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This article offers an affective perspective on multimodal literacies and encourages teachers to consider students' affective responses as a form of literacy engagement.
Students' murmuring gradually grows softer, and their bodies seemingly brim with curiosity. A stillness permeates the room. Students display an intense focus toward the screen. Their eyes and bodies are alert, their pens are in hand, and many are already jotting notes.
For a unit on analyzing informational text, Ms. Duke had been engaging the grade 7 students in her English language arts classroom with texts that had the potential for connecting to their lives and for cultivating critical consciousness (Freire, 1974/2013; 1985). As shown in the short vignette above, when Ms. Duke presented the documentary The True Cost (Ross & Morgan, 2015), students' engagement took on a form warranting closer examination.
The True Cost is a documentary on fast fashion that shows the devastating circumstances of factory workers in developing countries who work in inhumane and unsafe conditions to produce clothing and products that are then imported into developed countries like the United States. Just before she pressed play on the video, Ms. Duke encouraged students to write down connections as they watched, to "jot down anything you are thinking or anything it makes you feel." As the documentary began with its layered modes of music, sound effects, graphics, and printed as well as spoken language, I noted how students were responding and interacting with their papers, pencils, eyes, bodies, and the screen. I continued to observe, paying close attention to students as they interacted with the film.
The documentary cut to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where key figures such as factory owners, clothing manufacturers, and factory workers were introduced. Background music accompanied the video footage. "Cutting corners and disregarding safety measures had become an accepted part of doing business in this new model," said the narrator. "Until an early morning in April, when an event just outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, brought a hidden side of fashion to the front-page news." Clips from multiple news outlets showed live footage from the collapse of a building that housed a clothing factory. The building was reduced to rubble; family and friends were shown holding pictures of their loved ones as rescue crews searched for...