Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Sep 2008 Open Access

"This Video Game We Call War": Multimodal Recruitment in America's Army Game

Nancy Welch

Abstract

This article focuses on America's Army Game, the first-person-shooter video game now being peddled by the U.S. Army for classroom use. In my community-based literacy class, where students partner with children and teens at a local youth center, this "game" helps us to grasp and problematize literacy sponsorship and recruitment-the idea that literacy education involves not just learning a new set of practices but also trying out a social identity. Through this class, I argue for a pedagogy of multiliteracies that's committed to counter-recruitment: to enlarging ideological space so that critical questions can be formed and alternatives entertained.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2008-09-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv8i1pp162-191
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Open Access
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Topics
writing pedagogy literacy studies community literacy
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