Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers

Abstract

Bump Halbritter * Winner of the 2013 Distinguished Book Award from Computers and Composition. New Media Theory Edited by Byron Hawk Information and Pricing 978-1-60235-336-7 (paperback, $32); 978-1-60235-337-4 (hardcover, $65); 978-1-60235-338-1 (PDF, $19.99) © 2013 by Parlor Press. 275 pages, with illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Bookstores : Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. About This Book Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers addresses the current technological challenges and opportunities of writing teachers through a conceptualization of writing and reading that could not have been imagined by many writing teachers at the turn of the twenty-first century. While Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action looks forward to emerging writing technologies, it finds its theoretical foundations by looking back to Kenneth Burke’s concept of symbolic action. Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action situates its pedagogy for engaging the multidimensional rhetoric of audio-visual writing to help new and experienced writing teachers select, create, and engage productive models for designing audio-visual writing assignments and curricula. Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action draws upon Erika Lindemann and her pioneering work in A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers , as well as the educational theory of John Dewey, the multiliteracy theory of Stuart Selber, and the design philosophy of Robin Williams. Rather than look to the creation and critique of audio-visual texts as the goal of its pedagogy, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action looks for ways to use the creation and critique of audio-visual texts as a means for realizing a variety of learning goals for writing students. Bump Halbritter establishes not only the theoretical foundation for that work but also discusses, in depth, the material demands of working with audio-visual assets that writing teachers have not typically been trained to use: microphones, video came