Bolter, Jay David. “Critical Theory and the Challenge of New Media.”
Eloquent Images. Ed. Mary E. Hocks and Michelle R. Kendrick.
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005. 20-36.
As the first chapter of this text, Bolter sets the tone of Eloquent Images. In the first section of the chapter, “The Verbal and the Visual,” Bolter outlines how the image has come into a dominant role in our culture of digital media. The Web has integrated the many media of the 20th century and is restructuring the way we read and view information. He writes, “In short, the World Wide Web and other new media challenge not only the form of the book, but also the representational power of the printed word” (21). In the following section, “Theory and Print,” Bolter examines some of the challenges of new media, explaining how print is still the preferred medium for critical theorists. Here Bolter challenges theorists to examine new media from a more inclusive rather than exclusive lens by using new media as the delivery method of their critical theory. He writes, “These new media forms are available to us as producers as well as consumers, and they are available as forms of production to cultural critics and academics in general” (23). Jay Bolter is validating new media as an extension of academic writing, and this is valuable in my research as I am attempting to show how student-produced new media texts are an extension of the writing process. In the section, “Theory and Practice,” bolter uses specific examples of how critical theory can be applied to the practice of working with new media. He stresses the practical application of theory is most likely to be accomplished with teachers of composition. In the section, “Design in Context,” Bolter analyzes the results of instructors using Web design and virtual reality programs in their classrooms.
This chapter is valuable to my research in that Bolter calls on scholars to embrace new media by not only theorizing about it, but also using it practically as an extension of their writing and teaching practice. Bolter is making the point that it is not only valuable to discuss the impact of new media, and write about it, but it is essential to actually incorporate the new modes of communicating that new media into our scholarship. This is the core of my argument for using multimedia assignments in my composition classes. While most would agree that doing multimedia assignments is valuable, there is a need to validate these type of texts as an addition and/or extension of the academic essay. This is not to say that theorists should stop using print, or that students should stop writing essays in a particular format, but it does suggest that an ability to work in the multimodal forms available to us is a valuable asset within academia and beyond.
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