English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

After much struggling I am still falling short of an actual project idea.  I would like to link my study of trauma with visual rhetoric.  I think that some of the work on mirror neurons would be helpful in better understanding how people understand, process and react to traumas. In my thesis I looked at visual representations of trauma in film and that certainly has potential for continued resea

I know we're supposed to be at an early stage here, but I've been working on this awhile...

Given the ease of video editing software and the proliferation of web-based forums on which to post amateur productions, it's not surprising that fanvids have become a favorite tool for fans of television and film to create new arguments about their reading of the original text. "Fanvids" have the potential to return control of the text to the reader by giving the creator the power of suture. By analyzing vids from two different fandoms, I hope to tease out what it is these amateur auteurs know about visual rhetoric and how they choose to either accept or ignore Hollywood film conventions in order to make their arguments. Specifically, I will look at the argument for a romantic relationship between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy (of Harry Potter) and the argument for a romantic relationship between Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson (Stargate: SG-1).

I am very interested in the Visual Rhetoric of movie trailers. While we're constantly exposed to them (or at least those of us who cruise apple.com/trailers, imdb, myspace, and regularly attend movies), but how often do we really think about the makeup of the trailers that try so hard to get us to go out and see movies?

I'm a bit worried that we think about it often. I've often had conversations about such things with friends as credits are rolling and with other cinephiles about upcoming films.

As a student in professional writing, I have taken many courses about rhetoric and the way(s) it interacts with people, cultures, and contexts. I have always been interested in the way that medium and message coalesce to produce communication. However, I do not have the kind of background I want and know I’ll need in the areas of visual rhetoric, design, and technology.

For this project, I would like to explore the visual display of information as it relates to and supplements/complements the areas of professional and technical communication. I am interested in researching one or more of the following areas: the interaction of and relationship between text, images, and space; the shape or representation of visual information; the effective use of visuals; differing uses of visuals in academia and the workplace.

I am very much intrigued by the “falsehoods” that our eyes and brains team up to tell us. What I want to investigate is the times when we know what we see is not real (or know most of the time) and then try to articulate (both in words and images) what we did/didn’t see after (sometimes during) the fact.   Sounds silly, but I want to look at hallucinations and how we relate to them. I am curious about the things (drugs, meditation, sleep deprivation) that we consciously do to induce a state where we know that what we see is not “true” in the sense that others can confirm for us (which oddly enough is fairly similar to how things are normally, we just don’t know it).

I want to do my dissertation on spectatorship as the post-Enlightenment model of subjectivity (Benjamin, Lacanian and feminist film criticism, even Levinas). Specifically, I want to trace how the technologies of spectatorship from perspective in art through camera obscura, films and shopping centers to the internet have changed what it means to be a subject. My intent for this class is to yet another dry run of this project either through avatars or, a more broadly-defined avatar model, the personals website, Myspace and Facebook. I might also do blogs or uses of webcams, but I'm not sure what the range of the inquiry for this class will be yet.

Call me "old fashion" but earlier this semester I expressed interest in understanding the domains (or places) of visual rhetoric. With my project, I'd like to place visual rhetoric within the infamous (and dubious) Aristotelian taxonomy. While simultaneously critiquing and expanding Aristotle's (and by extension much contemporary) framing of epideictic rhetoric, I want to see (and perhaps wind-up arguing) how helpful it is to see visual rhetoric operating as a complexly envisioned epideictic rhetoric.

The aspect of visual rhetoric that interests me the most is the connection between neurological science and perception/persuasion. Many readings in the class explore this area, including Barry's Visual Intelligence and Gregory's Eye and Brain. However, there is a wealth of recent, cutting edge literature on cognitive systems and perception, and how metaphors and language assist cognitive systems in processing the world. I believe connecting these two areas of research is vital for rhetoricians, because more and more research is becoming available on how the brain functions. As both rhetoric and cognitive science continue to emerge, the connections between these fields need to be drawn.

Ok, so this is really just the germ of an idea, but I reckon that’s what we’re shooting for in this contract proposal. Most, if not all, of my research interests involve finding better articulated goals, purposes, and uses of popular culture and mass media in the composition classroom. Much of the pedagogical discussion for the best few decades has been wrapped up in the concerns of critical culture studies and radical positions that always seek to interrogate popular culture as a site of rampant inequality and absolute horror. I am not blind to these aspects of it, and think this style of interrogation is an ongoing process. However, I also believe popular culture is currently more complex than ever and (shudder) can have redeeming qualities; additionally, constantly having our students solely interrogate it in a manner that constantly belittles and demeans does not help us break the view of instructors as fuddy duddies who simply want students to hate on everything.