Introduction
The ReVise project remixes revision by using the University of Texas at Austin Digital Writing & Research Lab's (DWRL) resources to rework and recast course content (papers, readings, and texts) into digital presentations. Students in our Rhetoric and Writing 309K classes and transform textual objects into persuasive visual arguments. We designed the ReVise project as a way to conclude our respective courses. After learning the four steps of writing in Joseph Harris’ Revising—coming to terms, forwarding, countering, and taking an approach—students develop a methodology of revision. They ask and answer the following questions: What’s your project?, What works?, What else might be said?, What’s next? The project demonstrates how changing medium, genre, perspective, or audience can alter argument. The project has the following steps: Brainstorming, Pre-writing, A/V Workshop, Showtime, and Assessment. By completing this project, students review the steps of crafting a persuasive written argument. They add complexity to this beginning through visual, auditory, and editorial cues.
Rhetoric of the iPhone (Caroline’s Course)
The ReVise project calls students to radically revise a major paper—the iNarrative, the Researched Conversation, or the App Analysis—into visual presentations. Projects draw upon skills and content from the entirety of the course to showcase multi-modal forms of persuasion. Conferences and workshops about genre, tone, materials and scope result in concise, developed texts. This class pivots around the problematic, yet powerful author, audience, and text dynamic the iPhone generation inspires (sample student projects: how do body image issues result from Photoshop apps? How did music piracy make Ed Sheeran a pop star?). In crafting texts that persuade the eye and ear, students understand the reality of audience and learn to value credibility.
Rhetoric of Women in Dystopia (Amy’s Course)
The ReVise project adapts students’ knowledge of rhetorical devices in print to film. Students learn to analyze the adaptations of texts into film by reading critical texts that demonstrate visual analysis. When comparing visual and written texts, they develop an understanding of how medium/venue influences and affects the audience (e.g. how does adapting a graphic novel to the big screen differ from adapting a short story/novel?). They also consider the limitations imposed by these constraints. For the project, each student selects a different film to review (sample student projects: how does the series the 3% reflect issues of privilege and gender inequality in Brazilian society? How does The Handmaid’s Tale participate in the male gaze?) By constructing a persuasive argument about the film, they further reflect upon the role of women in dystopias and the film participates in the greater trajectory of dystopias that have been discussed.
*The assignment was recognized with the John Slatin Prize for Mastery of Electronic Media in Education (2017).