In the future, as a first-year writing instructor, I would like to couple multimodal composition with antiracist multimodal texts with the hope that it inspires students to connect across their various differences and identities. While I do not believe that I am qualified to say that these assignment ideas will work in practice, I would nonetheless like to propose some assignment ideas that I believe reflect the goals of the multimodal and antiracist FYW classroom.

​

Here is a potential sequence of assignments that I propose could potentially benefit students:

​

Comparative modes rhetorical analysis assignment (adapted from Arola, Sheppard & Ball, 2014)

Students pick one instance in Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric that incorporates the linguistic, visual, and spatial modes then analyze how these modes come together to create meaning. Students could also pick an instance in the book that invites readers to watch one of the situation videos and analyze how the video complements the script. A sample of this assignment can be found here. 

​

Multimodal positionality paper 

This assignment is two-fold. It asks students to consider and multimodally represent their various identities. It also asks them to reflect upon their rhetorical analysis assignments and consider how their identities influenced their reception and analysis of Rankine’s work.

​

Multimodal research paper with narrative assignment

Based on their positionality assignment, this one asks students to form a relevant question about some component of their identities and then asks them to do research to answer this question/questions. The written component allows students to practice academic writing while fusing the personal into it. 

​

Personal website and portfolio

Inspired by own experience in a technical writing class focused on multimodality, this assignment asks students to create their own websites and showcase all their multimodal projects online. Not only is this helpful for them to see their progress throughout the semester, it is also helpful for students who want to start working on their professionalization sooner rather than later. 

​

​