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Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy Kristin Prins University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy Kristin Prins University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations August 2015 Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy Kristin Prins University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Education Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Prins, Kristin, "Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1016. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1016 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MATERIALITY, CRAFT, IDENTITY, AND EMBODIMENT: REWORKING DIGITAL WRITING PEDAGOGY by Kristin Prins A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee August 2015 ABSTRACT MATERIALITY, CRAFT, IDENTITY, AND EMBODIMENT: REWORKING DIGITAL WRITING PEDAGOGY by Kristin Prins The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2015 Under the Supervision of Professor Anne Frances Wysocki Too often in Rhetoric and Composition, multimodal writing (an expansive practice of opening up the media and modes with which writers might work) is reduced to digital writing. “Reworking Digital Writing” argues that the opportunities and insights of digital writing should encourage us to turn our attention to all kinds of nondigital materials that have not traditionally been considered part of composing—including the materials that are already familiar to crafters and do-it-yourselfers (DIYers). Further, I argue that the material, technical, rhetorical, economic, and social dimensions of DIY craft provide a coherent framework for teaching multimodal writing in ways that encourage students to engage in the work of writing in ways that can make more apparent the composing activities and processes of writing and make more concrete the kinds of work that composed objects can do. Through this approach to composing, I argue that we can help students experience the very real ways in which writing can reshape our subjectivities and build new kinds of worlds with others. To that end, I examine DIY craft histories, theories, and practices to develop a new pedagogical framework for teaching multimodal writing. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: The Embodied Work of Multimodal Composing ......................................... 1 Writing and Embodiment ................................................................................................ 3 Embodiment in Rhetoric and Composition ................................................................. 7 Making Things: Writing (v.): Embodied Activity/Labor/Work (Or, the Need for Writing Studios) ........................................................................................................ 17 Making Things: Writing (n.): Embodied Object (Or, Why Form/Media/Mode Matter) ....................................................................................................................... 26 Making Meaningful Multimodal Rhetorical Choices ............................................... 32 A Look Ahead ............................................................................................................... 36 Chapter Two: Craft, Techne, Poiesis ................................................................................ 41 Craft-as-Techne ............................................................................................................. 42 A Look at Craftspeople Working in Ancient Greece .................................................... 58 Turning to Craft Studies ................................................................................................ 64 Digital Craft .................................................................................................................. 73 Craft: A Site of Knowledge and Action ........................................................................ 84 Chapter Three: Modifying Craft through DIY .................................................................. 85 Considering “Craft Capitalism” .................................................................................... 90 Craft Tradition and DIY Exuberance ............................................................................ 95 DIY Craft Politics and Economics .............................................................................. 102 Chapter Four: Making Something Else ........................................................................... 115 How DIY Craft Can Re-embody Writing ................................................................... 126 Embodied Knowledge ............................................................................................. 127 Embodied Rhetoric ................................................................................................. 133 Materiality, Embodied Knowledge, and Embodied Rhetoric ..................................... 138 Chapter Five: A DIY Craft Pedagogy Enacted ............................................................... 156 From Rhetorical Carpentry to DIY Craft Multimodal Writing Pedagogy .................. 161 So What Might All This Look Like in Practice? .................................................... 162 DIY Craft Subjectivity ................................................................................................ 184 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 189 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 204 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com. Posted 21 July 2014. .................................................................................................................... 4 Figure 2: “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com. Posted 23 July 2014. .................................................................................................................... 5 Figure 3: “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com. Posted 28 July 2014. .................................................................................................................... 5 Figure 4: “Palette of King Narmer” by Steven Zucker, www.flickr.com. Posted 15 November 2014. No changes were made to this image. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/> .......................................... 142 Figure 5: “Yarnbombs in Helsinki” by Sarah Stierch. www.flickr.com Posted 16 Sep. 2012. Image was cropped. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/> ......... 150 Figure 6: “Yarn Bomb” by Daniel Lugo. www.flickr.com Posted 10 Aug. 2011. No changes were made to this image. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/> .......................................... 151 Figure 7: “Downtown San Mateo Yarnbombs” by Lorna Watt. www.flickr.com Posted 19 Apr. 2013. No changes were made to this image. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/> .......................................... 151 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: A DIY Craft Framework for Composition ......................................................... 37 Table 2: Melinda Turnley’s Dimensions of a Medium ................................................... 175 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been made without the support of my parents, pals, fellow graduate students, and faculty. Anne and Mike, in particular, deserve more thanks than I could possibly ever actually give them. I believe that we learn to see our best possibilities through the things we make with others. You’ve helped me see more than I ever anticipated. vi Chapter One: The Embodied Work of Multimodal Composing But it was Roland Barthes that got to me, that led––no––seduced me into understanding that new media offered rhetoric the chance to comprehend the breadth of textuality, and rhetoric offered new media the mechanism for putting our experience with text into words.… Putting it more simply—in a world whirling so fast and so knotted together as it is, traditional approaches to text net us little in the way of understanding in what it means to be human today. – Dene Grigar, “What New Media Offers” (214, 216) [T]he sensual characteristics of specific materials; the regulation imposed by specialized tools when properly employed; the sociopolitical connotations of the figure of the artisan; and even the literal limits of time and space ... all provide a kind of friction that keep pressing questions of form, category, and identity open for further investigation. – Howard Risatti, A Theory of Craft (5–6) Several years ago, around 2010, the research writing class in my first-year writing program piloted digital portfolios. Instead of working toward a final portfolio of printed essays, students in a small set of sections would be encouraged throughout the semester to undertake research projects that didn’t necessarily take the form of print essays. As the pilot group of instructors met over the summer to plan for fall semester, we tried to imagine all of the kinds of digital projects students might want to undertake, and what resources they—and we—might draw on to help those projects
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