In the “Prologue” and “Openings” to his dissertation, “Multimodality and Composition Studies, 1960 – Present,” Palmeri argues that we need to do more than teach students to compose written text; we need to teach them to be multimodal compositionists. In order to do this, instructors do not have to turn away from the more-traditional composition theory, but to keep in mind the way that these theories try to articulate all communication as a multimodal process, even though they may still privilege the written text. Therefore, Palmeri re-reads expressivist, cognitive, and social composition theories from the 60s, 70s, and 80s to see how multimodal texts are addressed in these works.
Even as Palmeri identifies a tradition of work that engages multimodal composition, he points out that there are still obstacles and resistance to teaching visual and audio literacies and composition components in the university composition classroom. However, he argues that to be literate in the contemporary world, the ability to compose and read multimodal representations is essential. Moreover, students may come to the classroom with multimodal literacy that the teacher limits to producing alphabetic compositions. Therefore, teachers must inclusively encourage students to use their multimodal literacy and guide them in how these text can be used to ethical and social purposes. Such multimodal productions will not necessarily detract from the student’s ability to produce alphabetic writing, but actually might enhance it.
