Browse Exhibits (104 total)
Does Size Matter?
While it is known that social media has become increasingly popular in todays day in age, it has also gradually affected our ideas of everyday writing and altered the way we view it. The need for a lengthy text is no longer necessary, we now can read a short and to the point Instagram caption or a 150 character allotted tweet/comment. I want to further explore this theory of the affect that social media has on our idea of everyday writing. Does the text lose its gravity or meaning if it is shorter? Does utilizing a social platform and imagery take away from the purpose of the writing? I will be exploring these questions through my artifacts.
Expeditions, Exploration, and Foreign Experiences through Everyday Writing
Ticket stubs, maps, social media posts of travel...these are all examples of everyday writing that we oftentimes save from trips abroad to countries around the world. Why? Because we can't stay in those places forever. One of the most important affordances of everyday writing is its ability to provide us with memories. Looking at photos and souvenirs that we keep from our explorations away from home help us remember the times that once were in familiar and unfamiliar areas. This exhibit is meant to display some of those artifacts that deal with travel. Whether they are Instagram posts about visiting the Grand Canyon or a ripped map detailing directions to the Sydney Opera House, all these examples of everyday writing help us to remember some of the best expeditions and explorations of our times abroad.
Many of the artifacts you will see in this exhibit come from my own personal collection. I had the opportunity to study abroad my first year at Florida State University and that experience led me to create an exhibit that documents a subject that I am passionate about.
Feel free to browse the tabs on the right side of this page to see the various everyday writing artifacts that deal with travel. Hopefully this exhibit will give you a good idea of the broad scale that is represented by everyday writing, the importance of the seemingly mundane artifacts we experience in our everyday lives, and maybe even create your own collection of everyday writing artifacts when traveling abroad!
Examining "Finsta" Accounts as the Modern Day Diary: Everyday Writing in the Digital Age
This exhibit aims to examine everyday writing in the digital age. Social media is increasingly being utilized in a diary-like manner and private accounts are a popular way to express and archive one's thoughts. Over the last 5 years, many users of Instagram have created "fake" (otherwise described as private) accounts where they can be more selective with their followers and content. Many people began using "fake" accounts (also known as "finsta" accounts) to post more intimate accounts of their lives to a more select group of individuals. The increasing popularity of such a phenomenon brings to light many questions about everyday writing in the digital age. When considering how "finsta" accounts function as a new age diary and form of digital everyday writing, it is important to explore the way that elements like text, images, and the promise of privacy define this new form. As a scholar of rhetoric and composition (with interests specifically in visual and digital rhetoric), I have decided to examine "finsta" accounts as new-age diaries. The exhibit attempts to explain why "finsta" posts are everyday writing in addition to explaining how text, images, and privacy settings shape and impact the form.
"Finsta" accounts are a new and modern form of everyday writing. Emerging onto the social platform late in 2011, "finsta" accounts were a concept that invited users to engage in more private and personal posting on social media. "Finsta" accounts presented themselves as an alternative digital space where the user could maintain more control over the audience and their posts. For many people, the concept of "finsta" accounts is inviting. The form offers more privacy because of the user's ability to be more selective with who follows the account, what the profile picture is, what the username is, what the biography states, and what type of content is posted. "Finsta" accounts are digital spaces where users can post intimate details about their lives that are vastly different (and more honest) than their public persona. Additionally, they can market such posts to a more selective audience as a way to maintain the intimate and personal nature of the posts. As the form became increasingly popular, it was only natural that people saw the "finsta" form as an invitation to a space where diary-like entries could be posted and only the most inner-circle of a person's friend/family group could access them. Soon after their advent, people were using "finsta" accounts to post diary-like content that gave updates on their lives, their emotional states, their hidden interests, and more.
Promoted Tweets
Exploring an array of promoted tweets that have been documented by myself and others. Tweets have a standard format (and can be paid for by almost anyone. Seeking the answers to why people or pages will promote certain content, asking what their motivator is, and what the goal is.
