Letter from the MJA Editor
Gavin P. Johnson, Texas Christian University
Monday, September 1, 2025
Dear readers, collaborators, and accomplices:
Like so many things, this project began with a discussion at a table between friends. More specifically, a round of drinks followed by a 1:00 am burrito at a hole-in-the-wall spot in Spokane, Washington. After a long day at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC 2024), Christina Cedillo, Ruby Mendoza, Erin Green, Nick Sanders, and I spent the evening wandering around, trying a few different local joints, and enjoying each other’s company. Ruby and Nick were brainstorming a possible special issue for JoMR focusing on queer/transgender/feminist multimodal rhetorics (which will be published in a few months), Erin was thinking through her badass dissertation project on abolition literacies and community writing, and I was expressing some...frustrations. Over discussions, especially with Christina, I noted that while I knew many instructors who are teach interesting, justice-centered multimodal classes and projects, there wasn’t a resource available to house and share those kinds of materials. I recall saying (something like), "While I love reading scholarship on multimodality, I really wanted ideas on how to put theory into practice in my class and the classes I oversaw as a writing program administrator." Christina’s response was something to the effect of, “Well why don’t you do something about that?”
Multimodal + Justice + Action (MJA) is that something, and I am so very excited to share our first issue with you!
In my invitation for submissions, which was released just over a year ago in August 2024, I began by saying, “Multimodality can contribute to social futures, frame individual and institutional change, and guide the design of social advocacy [New London Group, 1996; Arola, Ball, & Sheppard, 2014; Tham & Jiang, 2019]. However, to do so, it is essential to not only theorize multimodality’s links to justice but also act on those potentialities in order to ensure that the classroom remains, as bell hooks explains, ‘the most radical space of possibility in the academy’ (1994, p. 12).” As a teacher-scholar dedicated to this work, I am confident that multimodality is a framework for being and doing that critically reflects the way the world actually exists. That is, we live in a world of multiplicities and multimodality, as a pedagogical practice, invites students to think complexly about communication and how the “modes on which we typically rely for information and entertainment influence how we construct our realities” (Cedillo, 2018).
Considering our current realities, it seems particularly important to understand how different modes of communication interlock to persuade. While many frame multimodal learning as an inherent good that can reflect the ways in which important ideas about justice, humanity, and culture are circulated, we cannot only see multimodality through rose-colored glasses. Indeed, the circulation of oppressive discourses (consider alt-right memes, fascist iconography, racist monuments, deceptive Covid-data visualizations, anti-trans propaganda, etc.) is also made possible through multimodal tactics (Woods & Hahner, 2020; Sparby, 2017; Gries, 2018; Slotkin, 2022; Sanchez & Moore 2015; Doan, 2021; Swartz, 2024). Like any form of communication or technology, multimodality is never neutral. Therefore, we, as teachers and multimodal composers, must take active steps in our classrooms to orient toward justice, access, and community. MJA, issue 1, features four outstanding contributions that, I believe, actively take these steps.
First, in "Challenging Podcast Bros and Genres of Disinformation,” Nick Sanders outlines three lesson plans that intervene in the audio composing process and one of its most popular genres––the podcast. Building on an outstanding opinion piece written by Dr. Tressie McMillian Cottom, Sanders frames his lessons as a way to “foster critical conversations and knowledge dispositions around the social consequences of [podcasts], particularly as it is used by white nationalist actors through disinformation campaigns.” These lessons open space for careful sonic analysis, remind us that multimodal genres shouldn't be oversold as uniquely justice-oriented rhetorical sites, and challenge students to critically address the (dis)information shared on their favorite podcasts.
Next, Ashley M. Beardsley serves up a unique recipe for an embodied, multisensory classroom experience. If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Ashley or attending one of her presentations, you may have received a small envelope of dehydrated sourdough starter and/or even tried your hand at breadmaking. In this contribution, she walks us through not only how to make sourdough in/as a class but also how to help students think about the deep nostalgia and complex histories baked into the food we eat. By focusing on the embodied practices of making and sharing in community, she “demonstrate[s] how folding the senses into research and teaching practices can shape how rhetoric and writing studies scholars and graduate students view academic writing, multimodal composing, and food’s political potential.”
