Virginia Kuhn (UW-Milwaukee)

Ways of Composing: Visual Literacy in the Digital Age

Affiliation: English (Rhetoric and Comp, Cultural Studies; Film) – UW-Milwaukee, 2005

Advisor: Alice Gillam (Greg Jay, Vicki Callahan, Victor Vitanza)

Ways of Composing: Visual Literacy in the Digital Age traces the approach to images in rhetorical studies and its integration in writing classes and composition textbooks in the US during the second half of the 20th century to the early 21st, identifying three stances: the print-based, the image-based and the hybrid.  The dissertation argues for a view of visual-digital literacy that includes the analysis (reading) as well as production (writing), and offers methods for rethinking fair use, citation and archiving practices. The argument gains strength through its digital enactment via words, sound, still and moving images, and linking structures.

Tools and Media: Photoshop, SnapNDrag, Final Cut Pro, TK3, MS Word / Words, images, audio, moving images, hyperlinks, deep annotations

Discussion of project in an AAUP article titled “Embrace and Ambivalence”

(Description of dissertation excerpted from this page of #remixthediss projects.)