Film in the Composition Classroom

Abstract

Abstract Instructors of writing-intensive disciplines infrequently integrate cinematic media in composition curricula. Furthermore, when instructors use films in composition courses, they often treat films merely as supplemental texts tangentially relevant to course topics and prioritize teaching content rather than media or filmmaking. This pedagogical approach overlooks an opportunity to ask students to consider how the audiovisual rhetorical efforts can meaningfully harmonize or create dissonance with the content. In this research study, the author argues that students are active media consumers engaging frequently with media as a form of composition. He navigates the limitations of Gregory Ulmer and Lev Manovitch, whose early work stressing the primacy of media literacies in composition classrooms is nonetheless seminal to the author's larger claims of film's educational import. The author relates the results of the IRB-approved research of his composition students, who offer feedback about the use of film in the class. The author calls for greater attention to film instruction and curricula development for collegiate composition classrooms, urging educators to move beyond film's supplemental use and toward more educationally fruitful practices, including teaching active watching and basic film analysis. Film is a critical form of cultural communication and media, and the author contends that it is a pivotal part of the landscape of twenty-first century literacy engagements.