viz.

Overview

This project’s members will join the DWRL’s award-winning visual rhetoric research and publishing project, viz. This distinguished site ranks among the most widely-read of all publications produced at UT and won the Kairos 2010 John Lovas Memorial Weblog Award. During the 2013- 2014 academic year, the site averaged nearly 14,000 page views per month. Although it is often referred to as a blog, the project's scope is much broader than that. It contains a robust and growing body of texts on visual theory and semiotics, multimodal pedagogical materials designed for visual rhetoric instruction, and interviews with important figures in rhetoric and communication who focus on the interdisciplinary field of visual studies.

Goals

The goals of viz. this year are threefold: to continue cultivating conversations about visual rhetoric, to expand its own audience and the audience for these conversations, and to produce visual arguments that contribute to these conversations. To this end, group members will focus on developing the site as a pedagogical resource for instructors in the DRW and DWRL, especially by contributing to the site’s static content; raising awareness of viz. by promoting the site and, when possible, increasing its visibility by submitting it for awards, review, or inclusion in other blog rolls; pursuing and maintaining collaborative opportunities (e.g. past work with the the Harry Ransom Center); exploring new publication types to enhance the site (e.g. reviews, interviews, slidecasts, or other visually oriented, multimedia projects); and revising the site’s bibliography by expanding and annotating it.

Responsibilities

Project members will engage with the study of visual rhetoric by researching, writing, and developing pedagogical tools that explore the intersection of image and text. Each project member is responsible for a weekly or biweekly blog post that analyzes a piece of visual rhetoric or makes a visual argument. Given its primary focus on visual rhetoric, this project may interest individuals with investments in the related fields of media studies, cultural studies, bibliography, and textual studies. Members of the group will reap many benefits, including regular writing and publishing opportunities for an award-winning academic research site; the addition of an innovative, multimedia component to a professional portfolio; networking with and interviewing experts in visual rhetoric and related fields; incorporating new visual rhetoric technology, texts, and theory into a larger research agenda; developing materials that can be used in a Digital Writing and Research Certificate portfolio; and enhancing a teaching philosophy/portfolio to include a range of visual rhetoric materials.

Deliverables

Members of viz. will create both dynamic and static content for the website, collectively producing at least three blog posts per week analyzing or engaging in visual rhetoric.