Promoted tweets have become a local (Twitter) phenomenon as the twitter account @advertisedtwit went viral. The whole point of the account is posting obscure tweets that were paid for by the original poster. The amusement that twitter users get from this account is viewing the absurd, obscure, and often cringey posts people pay to have shown to others. The point in paying to promote or advertise a tweet is to reach a larger audience than they normally would. This feeds directly into capitalist ideals and the need for attention on the internet with the evolution of “influencer culture”. Everyday writing by individuals are often the subject of @advertisedtwit's posts and screencaps. The most interesting, nuanced, and sometimes enigmatic content comes from personal accounts that decide to pay for and promote a tweet.
Promotion of tweets is available to nearly every account with a verified email and valid form of payment. Promoted tweets have been used for personal entertainment in the efforts to get on @advertisedtwit or to go viral with the added interaction, some have made their way onto the account by pure happenstance, and some are promoted for personal branding purposes or to raise awareness. The most common goal seems to be trying to gain momentum by getting interaction stats up on said tweet.
Tweets by personal accounts can be considered everyday writing because Twitter is a personal diary to some for live tweeting shows and events, it is a platform to stay connected to a fanbase or other group, and some use it as a way to catch breaking and entertainment news.
Cigarettes & Wet Dreams: A Progression of U.S. Presidential Campaign Adds
This exhibit explores and displays a radical progression of U.S. Presidential campaign advertisements. From today's standards of common courtesy and political correctness, the majority of these adds would hardly be present in private conversation, much less the national spotlight. The purpose of this exhibit is to analyze how the usage of everyday writing, within the context of political advertisements, has developed over time to form us where we are today as a society.
Cigarettes & Wet Dreams: A Progression of U.S. Presidential Campaign Adds
This exhibit explores and displays a radical progression of U.S. Presidential campaign advertisements. From today's standards of common courtesy and political correctness, the majority of these adds would hardly be present in private conversation, much less the national spotlight. The purpose of this exhibit is to analyze how the usage of everyday writing, within the context of political advertisements, has developed over time to form us where we are today as a society.
Graphic Writing Clothes
Graphic writing shirts are defined as t-shirts with some kind of writing on them to draw back to a certain characteristic of the wearer. Some of them could be simply the name of a movie or a band. However, some are made to tell a lot more about a person (and I mean A LOT more). Arguably a bit too much for the first impression but that is why these types of people wear it. They want to be unapologetically themselves. And so we delve into the world of Graphic Writing T-Shirts.
Dear Diary...
This exhibit seeks to understand and explore the multiple uses that journaling can provide for opportunities of everyday writing. These uses will be divided into two distinct categories: the public side of journaling, and the private side of journaling. Both categories will include references to journal entries from multiple parties in order to effectively gain insight into the overall experience of writing in a journal.
Journaling is a different experience for everyone. For some, it can be a stress reliever after a hard day. For others, it can be a physical reminder of certain periods of time in their life. Above all, journaling is a form of everyday writing. In “Notebooks, Annotations, and Tweets: Defining Everyday Writing through a Common Lens,” Yancy explains, “Such writing is both ubiquitous and, as Jamie White-Farnham explains in a recent College English essay, outside of “the common purview” (209): commonplace in daily life, and yet not fully recognized as a legitimate area of study,” (7). These journals are not being published or graded. While some may journal to share with others, there is no professional or academic interest taking place. There is only the person’s thoughts, a pen/pencil, and paper.
An important note to consider is how each journal entry is physically written down on paper with either a pen or pencil. We are living in a digital age, which makes it interesting to see how many people refuse to take up digital journaling, instead preferring the aforementioned tools for this activity. In “Why Technology Matters to Writing: A Cyberwriter’s Tale,” Jim Porter gives one possible explanation of the decision to write with a pencil, “The pencil matters not because of the composition of the lead or the quality of the graphite, but because of the lack of eraser and the training that accompanied the use of that eraserless pencil. It is not the pencil per se that is important, but rather the pencil in its social and ideological context” (384). In a digital space, it is much easier to erase what you’ve written. One of the biggest purposes of journaling is getting thoughts onto the page without erasing them. This makes using a pen or pencil and paper more efficient when partaking in this task.
