to incorporate elements from outside the Western rhetorical tradition. This is likely to lead to a richer result in the diversity of academic work.

Questions

1. David Bloome says of the curated exhibits we’ve looked at that “they undermine the traditional hierarchical structure of theoretic framing and narrative by eliminating the distance between researcher/scholar and subject (they are one and the same) and embedding theorizing as part of their lived experiences (exploding the separation of theory and data).” This sounds more democratic that the traditional approach. Is it more effective?
2. How would this multi-media approach to teaching and research benefit domestic students?
3. In light of Bloome’s reference to the debate over how literacy is defined — how would you explain the value of capturing a digital representation of your writing processes to someone outside the academic world?