For our mapping project, we are crafting linked digital essays about the places we are mapping. The story of a place often resides in the story of the people that it holds meaning for. Therefore, to use our map to create awareness of the injustices of prison and the double bias against women in prison, we need to not only think about describing place but also describing the individuals it effects. We’ve learned so well this term that to humanize, we need to get closer to people and eliminate the barriers between us. What is it like to be a person in this place, now or historically (if you’re describing an event from the past)?
This multimedia essay can take any shape that you want it to take as long as your goal is to connect with an audience. Above all, be creative and use the affordances of the digital medium we are working in: a Google Doc. In this medium, we can use words as well as sound, images, and video to connect the place and people you’re writing about to our audience.
Your words might be in prose, but they could also be poetry. Sounds might be music or some other noise that you associate with the place. Maybe these are sounds that you record. Images might be photographs or original artwork. Video clips combine these media — you can even record your own.
Important: if you create digital content for this project, it must be edited with considerable care. Raw, unedited artwork, images, and video are not persuasive content.
What about copyright?
Want to use something you find on the web? It’s important to evaluate the copyright status of the item you want to use and if your use falls under Fair Use, or an exception to copyright laws. See this great 2-minute video produced by NYU on Fair Use. Ask me if you have any questions and we can troubleshoot this together. If you’re unsure, don’t do it — it is NOT the case that you can use anything you find online, for educational purposes, and citing it makes it alright. One hint is to remember that you can create your own original images and recordings.
Citations: If you use work that is not your original creation or idea, it must be cited somehow, whether that is by linking to the original, by footnoting, or in a list of sources at the end of your essay.
Examples of how to tell the story of a place using text, images, and sound:
“A Brief History of Alice’s Restaurant” in https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-alices-restaurant-180967276/
“We Have Faces Too,” An exhibition about life in San Quentin https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/us/san-quentin-photography-nigel-poor-bampfa.html
Let’s Practice
Here’s an article (totally unrelated to women’s prison writing!) in The Atlantic about how NASA astronauts train in a pool. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/11/nasa-astronauts-spacewalking-pool/601375/. It’s mostly in prose, but it also has a photo at the top and some links in it. Don’t you think we can do better? Read the article and mark up places where you could embed digital content that would bring this description to life for an audience. If you recall CTW, think: how can I maximize ethos, pathos, and logos using text but also digital images and sound? Be creative, think outside the text-box!
Resources for finding digital content:
- Google Image Search > Tools > Filter by License Type (example search, using Billie Jean King)
- BBC’s free sound archive: https://www.factmag.com/2018/04/20/bbc-sound-effects-archive-download/
- Wikimedia archive of free images: an archive of roughly 56 million(!) searchable, free to use media files. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- Flickr Creative Commons licensed content: https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/.
- Youtube even has a Creative Commons license search. Be sure to do what the license tells you to do. See below
