In the upcoming Spring Quarter, WRD undergrads have the opportunity to learn about a new way to write — with photos. Taught by Dr. Lisa Dush — as an online hybrid. WRD 286 combines writing and language with pictures, where students will learn how to mix the two with ease. No prior photography experience is required, all you need is access to a camera or camera phone.
When asked about the photography process, Dr. Dush says she “teaches a bit about how to take good photos and how to edit them in Lightroom, with the idea that persuasive use of photographs requires some knowledge of photography.”
Students accomplish two major projects that Dr. Dush describes as “a photoessay, which engages with both personal archival photos and photos in public archives, and one online photoessay that is documentary in approach…to be published in Exposure or Medium.” Typically, the class visits the DePaul Museum of Art, which Dr. Dush hopes to do remotely.
These two projects will “explore a memory from your own past, which has been documented by a photograph or photographs, and to connect this personal memory to a larger cultural theme or narrative using photographs from public archives…and document an individual or cultural group and must feature photographs of both people and their environment”.
“The students also team-author reviews of books that feature ‘writing with photographs,’ which are published in a Medium Publication, and we will review new books this quarter.”
With this project, the students take on more of a teacher role, with “the audience for your review being writers who want to learn new techniques for combining text and photographs; the review should address questions such as how the text was produced, what makes it distinctive, how the writing and photographs work together, and how the book was received by you, by readers, and by critics.”
Students will not just be learning to take and edit photos while combining them with writing, they will also learn how to “use writing to encounter and reflect on your own and others’ photographs.”
In a digital world, multimodal writing is a necessary skill, and this course provides the perfect setting to practice and hone the craft. Students wanting to specialize in Professional and Digital Writing will benefit from this course, as well as those just wanting to dip their toes into the photography world, or those wanting to add pictures into their already existing work.