With the motivation to journal and the necessary tools to start, there is only one question left to be answered: who are we journaling for?
Annotations: A Window into a New Language
From a young age, students are encouraged to take notes and make annotations on the things they read—a skill that they will continue to use throughout the rest of their lives. This form of everyday writing, that helps them in their academic and professional performance, can at times also provide a scope for the use of everyday writing in much more personal endeavors such as refining language skills like reading comprehension and fluency in a language that is not their primary.
After purchasing a used copy of La Celestina in its original language in a bookstore in Jacksonville, Florida, USA—a primarily English-speaking country—, I became fascinated with the marginalia and annotations found in it. Despite the book being in Spanish, most if not all the annotations were written in English. Through a close examination of these, I have been able to draw some conclusions about the anonymous author. First, all marginalia are written in the same handwriting, implying that they were all made by the same person. Second, the presence of annotations that comment on character and plot points reflects that the author has a significant understanding of the Spanish language. This is then supported by the code meshing found in one of the annotations at the beginning of the book. Even so, the presence of annotations that serve as translation to specific words in the text shows that the author is still in the process of refining their fluency in Spanish.
While the same could be said about marginalia in any literary work read in a language that is not the reader’s primary, I believe the book in which these annotations can be found also serves to show the proficiency of the language in which the unknown author was in at the time they were made and how helpful these annotations were in the process of improving their Spanish language skills and their fluency. Written in sixteenth-century Spain, La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas contains a vocabulary very different and more complex from that of Spain today and more so of other Spanish-speaking countries. Despite being considered a novel, it is entirely written as dialogue. For this and many other reasons, the work remains as one of the most celebrated novels of Spanish literature, and "now, almost 520 years later, it is still being read (in Spanish and in diverse translations), discussed, studied, interpreted, and seen” (Fernández 16). As Rojas and Bruno explain it, “La Celestina, nombre por el que ha llegado a ser conocida, más comúnmente, la Comedia o Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, es, probablemente, la obra literaria más importante de España, después del Quijote, y una de las más meritorias de Europa en su contribución al desarrollo del realismo literario” (13). Because of this contribution to the development of literary realism in Europe, it has become a staple in high school and university Spanish courses across multiple Spanish-speaking countries. Simultaneously, students have developed a love-hate relationship with it, similar to that with Shakespeare’s works in the USA. With such a complex work inspiring the annotations, it is no simple task for a non-native Spanish speaker to explore and understand the text.
Contextualizing Art Through Everyday Writing
Most people are familiar with the saying “a picture is with a thousand words,” and while this may be true, sometimes a little more context is needed to evoke a complete understanding of a piece of art. Everyday writing can thus be used to provide this context, and this exhibit explores the ways in which people have used everyday writing in this manner.
The importance of establishing context in both everyday writing and in art, lies in its ability to stimulate knowledge creation. In her article titled “Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity,” Heidi Estrem uses a definition of writing which asserts that writing is “an activity undertaken to bring new understandings,” (Estrem 19). It is about “mulling over a problem, thinking with others, and exploring new ideas or bringing disparate ideas together,” (Estrem, 19). This concept of bringing new understandings and bringing disparate ideas together are seen within the interrelationship of art and everyday writing in this exhibit.
In the next few pages, a relationship between art, everyday writing, and materiality will also be established, as the materiality of a work is just as important to its context as any other component. In other words, I will be taking a scenic/contextual approach to analyzing these artifacts, where “writing is not only words on the page, but also concerns the mechanisms for production,” (Porter 386). The methods by which the creator of these artifacts composed both the artwork and writing of their piece attests to the purpose, audience, and overall meaning of the composition. The materiality also portrays the character of the creator while defining the composition’s intimacy and capacity for interaction, performing both as “an expression of the self and a social activity,” (Yancey, 164).
The ontological view of writing maintains the “impossibility of ‘contextless’ writing,” (Lillis, 80), and this is a view I choose to uphold in this exhibit. The meaning of any composition is heavily dependent on its context, an idea I will further explore in the pages to come.