Resumen de Digital Rhetoric: Harnessing the Language of Media in Hispanic Studies
This article explores perspectives from language pedagogy, writing and rhetoric, and media studies to analyze the implications and implementations of video essay assignments in intermediate and advanced Spanish language courses. The field of Hispanic Studies has largely accepted film as a useful pedagogical tool with broad student appeal. Yet while instructors often include film and other visual media in their courses, modes of critical analysis are still largely entrenched in literary studies methodologies and constrained by written language. The expansion of multimedia materials in language and literature departments has been coupled with cinema's own shift from analog film to the more dialogic digital video. During this time, video production has become accessible through more widely available filming devices, editing tools, and distribution platforms, transforming the one-way channel between filmmakers and their audiences. The incorporation of these technologies into the classroom through digital rhetoric assignments allows students to harness the visual, textual, and aural language of media in language learning. Providing examples from my own teaching, I demonstrate how such assignments not only work to boost students' fluency across registers, but also to develop the crucial analytical framework necessary for interpreting and engaging with today's complex and shifting media landscape.
