Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, by Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc.


	Book Reviews Issue 33.2 Fall 2005 (Online Exclusives) \| HTML Printer-Friendly Format \| *Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, by Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004. 276 pages. Reviewed by Wendy Warren Austin, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania A healthy mix of theory and practice, this collection of six essays by four well-known authors in computers and composition offers 19 practical assignments for teachers of both undergraduates and graduate students alongside a coherent, insightful analysis of the key issues in new media studies today. * The green-and-blue abstract cover of this unassuming paperback reflects a few of its key characteristics. The green connotes a valuable currency that will be borne out in its use, while the combination of green and blue reflects the cool range of the color spectrum, “cool” being an attribute I would definitely give to this book. The nature strip of bright orange and red autumn leaves on the back cover lets in light through its rear window, similar to my own reading experience: at first opaque, then cool and just right, then confusing, with rays of bright light shining through, then a brighter window into the whole intent of the book. Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc create an interesting cross between an anthology of six essays and a self-contained book with six chapters. The essays hang together, sometimes loosely, sometimes more tightly, like a series of gifts of varying value in separate boxes tied together with a single conceptual ribbon. The preface, however, seems like four different ones, all with different formats: one is a set of four bulleted statements, another two paragraphs explaining the book’s goals, the third is a poem, and the fourth is a quote. Only the first two formats offer a clue for what to expect—theoretical grounding for practical assignments that can be applied to a range of levels. They deliver on that promise, too, an aspect that will make this book worth its investment several times over. Wysocki opens with the first essay, “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings & Justifications,” a piece with five different “openings” that seems better suited for hypertext than book format. This is somewhat ironic since one of her key points is for writing teachers to pay closer attention to the materiality of texts. This understanding of materiality (a la Bruce Horner and Christina Haas) serves as a critical point Wysocki feels should be explored further within new media scholarship. With each “opening,” she tries to define “new media,” finally doing so with any clarity by the third “opening,” a tough enough task to be sure, but with a few page-long uninterrupted paragraphs, perhaps the materiality of this part of the text should be considered a bit more. I wasn’t impressed with the opening essay’s content, which was hard to follow at times, but the activities section at the end is where the richness of Wysocki’s vision begins to take shape. The end of each author’s essay includes at least four classroom activities, complete with teacher’s notes, description of tasks, objectives, intended level, time required, suggested variations, and sometimes sample evaluation scales and homework sheets. Here the authors concretize their theories and enable the beginning new media scholar as well as the seasoned writing instructor to see how these theories might apply to their own situations. Many activities do not require the use of computers in the classroom, enabling teachers out in the hinterlands or inner city to embrace these ideas as well as those who have access to state-of-the-art equipment. Because most new media texts (e.g., Hansen; Manovich; Shaviro) focus primarily on theory, but rarely on theory with practice, teachers of new media courses will enjoy having so many well-outlined assignments grounded overtly in solid theory. After the thinner air of Wysocki’s first chapter, the reader starts to suck in the first regular deep breaths of the book as the second essay, “Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of a New Media Text Designer,” by Cynthia Selfe, cuts right to the heart of the issues. She points out that as composition instructors, we’re becoming more interested in new media because we see it all around us, we have more access to tools that are easier-to-learn than ever, and because students are already “into” new media, whether we realize it or not. Selfe tells the story of David Damon, a young black man from Detroit who had a rough but sporadically literate childhood and ended up at a shall-remain-nameless college that prizes technology. He learns a great deal about creating new media texts (even to the point of making money designing web pages) but ends up failing out of his English classes, and ultimately college, because of his knowledge gaps in traditional text-making. Selfe analyzes the irony of the story, highlighting the need composition instructors have for training students to communicate successfully through more than just conventional texts. The third essay in the book, again by Selfe, “Toward