Screen 14 -- Should be Situated and Flexible

In discussing literacy, especially the need to extend thinking beyond merely verbal literacy, Anne Wysocki and Johndan Johnson Eilola suggest they might "describe literacy not as a monolithic term but as a cloud of sometimes contradictory nexus points among different positions. Literacy can be seen as not a skill but a process of situating and resituating representations in social space" (Blinded by the Letter 367).

Students can and should be taught about the cultural work of images in our society. Many of our most powerful and influential cultural concepts are encoded with what Richard Weaver called "God words" (e.g., "freedom," "motherhood," and "justice"). But we are a largely visual society, and many of these cultural concepts are encoded within easily recognizable images (e.g., representations of George Washington, the Statue of Liberty, the Madonna and child, and the American flag) (Reading the Visual in College Writing Classes 116).