Methodology and Message

Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres beings the conversation about the status of multimodal coursework and describes the complexities of incorporating multimodal software within college writing programs. This book targets university faculty and students within the rhetoric and composition fields as well as those with an expressed interest in multimodal communication in an effort to inspire positive attitudes towards digital communication and multimodal expression. Literacies cultivates an environment favoring expanded student creativity within undergraduate writing coursework and aims to place such multimodal communication on a similar pedestal print holds. Literacies provides thorough argumentation expressing how coursework involving multimodal components compel students to communicate through multimodal mediums artfully, as they do so outside of the academic realm. Additionally, Literacies works to shift both student and teacher attitudes regarding the nature academic worth of multimodal literacy, the scope of multimodal mastery, and the mindset privileging the “five-paragraph essay”. This book provides numerous visual and textual examples of student work illustrating the reenvisioning of digital textuality and rhetorical discourse within digital spaces. Literacies features a number of diverse and established professors with the fields of English, rhetoric, and composition which benefit audiences preferring ratiocination involving empirical research and scholarly debate.

As a life-long student exploring multimodal literacy, this book provided me a breadth of information explaining the modern resistances of multimodal course implementation faced by the academic writing community. Institutional fears of funding the “unknown and lowly” multimodal coursework fostered the mandate for monomodal projects and instilled a student devaluation of emerging hybrid genres of communication. Literacies displays the venturing of students and professors' march towards the multimodal unknown, an arena limited by time and technological expertise. Nevertheless, the multimodal projects and essays created within the various courses illustrated in Literacies put forth the argument that the routine, monomodal classroom stifles student creativity and undermines the current trend of digital communication students engage in outside university lecture halls.

I provide an overview of the three sections of Literacies highlighting the core ideology of each section and the pros and cons found therein. The final portion of each overview offers chapter recommendations, which are areas within each section that provide the most useful information regarding the subject matter.