You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'articulations' category.
So I’ve been busy writing my prospectus and putting together my HSRB stuff recently; I haven’t gotten to blog much about my dissertation project. What I really think the blog has helped me to do is to think through my ideas, but not necessarily help during drafting. In fact, I don’t know how much more I’ll be blogging my project from now on, unless I have issues or blocks in my project. But it’s not going to be anywhere near daily–I found that when I had to write daily, I kept going around in circles. I find that taking a step back and holding off on writing more for a few days helps. (of course I know that in drafting, writing a bit every day is useful. But as for articulating thesis ideas, writing every day is sort of overkill.)
So where am I now? I’ve handed in my prospectus to my chair, and sent a draft to my internal committee members to start looking through, and I’m within a day of handing in my HSRB requirements (you know, it’s not as hard as it looks. Really). Hopefully within a short time I’ll be scheduling my grad lecture!! I’ll let everyone know when that is.
–ejfleitz
Here’s my draft outline for possible chapters I’m proposing:
Overall argument: cookery texts as multimodal texts. Attempt to not only value cookery texts as rhetorical but especially to expand and explore the definition of multimodality. A theory-building rhetorical project.
Chapter 1: Introduction
–context, lit review, discussion of methods/methodology
–data: library sources
Chapter 2: Multimodal Cookbooks: Remediating Text
–in-depth lit review concerning multimodality, expanding definition of multimodality
–data: library sources, primary sources (19th century American cookbooks)
Chapter 3: Multimodal Literacies: The Cook as Teacher and Learner
–analysis of the process of reading/interpreting a recipe, possibly with historical background on the recipe’s roots as a oral culture
–data: library sources, small-scale reception study of local cooks, possible primary sources (19th century reform cookbooks–ones which focused on training the new cook)
–I’d like to include this reception study. If I can’t use the data in more than just this chapter, is it not useful? I’d like to use the data possibly in other chapters where applicable.
Chapter 4: Cooking with the Body: Cooking as Performance
–discussion of the materiality of cookbooks, as they refer to and call for a physical act
–data: library sources, primary source (sample television cooking programs, such as Julia Child, possibly in conjunction with 19th-century cookbooks or is that too much stuff?)
Chapter 5: Conclusion. Cooking in Print: Historical Multimodal Texts and Technology
–historical review of 19th-century cookbooks and the ways in which they took advantage of new advancements in technology
–data: library sources, primary sources (19th-century cookbooks)
–this may be similar to a paper currently under consideration in College English, but with a further developed theory base.
Problem: I’m not sure how I can defend my choice of focusing on 19th century American cookbooks. They don’t especially show how cookbooks are multimodal, any more than other print recipes do. They do show advances in technology at the time. They also are at a point in history where mass production of printed books was new and popular.
Problem: Is there enough connection between these chapters? Do they all work towards arguing for cookbooks as multimodal and for the definition of multimodality to be expanded?
Thanks
–E
OK, I’ve been doing some thinking about how to begin to organize the research and ideas I’ve come up with in the past six weeks of reading. I really am pleasantly surprised that most of my research I’ve done is actually relevant to what I’m wanting to do (often I shift topics and have to throw away lots of research). Anyway, some of it looks familiar to previous postings.
Main argument: Cookery texts as multimodal texts. I’m using the term “cookery texts” to keep it broad, to include TV cooking shows, newsletters, emails, recipes, websites, blogs, cookbooks, DVDs, etc. in the range of texts that characterize this “foodie” culture. I’m not sure if I want to focus on one type of cookery text, as that’s not really my point. My point is to show that recipes, in print or email or hypertext or whatever mode, are each multimodal. They have always been multimodal, and it has not come about since the existence of the Net or of the “foodie” phenomenon. To that end, I may focus on discussing print recipes and print cookbooks only because they are less obviously multimodal, in order to try to expand the definition of multimodality.
Subpoints (in no logical order, they’re just as I could think of them):
1) How we read/use cookery texts
This may be a big one. It may run throughout my entire diss, as well. It may involve:
2) Multimodal characteristics of cookery texts
This may also be a biggie.
3) Reception study
In order to study how one reads/uses a cookery text, I am envisioning a reception study involving home cooks (not professional cooks). It may involve group discussions, one-on-one interviews, group or individual reactions to cookbooks/TV shows/websites, and a questionnaire.
4) Multimodal Literacies: The Cook as a Teacher and Learner
Discussion of the reader’s role in the teaching-learning dyad as applied to cookery texts.
5) “I am a foodie”: Identity in Cookery Texts
Discussion of the reader’s identity in a cookery text.
6) Cooking With the Body: Cooking as Performance
Discussion of the physical act of cooking, which engages modes other than print. The act is attempted to be represented in print, but as a physical, bodily act, can never be completely defined by language, always existing on the border of language.
7) Cookery’s Roots
A historical look at the move from a woman-dominated, oral culture to a literate practice.
8 ) Cooking with Technology
A historical and rhetorical analysis of the ways in which cookery texts throughout history have been prone to adopting new technologies. May bring in study of Victorian era reform movement and their use of print to their advantage.
So here’s my ideas so far…let me know what you think.
More thinking about my project, here’s some notes towards an abstract:
At the moment, I am envisioning a study of the foodie movement, a pop-culture phenomenon that manifests itself in television cooking shows (Iron Chef, Rachael Ray), blogs, websites, cookbooks, CD-ROMs, and DVDs. I focus on the audience’s role in the construction and perpetuation of this movement, and look at the ways in which the audience constructs “foodie” identity through engagement with the new media texts. Using reader-response theory in conjunction with feminist theories of identity and the body, I construct a framework that analyzes the foodie movement as a rhetorical text…
That’s what I have so far. As for the “feminist theories of identity and the body” part, not so much right now. Am looking instead at feminist media studies and discussions of the female reader/viewer, issues of the gaze and taking back the gaze. I’m finding that both feminist media studies/feminist reader theories and new media studies articulate more accurately the “relationship” between reader and text, as a more flexible, dialectic system.
I’ve also noticed that reader-text relationships are often driven by desire. Several theorists mention desire or needs as a reasoning for interpretation. This may become a significant point. Or, not.
A research question: What does the viewer/reader do when presented with a cookery text?
Recent ideas (since the above notes were written): Cookbooks as multimodal? The current media of cooking (books, websites, magazines, etc) takes advantage of its multimedia potential…or, how we read cookbooks can best be explained through theories of multimodality, as cookbooks/cookery texts have always been multimodal.
Also, maybe look more into the issue of white space or gaps/spaces in cookery texts, which may be where readers inhabit in order to create closure and connect data to context…where learning occurs…
Feedback appreciated!
–ejfleitz
I’m doing a study of cookbooks which explores the way they reflect the transfer from primary to secondary orality, as it is demonstrated through new media texts and how they address the audience and interact with them. Using feminist theory–body studies/material culture focus. Perhaps also the theory can be applied in the larger scale, to develop a new theory to apply to material rhetoric. Somehow I want it to do more than just “rewrite women into the rhetorical tradition” and “value cookbooks as rhetoric.” They seem very simplistic.
OK. That was a lot of writer-based prose. But it’s where I am right now. If you’d like to read more of it, let me know and I’ll add you as a member of my other blog, http://thedaily10.blogspot.com. You can’t go there now because it’s set to private, unlike this blog. Invite only 
–Elizabeth
Recent Comments