New Media Texts: Taking up the Challenges of Visual Literacy,” does just what it says: claims the route to understanding new media is understanding visual literacy better. Selfe believes the route to understanding new media better does not mean that we need to learn all the cutting-edge software packages, although that can’t hurt. Moreover, Selfe addresses whether composition instructors should even focus on visual studies in their classrooms. I had begun to wonder that myself, frankly, and was glad to see this addressed, not taken as a given. My concern rose when she noted that “[t]eachers continue to privilege alphabetic literacy over visual literacy” (71), because I have always assumed that our role as writing teachers within the realm of the university curriculum was alphabetic literacy, while the realm of art teachers was visual literacy. Within a page or two, however, Selfe’s reasoning (supported by Sean Williams, Diana George, The New London Group, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen), began to make sense to me: because we have a verbal bias, we need to add visual literacy to our repertoires to better understand how students are communicating and reading/viewing communications in a rapidly changing and image-filled world. “Box-Logic” by Geoffrey Sirc starts with a pointed, clear opening, but the further I read, the more exasperated I became. Sirc’s title to the fourth essay becomes clear as he describes Marcel Duchamp’s work, the Green Box, a felt-covered box containing loose scraps of paper and objects that left the reader to reassemble according to each one’s desires. Citing three more historical figures who collected things in boxes, Sirc discusses Joseph Cornell, who flitted around Paris, hunting found objects and exotic curiosities, keeping all of his treasures in a box; Walter Benjamin, who kept all of his personal books in boxes, finding joy in recategorizing them at will; and George Maciunas, who creates his art exhibits with boxes. Though his “box-logic” concept has some merit, Sirc constantly criticizes “middlebrow academia” (117), composition textbook authors with “less-than-risky themes” (127), and those who emphasize culturally important contact zones in their classes, while he himself glories in hip-hop as a theme in his composition classes, whatever’s “craft and cool,” and the virtues of the “eagerly awaited” Kurt Cobain diary as wonderful bits of “unfinished text” (124). Sirc wants his students to gain “desperately important compositional skill” in rearrangements and “notational jottings” (123). He envisions students as collectors, and texts as boxes with desired objects contained within them adhering via loose association. Only fleetingly does Sirc acknowledge composition teachers have to work within a system or that students still need to learn at least basic (only basic?) communicative skills. Sirc’s activities at the end of the essay also display a disappointing looseness to them, without evaluative criteria other than that a project “needs only be interesting” (133). “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty: On Some Formal Relations in Teaching About the Visual Aspects of Texts,” the second essay by Wysocki, is as exhilarating as the previous essay is disappointing. This time Wysocki outdoes herself, using a compelling ad with a naked woman in it to support a remarkably comprehensive analysis of not only design principles in general, but her own conflicting reactions to the ad, through a clear and careful Kantian understanding of beauty and judgment. The seven activities that conclude the essay complement Wysocki’s philosophical underpinnings beautifully. Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s “The Database and the Essay: Understanding Composition as Articulation” manages to successfully revive the usable parts of Sirc’s “box-logic” argument. Johnson-Eilola offers two ways to understand textuality in a changing world: symbolic-analytic work and articulation theory. Symbolic-analytic work centers its value in manipulating information as opposed to creating it anew, while articulation theory allows us to construct meanings by how information is arranged and connected. Using developments within intellectual property law, Johnson-Eilola discusses how recent legal decisions point to a trend in valuing significantly arranged collections of information fragments (in databases) over creativity. Emphasizing that we cannot forget that writing remains connected to economics, Johnson-Eilola highlights how search engines and weblogs illustrate the rearrangement of information fragments into valuable collections. It stretches credulity to think of search engines as writing, but Johnson-Eilola makes the argument convincing. In addition to the typical index and bibliography, the volume provides a special bibliography of print resources with 24 abbreviations marking various disciplinary categories. While 24 categories seems a bit too unwieldy (9 or 10 would suffice), readers from different fields may appreciate these source annotations. Edinboro, PA Works Cited Hansen, Mark B. N. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge: MIT P, 2004. Shaviro, Steven. Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT P, 2002.