#new work of composing

[ecbrenn]

The body rhetorically functions as a topos, or commonplace, across disciplines, across theoretical stances and epistemologies, and across experiential standpoints. Meaning making is mediated through the body—in a given body's available means.

The title of this section is "Invention is Embodied." This was something I brought up at the very beginning of our class--and I think it can work in two ways. Invention is embodied, meaning that the body is a tool in the act of invention. But we also rhetorically invent our bodies. Invention is embodied, and the body is invented. This invented body then serves as the place--the commonplace--from which we view the rest of our world.

"Re-Inventing Invention," Act 1 Scene 2 

[ecbrenn]

Rather than focusing solely on teaching students to narrow and focus their thoughts to produce 'coherent' arguments, composition teachers might also engage students in crafting works of interactive hypermedia that value and enact the process of discovery through inventive juxtaposition. More recently, computers and writing scholars have been articulating ways in which the radical appropriations and juxtapositions of audio and video remix artists might serve as models for rethinking writing pedagogy...Just as audio remix artists such as Paul Miller (2004) create new music out of re-arranging samples of other songs, so too can students re-invent digital essays by (at least in part) sampling images, words, and sounds from other texts.

What does invention look like in a multimedia age? How can we utilize new technologies to aid students in the invention process? Is invention inherently different today, given students' exposure to the kinds of multimodal learning environments that constitute the web? 

Re-Inventing Invention, Act 1 Scene 1