The third contribution, “Inclusion through Narrative,” comes from Rajwan Alshareefy. In this brief essay, Alshareefy encourages narrative storytelling in the first-year writing classroom through multimodal composing. The “Multimodal Personal Narrative (MPN)” he describes is grounded in David Moinina Sengh’s steps to radical inclusion, specifically identifying exclusion, listening to understand and learn, and pursuing advocacy and action. Through carefully chosen readings––instructive in content and form––Alshareefy shows how we can use narrative-based assignments to not only guide students toward unique multimodal expressions but also open up our own understanding, as teachers, of the diverse needs of the students we engage. As such, the MPN’s radical inclusivity also promotes the pedagogical flexibility needed to take action in and beyond the classroom.
Finally, Nicole O’Connell shares an original course design for “Creating Video Games for Social Impact.” The course is designed as a first-year seminar that is informed by composition theories of invention and process but lives outside the traditional first-year writing space. As video games continue to be a dominant form of entertainment and art as well as a site for intellectual development, O’Connell insists that we must “retain a humanities approach” to the study and creation of games. Accordingly, this course teaches students about game development, usability and accessible design, narrative justice, and social impact all while developing a student-centered first-year community and introducing them to essential resources for success in college.
Launching MJA has been a labor of love, and I am so grateful for Nick, Ashley, Rajwan, and Nicole’s willingness to contribute their materials to this first issue. Teaching can be an isolating and exhausting endeavor if we think we must reinvent the wheel in order to act upon the latest theories in the scholarship. The same is true for social justice and community advocacy. The temptation to go it alone rarely leads to success and, most often, derails long-standing efforts toward meaningful change. MJA is a resource that you can use to do hard and important work with students. It is my hope that you take up the work shared here and, in time, generously share your work with us.
If you are interested in contributing to a future issue of Multimodal + Justice + Action, please contact multimodaljusticeaction@gmail.com.
Take care.
Gavin
REFERENCES
Arola, Kristin L., Ball, Cheryl E., & Sheppard, Jennifer. (2014 Jan. 10). Multimodality as a frame for individual and institutional change. Hybrid Pedagogy. https://hybridpedagogy.org/multimodality-frame-individual-institutional-change/
Cedillo, Christina V. (2018). From the editor. The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, 2(2). https://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/from-the-editor-2-2
Doan, Sara. (2021). Misrepresenting COVID-19: Lying with charts during the second golden age of data design. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 35(1), 73–79.
Gries, Laurie (2018). Swastika monitoring: Developing digital research tools to track visual rhetorics of hate. In Rich Wysocki and Mary P. Sheridan (eds)., Making Futures Matter. Computers and Composition Digital Press/ Utah State University Press. https://ccdigitalpress.org/book/makingfuturematters/gries-intro.html
hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.
New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.
Sanchez, James Chase, & Moore, Kristin R. (2015). Reappropriating public memory: Racism, resistance and erasure of the Confederate Defenders of Charleston monument. Present Tense, 5(2).
Slotkin, Alexander. (2022). The geopolitics of white supremacy: A case study of monuments and monumental rhetoric. The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, 6(1). https://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/6-1-issue-slotkin
Sparby, Derek M. (2017). Digital social media and aggression: Memetic rhetoric in 4chan’s collective identity. Computers and Composition, 45, 85–97.
Swartz, Haley. (2024). Tweet to #savewomenssports: Visualizing anti-trans stigma in athletics. The Journal of Multimodal Rhetoric, 8(1). https://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/8-1-swartz
Tham, Jason, & Jiang, Jialei. (2019 Feb. 5). Multimodal design and social advocacy: Charting future directions for design as an interdisciplinary engagement. DRC: Gayle Morris Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. https://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2019/02/05/multimodal-design-social-advocacy/
Woods, Heather Suzanne, & Hahner, Leslie A. (2020). Make America meme again: The rhetoric of the alt-right. Peter Lang.