Teaching Place Identity Oppression with Digital Maps and Life Writing, Katherine Roseau
Mapping Memory and Objects, Vanessa Berry
Automedia Portals in the Digital Writing Classroom, Threasa Meads
Teaching Place Identity Oppression with Digital Maps and Life Writing, Katherine Roseau
Abstract
In my course on Nazi-occupied France in spring 2020, I introduced students to theories in place attachment, and they created digital maps (StoryMaps ArcGIS) to explore place identity as expressed in letters and diaries written by Jews. To evaluate the usefulness of this visual, spatial tool, I conducted an IRB-approved survey study. In this presentation, I will address the following questions: How does teaching an overlooked yet visually salient aspect of the Holocaust (place identity oppression) help students to understand the experiences of Jews? How do the digital maps aid our understanding of place identity and place identity oppression?
Bio
I am an Assistant Professor of French at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. I use an interdisciplinary framework of theories in memory, genre, place, and cognitive studies to investigate the functions of life writing in war in order to understand how humans cope with acute threats to identity and stability.
Mapping Memory and Objects, Vanessa Berry
Abstract
In memoir, places and material objects often anchor the life experiences of the author, and provide points of connection for readers. As a pedagogical tool, maps are a useful form with which to develop these elements of memoir, as they enable spatial representations of relationships between the physical and the ephemeral. Drawing on visual methodologies, DIY autobiographical practices, and ideas from vital materialism, this paper puts forward a consideration of maps and mapping – particularly the hand-drawn map, but also digital mapping practices – as a form and method for evoking and enhancing place and object-based memories.
Bio
Vanessa Berry is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney and a writer who works with memory and archives. She is the author of “Mirror Sydney”, a collection of psychogeographic essays and hand-drawn maps, memoirs “Ninety9” and “Strawberry Hills Forever”, and the zine-series “I am a Camera”.
Automedial Portals in the Digital Writing Classroom, Threasa Meads
Abstract
In this paper, I discuss the value of embedding automediality as a threshold concept in a digital writing curriculum underpinned by a transition pedagogy-threshold concept framework. Reflecting on my recently designed and delivered second-year digital writing course, I observe how a collage of particular learning activities and assessments such as digital remediation and online performances of self, when read and practiced through an automedial lens operate as a pedagogic threshold. In building towards the next iteration of the course, I grapple with revised strategies for embedding automediality as a threshold concept to springboard students’ transition and transformation.
Bio
Threasa Meads is the author of two liminal autobiographies, Nobody and Mothsong (Rare Bird Books). Her other writing can be found in places like Cordite, LiNQ, Double Dialogues, and TEXT. Threasa lectures in the School of Arts at Federation University. For an extended bio and publication list visit: threasameads.com