Fourth Year Winner: Activism: A Changing Perspective
WRIT 4000, Activist Rhetorics. CD: Laura Allen.
Abstract
You are not defined by your thoughts. What truly counts is how you choose to act.” So ends the author’s Zine, an extended reflection on the necessity of thoughtful, authentic activism. As the writer’s text shows, the Zine format is well suited to the digital world, where it adds hypertext and multimodal content to texts and images on a common theme. In this particularly thoughtful and convincing submission, the writer has carefully considered personal, public, and brand activism, linking the three contexts together with a fourth extended meditation on the importance of microactivism in daily life. This begins, as does much that is good activism in this era, with a call for awareness and humility, and for direct action, whether on a large or small scale. We can’t all change the world—but we can change ourselves, and with this, address inequity on a local level. No single raindrop is responsible for the flood—but the flood can’t happen without them either.
The writing in this submission is compelling and interesting, and each topic chosen is of considerable interest. By carefully linking to well-researched and varied examples of activism on micro and macro levels, and by skillfully combining multiple media to both enhance and establish their larger argument, the writer constructs an entirely persuasive case against passivity and casual acceptance of unfairness. The initial essay in the collection is particularly compelling, and grounds the writer’s thoughts in a bedrock of credibility—this is a person who has lived the activism they encourage in the rest of us. The result is an engrossing call to carefully reflect on our own thoughts and choices, and specific advice for personal action. In a world where many disappointed idealists have become cynics, the author reminds us that, as ever, the personal is political, and that the potential for real change lies within all of us, if only we choose to grasp it.
