Look Again, They Said: Analyzing Power in Museum-Based Pedagogy & Multimodal Composition

Abstract

Nonhuman networks of power are often harder for students to identify than human ones. Much scholarship within education and in the field of composition have addressed the tempestuous nature of power dynamics within a classroom environment. This study illustrates how students can become more aware of human and nonhuman networks of power by drawing upon the multimodal affordances of museums. Specifically, it investigates how museum literacies (verbal, visual, technological, social, and critical) and the overlapping modes of multimodal composition (linguistic, visual, auditory, gestural, spatial, and material) can help students disentangle the relational forces that shape every environment, perspective, and reality. In this context, power is identified as a transformative process, instead of an entity to be wielded, while agency is considered to be an action or quality that produces an effect. To discover the extent to which museum-based pedagogy can increase student awareness of power, two versions of an ENGL 102 course were compared using data from student reflections that were turned in with each major unit project. While all courses used multimodal composition, half used museum-based pedagogy. The results of this study indicated that museum-based pedagogy helped students identify nonhuman networks of power, particularly in relation to access-related issues, physical (tactile) materials, and personal experience. The results suggest that critical reflection on museum-based projects can strengthen students’ object knowledge, or rather, the ways lived experience can be known with and through objects, and by doing so, students can come to identify previously unseen networks of power. Because of this, writing courses, specifically those rooted in multimodal composition, should consider fostering museological relationships with objects, whether from museums or everyday life.