Blog: Arts and Ideas Events

               Documentaries introduce a new aspect of rhetoric that is hardly touched on in the typical writing class. However underestimated this is, it provides a new learning experience. Documentaries reframe an understanding about how to formulate questions and problems to explore in academic writing. First, a review of a documentary eliminates the opinions and analytical writing encouraged for other forms of writing. By changing the rules for what can be talked about or in what manner they can be mentioned, expands the linear way of thinking most students are used to while writing. Second, a new objective question must be formulated to appeal to a broader audience. This audience is much different than writing an essay on a specific topic and having an idea of what kind of person could be reading it. The recent project that our class completed opened my eyes to how much flexibility and power writing has to it. An essay could be constructed geared towards one topic or audience and with a few edits could be morphed into an entirely new paper. I valued this experience and feel that documentary writing should have been integrated into English classes sooner.