“Tonight, My Unconventional Conventionists, You Are to Witness a New Breakthrough”: How Shadow Casts of The Rocky Horror Picture Show Remind Us to Break Genre Conventions

 

You might think that genres are rigid—that there are specific conventions to each genre that should be followed in order to have something recognized as that particular genre. However, sometimes genre conventions are meant to be bent or even broken. Karn demonstrates that The Rocky Horror Picture Show exists as a prime example of how breaking genre conventions can be exactly what a text needs.

Shades of Henna

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Although henna art is generally considered a means of decorating the body, this ancient art form can also be thought of as a complex literate activity. Mizan uses pedagogical cultural-historical activity theory (P-CHAT) to explore different functions of henna art. She analyzes women’s use of this literate activity and illustrates how it is employed to define and communicate their senses of self.

Using P-CHAT to Understand the Lives of Those with Type 1 Diabetes

 

Being a type 1 diabetic often means being misunderstood because people are unaware of the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. In addition, people’s lack of awareness about what it’s like to live with type 1 diabetes can cause extra work and frustration for people with the disease. Gedge uses P-CHAT terms like reception and socialization to explore how people interact with diabetics in ways that can make life more difficult.

Flossed in America: How Discourse Communities Participate in Literate Activity

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Ebert dissects and analyzes how a community built around floss picks actively participates in literate activity. Through the means of P-CHAT and multimedia texts, Ebert explores the complexity of writing in the world around them.

The Remediation of True Crime and Its Role in Romanticizing Killers

 

DeBoe discusses the remediation of true crime content. She does so by tracing true crime events from spoken forms of communication to books, movies, and online spaces. By exploring the ways in which different representations of true crime events may lead to the romanticization of serial killers and evaluating the influence of different discourse communities that revolve around true crime.

Manic Panic: When You’re Not a “Natural” Rainbowhead

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Shupe explores the importance of genre analysis and convention, and using critical thinking in concert with antecedent knowledge to read people much as we might read a text.

A Great British Baking Adventure: Antecedent Knowledge, My Dog, and a Dry(ish) Cherry Cake

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Myerscough explores how bakers use their uptake skills and baking antecedent knowledge to tackle super vague baking challenges in The Great British Baking Show. To do this, of course, she must experiment with one of the recipes from the show herself—here’s hoping it’s edible!

Dealing with Divergence: A Grassroots Co-interview on Antecedent Knowledge, Transfer, and Uptake

 

Kartcheske and Tullos use the genre of a Grassroots Co-interview to help them process their developing understandings of writing as they move between different personal, academic, and industry environments. By talking through these concepts together, both Kartcheske and Tullos complicate their notions of uptake and antecedent knowledge as it relates to their writing and writing researcher identities

Mundane Creativity: Analyzing the Colors and Footnotes of a K-pop Song List

 

Using a definition of creativity that includes everyday activities, genres, and content offers us a broader perspective when it comes to appreciating different literary texts. As such, we can look at mundane pieces of text—like that of a song recommendation list—as creative. In this analysis of her K-pop song recommendation list, Eldredge examines how color-coding and footnotes can both be appreciated as aspects of creativity.

Left-Handed Literacies

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Blue shares her experiences as a left-handed writer in a right-hand–dominated world. Through a series of images and text, Janine is able to shed light on the tools and literacies necessary for left-handed writing success.

Instacart-ing Is Quite an Intense Literate Activity—Here’s Why 

 

Moore discusses the different literate activities and literacies present when working for Instacart, a grocery delivery service.

Would You Drink This? The Literacies of Evaluating Risk

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Walker researches how humans learn to assess risk but comes to the conclusion that building risk assessment literacies is not really something you can memorize or make a step-by-step list for. Instead, we have to wrestle with our brains—learn how to recognize some of our unconscious practices, use research as part of our decision-making, and be more aware of our emotional biases.

Would You Drink This? An Exercise in Risk Assessment

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In the article that precedes this comic, Walker offered a summary of her acquisition of new literacies about risk assessment (as well as the difficulties in accurately assessing risk). So here, she uses that information to consider her own decision-making about the sketchy water bottle.