Part I: "Refiguring Notions of Literacy in an Electronic World"
The first section of Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies begins by addressing the often-discussed topic of literacy in today's electronic age. The essays in "Refiguring Notions of Literacy in an Electronic World" do just that--literacy, in its many incarnations and constructs, is examined in as many different ways. Denis Baron provides a short historical overview of the development of writing technologies from the invention of writing to the present, including the tale of Henry David Thoreau's family pencil manufacturing business and Thoreau's contributions to the more technical side of writing. Baron argues that technologies are developed for use by an elite group of people for a specific purpose, and subsequent technological strides are made as the technology spreads throughout society and individuals experiment with, alter, and recreate different incarnations for their own uses.
Gunther Kress and Douglas Hesse examine how the unfolding world of electronic communication has changed (and will change) the needs of the students in the contemporary English classroom. Kress urges readers to reassess our current notions of literacy to include the visual while calling for a more updated definition of the word "literacy," using examples of visual representation from various sources to argue for a more inclusive incorporation of all different literacies in the English classroom. Hesse warns us of the implications of tossing aside essayistic literacy in favor of postmodern literacies such as technology; meanwhile, he calls for the redefining of the essay to include the technological aspects of the genre.
Sarah J. Sloane looks at establishing genealogy as a critical lens through which we should view the work of students, a suggestion based on her experiences with J., a first-year student writer, and the "medial hauntings"of his prior writing experiences which, Sloane argues, shaped his decisions about style, topic, and form. She concludes with a call for a more careful, attentive look at how genealogy, or memory, may affect writers and their composing processes, particularly when those processes take place at a computer.
Myka Vielstimmig, the collaborative author of Kathleen Yancey and Michael Spooner, takes the suggestions of Kress and Hesse and creates a visual essay which crosses genre borders and conventions to examine the "new essay" and the different perspectives it can incorporate. Vielstimmig argues against more traditional views of textuality and collaboration by threading together multiple voices and texts to create a new experience for the reader.
In their response to the articles in this section, Diana George and Diane Shoos address literacy and technology in the past and in the future. They call for the incorporation of the visual into our concept of literacy, as Kress suggests, but they push for the closer examination of the medium or technology in which the visual is presented and a more focused look at the meanings and messages of images and their presence within texts.
- Dennis Baron, "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies"
- Douglas Hesse, "Saving a Place for Essayistic Literacy"
- Sarah J. Sloane, "The Haunting Story of J.: Genealogy as a Critical Category in Understanding How a Writer Composes"
- Gunther Kress, "'English' at the Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in the Context of the Turn to the Visual"
- Myka Vielstimmig, "Petals on a Wet, Black Bough: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay"
- Diana George and Diane Shoos, "Dropping Bread Crumbs in the Intertextual Forest: Critical Literacy in a Postmodern Age"
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