Cinema-(to)-Graphy: Film and Writing in Contemporary Composition Courses

Film is simply too big and too influential a mass medium to ignore. Surprisingly enough, although film is already a staple in many composition classrooms, little has been written about its uses-leaving many of us uncertain of how to proceed. Cinema-(to)-Graphy takes you inside some of those classrooms, offering new ideas on integrating film and other visual media with student writing.

Ellen Bishop divides the book into four sections based on where the authors locate themselves in the field of film and writing. These essays, if anything, resist easy categorization; all of them begin to unfold both theoretical and practical questions that arise from the conversation about film and writing, cultural studies, and undergraduate students. These instructors offer special insight into both course structures and materials, and the methods through which they make use of them. Best of all, they offer new strategies to help students become critical thinkers who can responsibly speak to and read their media-saturated world, and who can identify and work with the problems posed by language.

This anthology will be of great use to university and college teachers of all ranks, especially graduate student teachers interested in integrating film into their composition classrooms.