A variety of texts — visual & verbal — from many genres, and in full color. Convergences brings together the many kinds of texts we encounter in everyday life. You will find essays by heavy hitters like H.L. Mencken. Camille Paglia, and Malcolm Gladwell. You’ll find a poem by Sherman Alexie; multiple versions of Little Red Riding Hood; and the transcript of the Scopes Trial. Among the visual works, you’ll find a poster of Rosie the Riveter, a comic by Art Spiegelman, a PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address, a Geico caveman ad, and a still of the "Star Wars Kid" from YouTube. Why present avatars alongside government documents? Urban legends with graphic memoirs? To allow students to experience texts they way they do outside the classroom — but to do so more critically.
Teachable thematic clusters pair the verbal and visual. For example, the Packaging Culture chapter includes clusters such as "How to Make an Ad" and "Packaging the Body." Each cluster in the book is anchored by a strong essay by widely-taught authors such as Susan Sontag, John Edgar Wideman, and David Sedaris, that is then paired with thematically-related written texts (e.g. a poem, an interview, a court transcript) and visual texts (e.g. a graphic memoir, a web page, a comic, a found object).
Solid pedagogy & apparatus that bring it all together.
At the heart of the book is an approach that asks students to consider each text’s message (what it says), its method (how it says it), and its medium (how it’s delivered). This pedagogy is laid out in the Introduction and reinforced in questions that follow each cluster — and with annotated examples of the kinds of texts (essays, photos, ads, etc.) that appear in the book. Questions at the end of each chapter prompt further connections and offer a variety of writing projects.