public

Introduction and Literature Review

How can scholars utilize the intersection of visual rhetoric, social justice, genre theory, and embodiment theory to craft resistance reading and writing practices in the classroom? What contemporary and relevant artifacts exist as models of these applied theories? An excellent example is digital graphic narrative, specifically digital graphic narratives that relay the experiences of minority individuals who have found safe spaces in this genre.

Introduction

Among the multitude of objectives listed on a First-Year Composition (FYC) syllabus, developing a critical stance—whether in terms of reading, thinking, analysis, or reflection—seems paramount. This pedagogical aim oftentimes implicates what Paulo Friere famously coined “banking education,” a model that sees students as empty receptacles waiting to be filled by an institution’s ideologies.

Scholars in rhetoric and composition have, in recent years, examined how publics, counterpublics, and public writing function in everyday spaces and places, as expression, argument, and resistance (Warner; Rivers and Weber; Rice; Coogan; Weisser). In response to world-wide events and political changes, networks – informal and formal – use the public sphere to communicate dissensus and resistance, making visible the rhetoric of counter/publics in tension with larger publics.