Citizen Rhetoric & Digital Video Composing

Each fall for the past three years, I have taught a digital version of English 355: Rhetoric and Writing. Designated “WC,” this course fulfills part of the University of Tennessee’s “communicating through writing” requirement, and it also serves as a gateway into the rhetoric and writing concentration in the English major.

My sections of this upper-division undergraduate course combine digital video composing with citizen rhetoric, an activity modeled after participatory or citizen journalism. In We Media Chris Willis and Shayne Bowman describe citizen journalism as “[t]he act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.” Similarly, citizen rhetoric engages students as active citizen-rhetors in the process of identifying rhetorical situations and using multiple modes of communication and multiple media to present well-sourced arguments to different audiences.

Recognizing the twenty-first century as a century of multiliteracies, this course also encourages students to explore the breadth and depth of present-day writing in all it’s multimodal, multimediated complexity and glory. Specifically, students work independently or in small groups to compose 3- to 5-minute digital video documentaries on a variety of civic themes.

In 2007, students investigated citizenship in action at school and in local communities. In 2008, students examined election rhetorics and related topics. In 2009, students will be studying environmental issues such as local farm movements, slow food, mountaintop removal mining, water pollution, and the commercialization of “going green.”

This year’s screening, “What on Earth?,” will be held on Monday, November 2nd at 3:30 and 5:15 in the Hodges Library Commons (on the 2nd floor). Past films can be viewed on the CitizenRhetoric YouTube site. You can also watch Jenn Fishman, Jess Irwin, and John Nelson talk about how this course increases students’ understanding of how rhetoric and writing knowledge transfers across both media and situation: visit the University of Tennessee Innovative Technology Center website.