Invitation to the fall Digital Showcase
The Department of English has hosted a biannual Digital Media Showcase since Fall 2013, when digital composition assignments first became widely integrated into our Seminar in Composition curriculum. The cross-programmatic open house showcases projects crafted for courses across the department—featuring instructor-nominated work by students of composition, literature, film, public and professional writing, and all genres of creative writing.
The first showcase was launched by Trisha Campbell, who completed her doctorate in Pitt’s Composition program in 2015. In the first call for projects, Campbell sought to highlight ways in which “digital production is being taught in creative, compelling and scholarly ways across the department.” The Digital Media Showcase continues to be curated with this goal in mind by the department’s Digital Media Learning Coordinators (DMLC) each semester. In the years since, the scope of the call has expanded beyond the digital to spotlight the full range of creative pedagogy and production in our classrooms—by incorporating handmade and multimodal projects such as games and zines.
As a PhD student enthusiastic about multimodal pedagogy, I have attended nearly every Digital Media Showcase over the last five years. Each term features a diverse range of terrific projects and promising works-in-progress, and no term is quite like another. Now in my second term as DMLC, I have had the privilege of organizing two showcases—most recently, on December 5, 2018.
Student Web site design from archive
The Fall 2018 projects included an eclectic mix of classroom collaborations and independent initiatives. Erin Anderson’s students shared personal, playful, and powerful audio pieces from their Multimedia Essay workshop. Among them was Maya Best’s “Learning to Speak Again,” on Best’s interconnected relationships with language; she focuses on her grandmother, who taught her Bengali, and how things have changed since a stroke took away her grandmother’s ability to speak.
Kelsey Cameron’s Composing Digital Media students made soundscapes, timely captioned videos, and games in Twine, an open-source interactive storytelling tool. Jess Fitzpatrick’s Narrative and Technology students further added to our collection of Twines, including a whimsical “Conquering Cathy” game by Arie Kalcevic, which features a choose-your-own-adventure romp through the Cathedral of Learning, filled with the requisite secret passageways and peregrine falcons. The Secret Pittsburgh class, which had their own end-of-term showcase, gave us a teaser of their work-in-progress with a BuzzFeed Quiz on “What Secret Pittsburgh Destination Are You?” Other locally sourced projects came from Jen Saltmarsh’s students, who crafted visual essays with firsthand footage filmed in Pittsburgh.
Still of visible poem featured in Fall 2018 Digital Showcase
Brenda Whitney’s How to Do Things with Literature course took inspiration from the Visible Poetry Project to craft visually stunning adaptations of poems by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. One student, Grace Eden, reinterpreted Dickinson’s love poem, “Her Breast is Fit for Pearls,” as a “short film about queer women,” noting the importance of featuring a “comprehensive, diverse spectrum of relationships … in love stories told in various mediums.”
Projects from Stephen Quigley’s courses represented the Public and Professional Writing Program. Groups used Adobe XD to build app prototypes in the form of training manuals. These interactive apps were available via live QR codes that could be scanned by smartphones, and were also showcased on dedicated displays with self-scrolling screens.
I’ve only mentioned a few of the event’s features to highlight the exciting range of projects and possibilities. I encourage everyone to check out (or revisit!) the full line-up of creative and critical works, which are digitally archived here. For everyone teaching multimodal projects next term: please look forward to my call for the Spring Digital Media Showcase next year—I am already looking forward to seeing what the next showcase will bring.
—Melissa Yang
Melissa Yang is a PhD Candidate in Composition and the current Digital Media Learning Coordinator.