"From the Snaps of Skin to Writing on Walls ...": Artifactual Technoliteracies and Youth Lifestreams

• In Event: 52.083 - Youth and Adults Engaging in and Embodying Literacy for Change

Abstract

Drawing on data from a multi-year connective ethnographic study with LGBTQ youth, this paper explores the scriptural counter-economy of visual composing across online/offline environments. Combining theoretical constructs from "multi-" literacy studies with a discursive approach to identity, this article describe the influences of digital technologies and photo-based composing tools on contemporary configurations of youth identity making. Focusing on how youth use these material, embodied, and visual texts to create, curate, and compose selves, this paper considers how these material texts offer alternatives to “school-ed” writing. In concluding, the author draws implications for youth composition, focusing on the rhetorical features often forgot in school-based writing such as embodiment, experience, and ontology.

Author

• Jon Michael Wargo, Michigan State University