Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

digital stories

In my final semester of grad school, I chose not to do a master’s thesis and instead took two additional courses (and all the research papers that come with them). One of those classes was American Popular Culture, where the final project was not a lengthy paper but a “digital story” — a short video combining still photos, video clips and student narration — and a short reflective paper. I really enjoyed this class; it was probably one of my favorite classes from grad school.

Late one Friday night early in the semester, I ran across a television show on the Style Network that just made my week: The Brini Maxwell Show. I was intrigued at first by the “Martha Stewart goes retro” theme of the show. And then I realized that the host was a man in drag, and I was hooked.

And I had a topic for my project: Evaluate Brini through the lens of performance theory, looking at her take on the roles of woman, “domestic goddess” and television host.

The project turned out pretty well. In the two years since then, my professor has been doing a lot of work studying and promoting the use of digital stories in the academic space, including an article in this month’s Journal of American History. (He told me this morning that this may be the first time a drag queen has appeared in the pages of this academic journal. Groundbreaking!)

He and a small group from Rob’s office invited me to campus yesterday to participate in work on a new DVD about academic digital storytelling, which will include a number of student projects, including mine. They interviewed me on camera about my memories of the project and the use of it in place of the traditional long-form academic paper.

The main gist of my response was that there are some topics where the visual is so strong, you can’t get a complete feel for what’s being discussed unless you’re actually able to see it. And the digital story format allows a student to layer those powerful visuals against her own narrated analysis.

I don’t think I’m very good on-camera — I don’t think I’m very good at speaking in general, with my tendency to halt in the middle of sentences while I collect my thoughts (I should hold up a sign that blinks “buffering…” whenever this happens) — but, thanks to the magic of editing, hopefully they can salvage something out of the interview that will be useful to them. I’m looking forward to seeing the final product, and the reflections of other students who participated.