DMAC

 DMAC was profoundly influential for our program. I'll never forget the first time my department head and regular collaborator learned the term "multimodal." Even without the term, they were as sold as I was. Dickie Selfe came down that fall to conduct a feasibility study for the research center that became the Converging Literacies Center (see White Paper).

Though I would not say DMAC was directly responsible for everything that came out of CLiC and my related work as described below, I can say that it set a . . . I don't know, it "seeded" work I'd long wanted to do but hadn't figured out how. I always wanted to figure out how to create a video essay. Or at least that’s my recollection. I hadn’t thought to make that link to my scholarship until I first saw/learned about and from Cindy Selfe’s work at the Watson conference back when she was the visiting scholar. 

I went to DMAC because I saw the projects students produced when Cindy Selfe was Watson visiting scholar (2006?). At the time, I was working on my book The Way Literacy Lives, which included my brother's literacy narrative. He was an electronic musician as well, which I had been writing about in alphabetic text/prose at precisely the same time and which seemed inadequate for the task. To speak of multiple literacies, it struck me immediately that I needed to include his music and voice directly. Cindy assured me all I needed was a cheap/free video editing program and I could figure it out. I couldn’t. I really tried. Thus, DMAC. 

Anyway, IMMEDIATELY after walking out of that auditorium in Louisville, I sat in the lobby and began storyboarding the video essay that finally became Standardized, an essay I began at DMAC and was immediately invited to present with other video essays at a featured session at NCTE that November (NYC). That’s here: https://youtu.be/BasSXwwI-Y0 Linda Adler-Kassner organized that Featured session. Funny, she told me some time later she used it as an example in her classes all the time. Not certain if she still does. Weird, though, to think of my brother’s voice (recorded by phone with me in my hotel room in Columbus and the recording itself taking place  on his equipment in his home studio in Austin because I did not have or know much about how to make that happen—before smart phones). I found out and signed up for DMAC. I raved about it so much my colleague and collaborator went the very next year. 

DMAC gave me the tools I needed to produce other video essays for various reasons, including documentaries funded in part by NEH. I produced several documentaries and articles directly about this developing project, and I have created two coursed explicitly about generating video essays that are quite popular and in regular rotation: a graduate course called "Writing with Digital Media"-- and an undergraduate course). The work I have done through CLiC, though

CLiC mission, the research center I launched in 2007. Early in its life, our Dean was so excited about it he saw CLiC as potential for

The mission of the Converging Literacies Center (CLiC) is to promote a better understanding of how texts and related literacy practices may develop, sustain, or even erode civic engagement across local publics, especially among historically underrepresented groups. With a view toward promoting more robust public discussion, CLiC supports historical, theoretical, and empirical research on rhetoric and writing as manifested in everyday local contexts and over time. CLiC is highly attentive to new media’s role in our increasingly literate lives, thus projects emerging from and informing CLiC often engage new media as both object of inquiry and the form through which these findings are communicated. Likewise, CLiC develops educational and outreach initiatives designed to address relevant civic issues.”

There’s more. But I suppose that’s enough.