Cinema-(to)-graphy: Film and Writing in Contemporary Composition Courses

Film is simply too big and too influential a mass medium to ignore. Suprisingly enough, although film is already a staple in many composition classrooms, little has been written about its uses - leaving many of us uncertain of how to proceed. "Cinema-(to)-Graphy" takes you inside some of those classrooms, offering new ideas on integrating film and other visual media with student writing. Ellen Bishop divides the book into four sections based on where the authors locate themselves in the field of film and writing. These essays, if anything, resist easy categorization; all of them begin to unfold both theoretical and practical questions that arise from the conversation about film and writing, cultural studies and undergraduate students. These instructors offer insight into both course structures and materials, and the methods through which they make use of them. They aim to offer new strategies to help students become critical thinkers who can responsibly speak to and read their media-saturated world, and who can identify and work with the problems posed by language. This anthology should be of use to university and college teachers of all ranks, especially graduate student teachers interested in integrating film into their composition classrooms.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Cinema-to-Graphy - Film and Writing in Contemporary Composition Courses, E. Bishop. Part 1 Critical Frames: Interpreting the Personal - the Ordering of the Narrative of Their/Our Own Reality, P. Caill; Writing Images - Some Notes on Film in the Composition Classroom, D. Wild; Rear Window - Looking at Film Theory Through Pedagogy, E. Maloney and P. Miller. Part 2 Methods of Reading Race in the Film and Composition Classroom: Representing Student Culture - Field Research and John Singleton's Higher Learning in the Composition Classroom, D. Dunbar-Odom; Reading Race in the Multicultural Classroom, E. Bishop; Reading the Right Thing, J. Harris; Reading Multiculturally and Rhetorically - Higher Learning in the Composition Classroom, J. Schmertz and A. Trefzer. Part 3 Other Classrooms, Other Students, Other Methods: Mapping the Use of Feature Films in Composition Classes, D. Cruz; Inherit the Text - an Interdisciplinary Perspective on Argumentation, L. Kasper and R. Singer; Using Film to Teach Coherence in Writing, K. Chanock; Education with Rita, V. Salmon. Part 4 From the Film Studies Perspective: Challenging Antiwriting Biases in the Teaching of Film, J. Heyda; Apocalypse Yesterday -Writing, Literacy and the "Threat" of "Electric Technology", L. Fisher.

About the Author :

Ellen Bishop is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.