Engaging Gender

Abstract

Enabling students' engagement with gender theory can be a difficult task. One of the best ways to help students learn difficult conceptual material, such as theoretical texts, is to provide them with opportunities to state and restate those ideas in multiple ways and through multiple means. Digital storytelling provides an effective pedagogy that enhances this process of stating and restating, forcing students to express themselves in the `new language' of multimedia. Through a detailed reading of one student's work the essay proposes a taxonomy for novice uses of theory, ranging from summary to development of theoretical symbols. I then argue that digital storytelling uniquely enables students to illustrate and apply difficult conceptual material. In some cases, the visual form can even open up new possibilities for the application and refinement of concepts.