Microsoft Word – Image Project .docx
Erin Schaefer
Professor Jackie Rhodes
WRA 860
27 September 2016
Composer’s Statement
In image one, I wanted to depict the ways in which labor in academia often asks graduate students and faculty to compartmentalize different aspects of their lives. In particular, I had Julie Lindquist’s “Time to Grow Them” in mind, which emphasized how studies that are holistic and/or more personal/relational in nature are valued less in the academic economy. I wanted to show how various aspects of my identity are framed from the gaze of the academy. I used camera angles and proximity to focus on two elements in each picture: environmental context and type of embodiment. I wanted to show the viewer that my identity is embedded in specific environmental contexts, even when the richness of these contexts (e.g., me looking out on the river and me playing in a bush) is sometimes diminished when viewed from an academic gaze. It is literally difficult to notice the details of my surrounding context because of how small each box is, just as these elements are often simplified when I try to represent them through certain academic styles of writing or conference presentations. To depict different levels and types of embodiment, I consciously chose to show/not show my face. The me that is typing, while showing a type of embodiment (notice the extreme hunching of my back), it also erases my embodiment because the viewer cannot see my face. My body also appears to be partly composed of technology: wires appear to be literally plugged into two sides of my head. This contrasts starkly with the picture of my viewing the river: here you see my face, and perhaps are more aware that I am a human being on a journey. Similarly, the me that is playing in the bush on the bottom right depicts a resistance to my disembodiment; my whole body is present in the frame and in a playful way. The tilted
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angle of me crying in the bathroom is meant to show of emotional experiences of academic labor. The inclusion of this photos shows that this is definitely a part of the work that I do as a professional, but the tilt of the camera angle suggests that emotion does not fit neatly into academia or academic categories.
Image two is a remix of the first. I use an image one and show myself watching the academia compartmentalized box floating in the river. My intention, in both image one and two, was to use water as a symbol of fluidity. I especially emphasize fluidity in image two. I am arguing that though academia can try to compartmentalize my identity, I can still practice a kind of agency. I do not mean to imply that I am a sovereign subject, which is why the picture of my reflecting is also included in the compartmentalized box. In other words, I am acknowledging that I am still interpolated through my identification with the academy. Still, the red leaf I hold (with a single red leaf in the tree behind me among uniform green leaves) is meant to show that I can control my level of investment in academia’s version of my identities through reflection. Image three is similar to image one in that it refers to Julie Lindquist’s, Marc Bousquet’s, and especially Carry Kilfoil’s discussion of the ways in which we’re expected to produce a certain kind of academic writing. Kilfoil cites Joseph Harris’s argument that we do not draw on students’ voices because it diminishes our legitimacy as a discipline (734). I wanted to portray this by showing myself literally erasing their faces (as well as different aspects of my own experiences, which are also deemed illegitimate). I also wanted to nod to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s idea that media producers try to erase traces of themselves as producers. Just as they argue, I argue in this image that even when we try to erase them, these influences (our own identities and the voices of our students) are still present, not completely erased.
Image four is meant to touch on the issues that graduate students and faculty face. Kilfoil, for instance, talks about growing anxiety we feel in showing our own legitimacy (as a field and as
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professionals). I tried to depict this anxiety by showing my own projected fears of the job interview. The oil painting filter and my body literally “bending over backwards” show how I imagine this scene to be, and how I am willing to go to extremes to accommodate an institution’s wishes. The skeptical look on Julie Lindquist’s (the fictional interviewer), in sharp focus, along with the tilt of my chair (and disproportionate size of my body in relation to hers) should raise the anxiety for viewers, as well. This image, especially when read by my colleagues, is a comment on our complacency in an institution that imposes my confining expectations (e.g., that we produce a certain kind of research, that we provide cheap labor, that we fulfill enrollment requirements, etc.).
Image five is a twist of a quote from James Porter’s argument that “we made ’em, we can fix ’em” (as quoted in Bousquet 493). Bousquet challenges Porter by questioning who is represented in effecting change in these organizations. Specifically, Bousquet asks who the “we” is when Porter says that we can change. He argues that the voices of graduate students and fixed term faculties are often obscured when those in middle management who often speak for these voices (499). In showing faces of undergraduate students, graduate students, and a variety of faculty members literally making up the brick and mortar of our institution, represented as Bessey Hall, I am showing that this “we” includes all of these other voices. My font choice emphasizes action as well as anger. I think that all five images work together to acknowledge both the realities and very real, embodied experiences of work and labor in academia, while also offering hope through images that suggests different forms of agency.
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Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT P, 2000. Print.
Bousquet, Marc. “Composition as Management Science: Toward a University without a WPA.”
JAC 22.3 (2002): 493-526. Web.
Kilfoil, “The Nature and Value of Work in Rhetoric and Composition.” JAC 32.3/4 (2012): 731-
737. Web.
Lindquist, Julie. “Time to Grow Them: Practicing Slow Research in a Fast Field.” JAC 32.3/4
(2012): 645-666. Web.
Porter, James E., Sullivan, Patricia, Blythe, Stuart, Grabill, Jeffrey T., and Libby Miles.
“Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change. College Composition and
Communication 51 (2000): 610-41. Web. Unknown. Bessy Hall. 2006. Photograph. Web,
