In February, 2021, Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Dr. Carolyn Miller shared a riveting presentation, "Memoir, Blog, and Selfie: Genre as Social Action in Self-Representations."
Thank you, Dr. Liz Wright, for inviting and introducing her.
Dr. Miller offered this summary: A rhetorical approach to genres understands them as social recognitions and expectations about communicative action: they are cultural patterns of getting things done together. Beyond the hierarchies and traditions of high culture, beyond the highly structured genres of the classroom, the professions, and the workplace, we also find genres embedded in our everyday lives as consumers and citizens, as spiritual and hedonic beings, as creatures of both action and reflection. This lecture-presentation explores several familiar genres of self-representation, starting with the old-media genre of memoir and moving to new-media genres such as personal blogs and selfies. How are these genres grounded in their media environments? what do we expect from such works? why and how do these cultural patterns appeal to us? what social actions do they perform? by what recurrent social exigences are they motivated? Exploring these questions will show how rhetorical genre analysis can illuminate contemporary social life, how the past is sedimented within present practices, and how new digital and visual genres can reinvigorate and extend traditional approaches to genre.
The video can be seen on YouTube.
To join ELWS as a student (or as a teacher), visit the department page for more information.