Writing New Media

Essays by Cynthia L.
Selfe and Geoffrey
Sirc

presentation
by Karen K. Lee
 Cynthia L. Selfe
founder and co-editor of Com-
puters and Composition: An Interna-
tional Journal for Teachers of Writ-
ing
former chair of CCCC
Author and co-author of many
books,
including:
Global Literacies and the World-
Wide Web
Technology and Literacy in the
Twenty-first Century
Literacy, Technology, and Society
Professor of Composition &
Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First
Communication, Michigan Technological Uni-
Century
versity
 The New London Group
A group of ten literacy scholars with varied interests

from Australia, Great Britain, and the United States

gathered in New London, New Hampshire in 1994.

Their goal: to bring together concepts and ideas

from various fields in different English-speaking

countries to develop a new theory of literacy.

 The New London Group
Two key assertions resulting from the group’s

discussions:

 an acknowledgment that current communications

media are retooling the methods in which people are

utilizing language; as such, “there cannot be one set

of standards or skills that constitute the ends of

literacy learning, however taught” (64).

 The New London Group
 The adoption of the word “multiliteracies” to

guide pedagogy toward the goal of responding to

the world’s exponentially growing connectivity –

and diversity.
 The New London Group
The results of their work was the article “A
Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social
Futures” which appeared in Harvard Educational
Review 66:1 (Spring 1996). The Group described it
as more of a manifesto and not a complete work
on the subject.
“Composition in a New Key”
In a multimedia presentation of her

Chair’s Address to CCCC in 2004,

Kathleen Blake Yancey urged her

audience to consider making some

major changes to the way composition

is taught:
● Consider what students are composing relates or

compares to genres outside of the classroom

● consider what the best medium and the best

delivery for such a communication might be;

● then create and share those different

communication pieces in those different media, to

different audiences;
● think about what students might take with them

from one medium to the next

● consider how these transfers between compsoing

in different media help prepare them to become

members of a writing public (311).

http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~cyselfe/Writingandmultimodal/Writing.htm
 Geoffrey Sirc du
Soleil
Professor of English, Uni-
versity of Minnesota

Turn-ons include
the Sex Pistols, hip-
hop, and Marcel
Duchamp

won the 2003 Win-

terowd Award for Out-
standing Book in the
Field of Composition
Composition as a Happening.
Theory for his book
Duchamp’s Green Box
The Bride Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors, Even
(The Green Box) (1934)
Contains one color plate,
93 notes, and
photographs and
facsimiles by Duchamp.
It is a compilation of the
artist's creative thought
process during the
conception (while in
Paris and New York) and
execution (while in New
York) of The Large Glass.
320 of these were
produced.
 Joseph Cornell
Collage artist who
worked mostly with
found objects; he
had a filing system
of over 160
"dossiers", images
and information on
themes that he
found intriguing.
“Crystal Cage (Portrait of
Berenice)” 1943.
 Questions
 How do we change the attitude that visual
and new media are “second class texts”?
 How do we deal with resistance from
students and from fellow instructors?
 How do we evaluate students’ work?
 What do we do about the technology
divide?
 Are Sirc’s assignments too complex, or not
challenging enough?