Archive as a Multimodal Site
Kress and Van Leeuwen have me considering archives as multimodal sites. I have a lot more thinking to do on this, but my beginning idea is to explore both physical and digital archives as multimodal sites. I know Jim Purdy in his dissertation considers the design of digital archives like JSTOR as multimodal sites.
I'm looking specifically at digital archives that represent American studies and am in the process of developing a rubric to assess how such archives work. One thing I should point out right away is that I'm going to have to define "digital archive"--that it's basically a web site, but a site with the purpose of archiving texts--anything from historic letters to electronic editions of novels or poems. There's a lot out there on the web, but not a whole lot of work yet on this sort of scholarship.
Kress and Van Leeuwen in Multimodal Discourse consider how magazines represent discourses, and it makes me consider how web sites represent discourses, because I think they operate much like magazines. If it's an academic website, say for some topic in "English studies," however large that might be, how is "academic discourse" depicted? What sort of ideology does a design of a web site invoke? (Visual rhetoric...)
What is expected of an academic web site? What sorts of colors and what organizational scheme? For example, how would the design of a site about literature differ from a site about multimedia or linguistics? What sorts of images would be used?
Would most literature web sites have a romantic feel? Is there a discourse of literature that usually involves romantic views of history? How does such a discourse operate in or reflect our culture? I think many web sites dealing with literature have similar visual rhetoric to Levenger ads (see the Levenger catalog here:http://www.levenger.com/)
So, does the design and visual rhetoric of English studies usually end up with images or tweed elbow patched professors, spectacles resting on an open book, and leather-bound tomes (or leather library chairs)? Do these images of "English" really represent the current state of our field?
I'm looking specifically at digital archives that represent American studies and am in the process of developing a rubric to assess how such archives work. One thing I should point out right away is that I'm going to have to define "digital archive"--that it's basically a web site, but a site with the purpose of archiving texts--anything from historic letters to electronic editions of novels or poems. There's a lot out there on the web, but not a whole lot of work yet on this sort of scholarship.
Kress and Van Leeuwen in Multimodal Discourse consider how magazines represent discourses, and it makes me consider how web sites represent discourses, because I think they operate much like magazines. If it's an academic website, say for some topic in "English studies," however large that might be, how is "academic discourse" depicted? What sort of ideology does a design of a web site invoke? (Visual rhetoric...)
What is expected of an academic web site? What sorts of colors and what organizational scheme? For example, how would the design of a site about literature differ from a site about multimedia or linguistics? What sorts of images would be used?
Would most literature web sites have a romantic feel? Is there a discourse of literature that usually involves romantic views of history? How does such a discourse operate in or reflect our culture? I think many web sites dealing with literature have similar visual rhetoric to Levenger ads (see the Levenger catalog here:http://www.levenger.com/)
So, does the design and visual rhetoric of English studies usually end up with images or tweed elbow patched professors, spectacles resting on an open book, and leather-bound tomes (or leather library chairs)? Do these images of "English" really represent the current state of our field?
posted by Elizabeth Vincelette @ 11:26 AM
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