Congratulations to Wagner College English professor and writing center director Lindsay Sabatino and her co-editor Brian Fallon, associate professor and director of the Writing & Speaking Studio at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, whose new book, “Multimodal Composing: Strategies for Twenty-First-Century Writing Consultations,” was published in April 2019 by Utah State University Press.
Writing centers are increasingly becoming sites for composing and providing feedback on multimodal projects, as more educators are including assignments that ask students to negotiate multiple modes (words, images, colors, gestures, movement) in order to communicate effectively to their audiences. Sabatino and Fallon worked with other scholars to put together a collection of 14 chapters that provides strategies for writing center directors and consultants working with writers whose texts are visual, technological, creative and performative. “Multimodal Composing” is an interdisciplinary text that brings together concepts from composition and writing center studies with art, design, film, sound theory and universal design practices, to name a few.
As described by the publisher,
This book is a focused conversation on how rhetorical, design, and multimodal principles inform consultation strategies, especially when working with genres that are less familiar or traditional. “Multimodal Composing” explores the relationship between rhetorical choices, design thinking, accessibility, and technological awareness in the writing center. Each chapter deepens consultants’ understanding of multimodal composing by introducing them to important features and practices in a variety of multimodal texts.
“Multimodal Composing” introduces consultants to key elements in design, technology, audio, and visual media and explains how these elements relate to the rhetorical and expressive nature of written, visual, and spoken communication. Peer, graduate student, professional tutors and writing center directors will benefit from the activities and strategies presented in this guide.
Drs. Sabatino and Fallon also designed a companion web site (http://www.multimodalwritingcenter.org) offering access to additional resources that are difficult to reproduce in print, including updated links to resources and color images for the collection.
In addition to co-editing the collection and co-authoring its preface, Professor Sabatino’s own chapter, “Introduction: Design Theory and Multimodal Consulting,” makes a significant contribution by providing readers with the theoretical underpinnings that inform the book’s practices. This chapter is a foundational overview of design principles readers will encounter in each of the chapters. It is written for readers with little or no design experience. The chapter focuses specifically on rhetorical choices, visual and audio design principles, universal design and accessibility practices.
Lindsay A. Sabatino is assistant professor of English and director of the writing center at Wagner College. Her research and pedagogical interests focus on writing center theory and practice, multimodal composition, digital rhetoric, writing tutor education and faculty development. More specifically, her research explores composing in digital environments, the relocation of writing centers into libraries, online tutoring, gaming studies, and writing studio spaces. She has published in Computers and Composition, Writing Lab Newsletter, The Peer Review and Praxis.
Brian Fallon is associate professor and founding director of the Writing & Speaking Studio at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY. His career has focused on promoting the collaborative learning practices of peer tutors, especially through his work with the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing. He is a recipient of the Ron Maxwell Award, has published in the Writing Center Journal, and has contributed to “The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors.”
