Author
Sousanis, N.
Year
2014/2015
Title
Unflattening: A visual-verbal inquiry into learning in many dimensions
University
Teacher’s College Columbia
Discipline (uncoded)
Interdisciplinary Studies in Education
Macrostructure
Topic-Based
Proposed Area of Unconventionality
(Tardy, 2016)
Practice, Modality, Rhetorical aims and strategies, Linguistic & textual form
Description and other notes
“images are not subservient to the text; rather, ideas are embodied through the inextricable partnering of words and pictures, in which neither has the upper hand.” — typical of a comic book or graphic novel but a-typical of a dissertation
(Proposed) Degree of separation or connection between atypical or unconventional component(s) and conventional or written component(s)
Separate. The entire dissertation is presented in comics form, save for one page (the ‘written component’ see notes), which is presented in a way that is meant to be disruptive.
(Proposed) Type of relationship construed between atypical or unconventional component(s) and conventional or written component(s)
Influenced. The dissertation is presented in comics form, save for the ‘written component’ (see notes). The effect is that the written component (which would typically be considered conventional) becomes atypical or unconventional in the context of this dissertation. The written component is made possible through the rest of the dissertation (which is in comics form). In other words, the comics establish the context, purpose, argument etc., needed to make sense of the written page.
Notes/Reasoning
It is difficult to discern components here because the creative or unusual component isn’t just positioned as a crucial element of the institutional copy of the dissertation– it is the dissertation. However, there is one page (p. 47 in the dissertation, p. 54 in the Harvard Press edition) that is meant to mimic the way a dissertation is traditionally supposed to look (typed, double spaced, font style, etc.). This page includes a “figure” (hand-drawn, like the rest of the dissertation) which has a caption (“Fig 1: Object bent in water”). This page is purposely presented as separate from the rest of the dissertation but, at the same time, readers are able to move from the previous page (which is comics-based) to the parody page (which is print/text-based) without losing their place in the story or overall argument Sousanis is making with the dissertation.
Discipline 2 (coded)
Education
Discipline Grouping (coded)
ED
Source
Participant
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