This panel will be a conversation drawn from the graduate seminar and production workshop, “Storytelling Across Media” taught in the School of Media Studies at The New School. As a course with a focus on critical making and social justice, “Storytelling Across Media” engages with mediums such as audio, video, electronic literature, and new media platforms juxtaposed with addressing intersectional differences such as race, gender, class, ability, and citizenship. Through constructionist learning--learning through creating--students participated in creative media workshops grounded in theory with an exploration of "Storytelling Across Media." Social justice topics explored include New York City, food, incarceration, gender and racial justice, HIV/AIDS, and other social issues as students write and create across media. Media visibility and the centering of alternative voices confronting structural inequities was a key component behind the design of “Storytelling Across Media.” Students channeled their diverse voices into media-making with a syllabus that was equal parts course, workshop, and collaboratory.
While the predicted outcomes for the course included a website featuring individual graduate student projects as well as presentations and a celebration, the New School PT faculty strike disrupted these plans and led to a different outcome - a stronger “classroom as community.” The course participants did not cross the digital strike line and stood with part time professors during the Part Time Faculty strike. Despite the strike (or possibly in part because of it) - the actual outcome was a stronger classroom community of media makers & artists, also collaborating on a conference panel, not just as classroom colleagues, but as close interlocutors, collaborators, and friends.
In this panel graduate and faculty media makers from The New School Media Studies will discuss and reflect on storytelling across media through their respective projects, and the experience of creating and convening during the Part Time Faculty Strike at The New School. Sarah Wilson will discuss interactive documentaries as methodology for practice based research. Margaret Rhee will discuss her digital poetry and pedagogy projects on socially engaged justice issues. Jeff Sweeton will discuss his long time media practices in technology pedagogy and gamifying “We Are Having This Conversation Now” by Alex Juhasz and Ted Kerr (Duke UP). Andrea L. Fernández will present a pair of multi-media paintings integrating course theory and perspectives on the Part Time Faculty strike.This panel will demonstrate how the engagement with creative design and social justice approaches to technology, education, and movement building can be illustrated in a variety of media such as I-Doc, data visualization, digital poetry, HIV/AIDS media, gaming, and the politics of academic labor. In doing so, we aim to reflect on the course that was designed centering social justice and critical making, and how creating media and storytelling during an academic labor strike lends itself to strengthed bonds of community, solidarity, and criticality within and outside the classroom setting.
Key Terms: polyvocality, non-linearity, algorithms, methodology, world building, idocs, Korean drama, decolonizing practice based research, chatbots, HIV/AIDS, Gender equality, Data Visualization, Academic Labor strikes
Key Terms: polyvocality, non-linearity, algorithms, methodology, world building, idocs, Korean drama, decolonizing practice based research, chatbots, HIV/AIDS, Gender equality, Data Visualization
