Exploring Cultural Identity Within Visual Communication Josh Zimmerman Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, Arizona

One of my students wrote an analysis of his brother’s tattoo that spans the width of his back.  The tattoo is of the word, “SCHOLAR.”  Each letter is a symbol of some kind.  The “S” is a dollar sign, the “O” is a peace sign, and the “L” is a water pipe.  Basically, my student analyzed the tattoo according to what an observer might see, and then he explained what the symbols, and the word, mean to his brother.  After working with the student a little bit, he and I worked it out that each symbol is a part of his brother’s identity.  They grew up very poor, in a non-peaceful neighborhood, and around a lot of drugs.  The symbols are a mixing of things the brother will strive to achieve and things he will strive to avoid.  But they are all things that the brother identifies himself with, no matter how painful the relationship with them might be.  

I was excited when the student asked me if he could write a paper about his brother’s tattoo.  I believe visual literacy, the practice of “reading” images, can be a tool used to extract identity—cultural identity to be more specific.  And his brother created his own idea of how he is a “scholar” according to specific images that pertain to certain elements of who he is—his identity.  All images are cultural, and in the case with the tattoo, images tend to embody something personal about the bearer of that image. 

I want to bring this idea of revealing cultural identity through visual literacy into the classroom.  So many freshmen students are hesitant to write from their own perspective and experiences, and I feel this inhibits a relationship between them, the subject, and their writing.  I want the students to find that cultural relationship with their work, and I also want them to see how other work identifies the culture from where it comes.  In my thesis I analyzed a Mexican/American mural and explored how the images affirm cultural identity through the telling of stories.  But the stories also involve the creation or the inspiration behind the images.  The images tell of certain historical events, but also of the energy put into the mural by the youth group and the community involvement to paint it in the first place.  Similarly, each symbol in the “SCHOLAR” tattoo represents aspects of the brother’s life, his culture, that reflect who he is.  Each “letter” represents some type of inspiration or aspiration. 

I’m looking for a great deal of discussion from this module about how to develop exercises that combine visual literacy with cultural identity issues.  One exercise I did in a class was to have the students create some sort of political art and then write a paper about their inspiration for the piece and then how they culturally identify with the piece.  The piece and the paper were then presented to the class.  Of course, I did not grade on the piece’s aesthetic appeal.  The responses were amazing!  One student responded to the preemptive strikes on Iraq positively, until he began speaking.  He changed his view entirely while looking at his drawing.  It was really emotional and it sparked a great discussion about how identity does change or develop through experience.  Witnessing the change of how a person identifies with a piece of art they created was a fascinating and powerful experience for myself and the other students.  It also promoted a comfortable environment in which other students began discussing this idea of changing identity and not being constrained by cultural or social expectations.  Identity does change, and offering the students this idea and other general perspectives about identity will, I believe, help bring them closer to their writing and their selves. 

Questions for further discussion

1)                  What are some of the ways some of you all might be using visual literacy in your classrooms?  How have the students responded?

2)                  What type of assignments is anyone creating that concern issues of cultural identity?  How have the students responded?

3)                  What types of visual communication might we explore with the students that affirm cultural identity?

4)                  When students begin analyzing elements of cultural identity they find within images, how might we stress the importance of both a collective identity and an individual identity?

5)                  What type of constraints do you think the students might feel while “searching” for aspects of cultural identity through the use of visual literacy?

6)                  What sort of precautions might we want to take while promoting cultural identity?  Or, how might we want to work with the discomforts that will probably arise within as they begin associating themselves, their identity, with images?   

7)                  What might be the positive and negative consequences of such a focus?

8)                  What sort of effects might cultural identity in conjunction with visual literacy have on the standard idea of literacy?

Works Referenced

Teaching Basic Writing

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