College of Arts & Humanities
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1611
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Electracy in Praxis: Pedagogical Relays for an Undergraduate Writing Curriculum(2016) Geary, Thomas Michael; Logan, Shirley W.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The paradigm shift from traditional print literacy to the postmodern fragmentation, nonlinearity, and multimodality of writing for the Internet is realized in Gregory L. Ulmer’s electracy theory. Ulmer’s open invitation to continually invent the theory has resulted in the proliferation of relays, or weak models, by electracy advocates for understanding and applying the theory. Most relays, however, remain theoretical rather than practical for the writing classroom, and electracy instruction remains rare, potentially hindering the theory’s development. In this dissertation, I address the gap in electracy praxis by adapting, developing, and remixing relays for a functional electracy curriculum with first-year writing students in the Virginia Community College System as the target audience. I review existing electracy relays, pedagogical applications, and assessment practices – Ulmer’s and those of electracy advocates – before introducing my own relays, which take the form of modules. My proposed relay modules are designed for adaptability with the goals of introducing digital natives to the logic of new media and guiding instructors to possible implementations of electracy. Each module contains a justification, core competencies and learning outcomes, optional readings, an assignment with supplemental exercises, and assessment criteria. My Playlist, Transduction, and (Sim)ulation relays follow sound backward curricular design principles and emphasize core hallmarks of electracy as juxtaposed alongside literacy. This dissertation encourages the instruction of new media in Ulmer’s postmodern apparatus in which student invention via the articulation of fragments from various semiotic modes stems from and results in new methodologies for and understandings of digital communication.Item Videopainting:a Dialogue(2009) Rojo Acebes, Juan Andres; Morse, Brandon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My video installations refer both to the pictorial quality of cinema and to the artist's role as a voyeur. The videos depict simple processes or actions, such as eating, cleaning, or applying make-up. These actions are deeply interiorized and they recreate "true" moments of intimacy by capturing the natural way in which the body communicates. The emphasis is on the actions per se, the importance of the time spent performing them, and the emotional associations that they carry. The contrast between the qualities of the new media and my recent work's content and form, has transformed my previous self-indulgent activity into a meditated exercise of nostalgia. Formally my body of work bridges the distance between a Spanish Baroque painterly aesthetics and the apparently opposed qualities of the digital medium.