The Writing Instructor

Scholars in rhetoric and composition have, in recent years, examined how publics, counterpublics, and public writing function in everyday spaces and places, as expression, argument, and resistance (Warner; Rivers and Weber; Rice; Coogan; Weisser). In response to world-wide events and political changes, networks – informal and formal – use the public sphere to communicate dissensus and resistance, making visible the rhetoric of counter/publics in tension with larger publics. Although some individuals are intentionally members of counter/publics, others are unaware of their position within these networks.

First-Year Composition syllabi typically tout objectives centered around the advancement and enactment of critical thinking, analysis, and/or reflection. Perpetuating the aims of Composition’s social turn in the late 1980s and early 90s, this learning outcome urges students to develop their analytical faculties in service to social justice and freedom—ideas key to revealing and resisting hegemonic discourses operating within society. Such aims certainly persist in the twenty-first-century classroom as students are encouraged to engage with public rhetorics in order to practice the tenets of rhetorical argumentation through critical observation; however, when adhering to traditionally literate methods of exploration, their engagement oftentimes results in objective observation rather than active participation. Using the theories of New Materialism and Electracy, this paper explores the new and various methodologies available to students to engage with public rhetorics and ultimately shows how students can move from “critical observer” to “knowledge creator.”

How can scholars utilize the intersection of visual rhetoric, social justice, genre theory, and embodiment theory to craft resistance reading and writing practices in the classroom? What contemporary and relevant artifacts exist as models of these applied theories? An excellent example is digital graphic narrative, specifically digital graphic narratives that relay the experiences of minority individuals who have found safe spaces in this genre. My website, https://laurenbearddigital.wordpress.com, focuses on the rhetorical choices made by online comic artists who identify as LGBTQ and how these choices lend themselves to a re-articulation of genre, embodiment, and social justice. Before I delve into my own work, I will provide a review of current the digital humanities scholarship that has shaped my research.

Mere hours before Hurricane María hit my home country, I had a debilitating panic attack. I remember sitting in one of my graduate courses, staring in disbelief at my phone as the last weather bulletin before the hurricane hit land was emitted. I remember briefly speaking to my family and loved ones, knowing it would be days—maybe weeks—until I heard from them again. Surely enough, the category-four hurricane barreled through the 100 by 35-mile island with 155 mph winds, destroying a greater part of the country’s power infrastructure and communications grid. In the days that followed, I desperately searched on Facebook for any news; I browsed for endless hours but saw only messages of distress and hopelessness from those who, like me, form part of the Puerto Rican diaspora here in the United States (US). Only two Puerto Rican news stations were streaming through Facebook; they had no information to provide to their viewers. The island, like those seeking news about it, was in the dark.

Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani female education activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was shot in the head by a Pakistani Taliban gunman on October 9, 2012. While this incident nearly killed her, Yousafzai rose to prominence afterward because of her persistence in defying the Taliban’s oppression for female education. Malala’s struggle is undeniably noble, and she has been successful in voicing her concerns on national and international levels.

Saudi Arabia is one of the leading countries that publicly and systematically discriminates against women. The case of banning women from driving in Saudi Arabia is indeed an illustrative example. However, the use of social media to mobilize women concerning their rights was remarkable in generating support and influence. However, the novelty of this topic, the language barrier, and the conservative culture might be leading to a paucity of academic research pertaining to the study of social media activism to affect women’s rights in Saudi Arabia especially concerning rhetorical circulation. The significance of the circulation of discourse relies on the fact that it is responsible for both creating a public and affecting the conditions to achieve social and political objectives. Nevertheless, the circulation of discourse in this study will be identified as online activism and online influence. Both online activism and online influence (the circulation of discourse) on social media might be affected by other factors, in this case the results will be analyzed accordingly.

In skimming through a yellowed and brittle issue of La Nación, the Argentine national newspaper, it would seem that June 7, 1942 was yet another Sunday amongst many routine-altered days of World War II. The front page’s left column reports the British onslaught over Germany, while the right mirrors the offense, describing Japanese casualties in Midway. Between advertisements for “Eno’s Fruit Salt” (a “digestive aid” on sale for 70 cents per vial) and “Fernet Branca” (a beverage that should be brought home whenever “one brings a friend”) are accounts of an earthquake in Mendoza as well as an update on rubber rationing, announcing that factories are once again legally permitted to restore used tires.

The following presentation is concerned with two simple questions: what do we mean when we speak of literacy, and what do we mean when we speak of a public? Admittedly, at the end of the presentation, we may no longer decide to consider such questions as merely simple. Pushing forward regardless, a particularly important aspect of opening up these two concepts and exploring their salience and valences, especially for our purposes, as they relate to pedagogical practices and common places, is to pay close attention to how the relationships with their inverse concepts – counter-publics and illiteracy – change during the course of our inquiry. If in fact these relationships do change, and I will argue that they do, then there are important pedagogical, ethical, and rhetorical implications to ponder when trying to answer the questions: so, what, and, where do we go from here? What do we do differently? To be sure, I don’t and will not pretend to have any answers or ultimatums in response to these concerns. Instead, this presentation is crafted as such in order to open up a space for us here, and for all future readers and listeners, to orient and attune ourselves, again and with care, to the responsibilities we all share in regard to the Other, each other, and the more-than-human-world.