From the first day, we will establish the boundaries and guidelines of this discussion-intensive environment, defining important terms through the analysis of queer print ads while getting acclimated with rhetorical theory and analysis. We will introduce ourselves and assert our identities from the
get-go by saying, “Hi, my name is (preferred name). I prefer (he/she/hir/their) pronouns and identify as a (lesbian/asexual/transgender/I don’t identify).”
Introductions that follow this model provide a safer space for genderqueer, questioning, or trans students to self-assert identities and establish the meaningfulness of group ownership. As a group, we will agree together to a code of conduct for the duration of the workshop and policies about how students will be held accountable for their attendance and contribution. We’ll decide what happens in the case of absence or late or missed work, how we prefer to view media, the need for context and warnings about content, and begin to set up a visual media map online. From the beginning of the
workshop, we will take an inventory of participant experiences with critical analysis and what media outlets they are accustomed to using. In order to welcome a variety of perspectives, it will be made clear from the first meeting that everyone asserts his/her/their/hir own identity and no one other
participant can assign an identity to someone else or target them based on their perceived identity or preferences. During the first two weeks of
workshop meetings, all participants will continue to collaboratively produce a set of discussion boundaries and guidelines as part of an “ice breaker”
activity. The boundaries and guidelines will play a key role in setting the discussion climate of the workshop.
Because of its location in the heart of Buffalo, GLYS “serve[s] to connect the writers’ workshop to the neighborhood in which it [will meet]”
(Heller 9). Using the discussion-based environment of the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop discussed in Heller’s Until We Are Strong Together as a model to produce reflective responses that engage the participants, I would use the first meetings to gauge, through discussion, “what personal, social, educational, and political functions the… workshop [would] serve for those who attend it” (Heller 16) and get the participants to spend time thinking about their media networks. Flower discusses the importance of fostering dialogue (50) and blending active and writer-controlled strategies alongside
“strategies that draw out narrative, reflective interpretation and reveal situated knowledge [but also]… do the analytical work of proposing and testing hypotheses and options” (59). In order to evaluate what shifts I may need to make in producing pedagogically sound and effective digital projects with the students, I need to assess the knowledge, proficiencies, and media preferences they possess as they begin the workshop. Blending examples from the approaches of Heller, Flower, and hooks, I will strive to encourage students to become comfortable with their voices and LGBTQIA+ identit(ies) as digital communicators, develop a sense of community and pride with other writers, and embrace an individualized, self-aware sense of their queer
identity and membership within the local LGBTQIA+ community. Although
material is suggested and summarized in the supplementary materials of this report, students will be asked if they would like to alter the suggested
viewing list and will have the opportunity to choose the forms of media they would like to analyze with the focus on community and identity and the clustered issues devised in discussion. Once we’ve reviewed modes of
rhetorical criticism and analyzed several texts, students will suggest content based on their preferences or provided suggestions and devise discussion questions for selected content. Depending on how many participants continue to attend the workshop, the selection process can be collaborative and can take a comparative or analytical stance.
In selecting viewing materials, I apply the selection guidelines suggested by Logan, Lasswell, Hood, and Watson in “Criteria for Selecting Young Adult Literature.” Although the selection criteria discussed by Logan et al. is targeted for young adult novels rather than films, the selection process for visual media should also involve identifying texts that challenge participants “in processes such as comparing, contrasting, hypothesizing, organizing, summarizing, and critically evaluating” (Logan et. al 32-3) a broad range of representations. For example, using Foss, we could compare and contrast two songs involving queer characters in terms of differences in approach. We could cluster the themes associated with violence in the music
videos and lyrics of “Same Love” by Macklemore and Rise Against!’s “Make It Stop” (September’s Children) and compare them rhetorically. Rhetorical analysis of media texts provides the potential for “window and mirror opportunities” which Logan et al. define as instances where students are exposed to “new insights” and confronted with connections to their own lives through characters and situations (33).
While I will work to build the media suggestion list over time, I suggest surveying the participant’s individual media landscapes through survey or questionnaire before implementing the workshop and providing some constraints for viewing by giving students choices and opportunities to pre-view media before the workshop takes place. Keeping in mind the
context, location, and interests of the workshop participants, as the mentor, I would start the first meeting by selecting or giving participants the
opportunity to select media material “that discourages false images of queer persons and influences healthy perceptions about sexual orientation and gender expression” (Logan et al 33). I suggest that selection and analysis of media texts is most productive when undertaken with the goal of challenging students to explore the question of where the boundaries lie in constructing respectful narrative. Participants can encourage each other to vary their experiences with media through suggestions and raising awareness of lived
realities and interpretations that shape the way we view media examples. It is important to analyze and view representations of queer life on a spectrum in order to fully understand how they impact our identities and the larger community, remembering that depictions are problematic, not solely negative or positive. As an essential part of the workshop, students will learn to
support reasonable interpretations of texts through examples from within the media example and the outside world; through writing and the media map, we will blend different modes of communication as we construct our
responses to the texts we seek to analyze. The media map will assisting in problematizing queer representations by allowing us to visualize rhetorical and thematic connections using Foss’s methods and allowing us to chart how representations have been constructed over time. As part of understanding the full context of representations, the media map will also help to
demonstrate how media creators have shifted their envisioned target
audiences. For example, a participant could suggest an older media text (e.g.
Will and Grace) to reflect upon how queer people were represented to the larger heterosexual audience in the past and compare the representation of queer males to a modern media text (e.g. Modern Family). The organizational structure set by Foss begins by first comparing the key terms, their clusters, the fantasy-themes, characters, settings, actions, and ideologies. The goal of collaborative rhetorical analysis would be the encouragement of analyzing
media more deeply and discussing the steps and approaches that might create more respectful, complex narratives, characters, storylines, and dialogues.
Through in-workshop and optional digital responses, students will be challenged to reflect critically on media using common forms of digital
communication. Making use of the workshop’s Tumblr page, visual map, and connecting the students’ private social media networks (if they would like) will foster a deeper integration and understanding of media to encourage comfort in digital environments requiring different levels of technical
literacies. As students spend time thinking about their media networks over the course of the workshop, we will visually trace out symbolic and thematic connections between media depictions as a (digital) visual media map.
Students will be granted access to the visual media map and the Tumblr page as sources for outside support (given that they are allowed unsupervised Internet access if they are not yet “out of the closet”). In addition, depending on the number of attendees who join the workshop, the participants and I will produce one or two collaborative projects during our meeting time, with me collaborating to create materials with students as well as providing technical support if necessary. The collaborative project(s) will challenge students to construct a digital or theatrical response that addresses an
existing media text that we’ve looked at through the workshop, for example rewriting a script and performing, recording and editing a review podcast or video; writing a scene inspired by a media text; or creating a series of blog posts that analyze particular texts.