Welcome to the COIL Project!

In today’s media-rich context, the cannons of rhetoric are not just for Aristotle’s arguments, but rather can be applied to one of the most powerful form of visual culture: movies. Symbols and cues, either in language or in style, arrangement, delivery, can reveal ideologies of the film makers and the society that a film is created in or intends to portray. Filmmakers, just like any other rhetors, have their own distinct language and know how to use it effectively to create rhetorical appeals in the productions of film. In such productions, the role of social, political and economic context is deeply influential in the stories told and the characters created. This project exposes students to such context in vastly different societies in today’s global world and explore how movies are rhetorical messages that dramatize the ways people in different societies use language and images to tell stories and foster identification with certain ideology.

 

In this project, students will first be reviewing two movies by exploring the major differences in the philosophies, social life and self-conceptions of the U.S. and Chile. The project hopes to help students understand how rhetorical concepts and theories developed in those traditions remain powerful tools to understand American and Chilean movies. Students will also explore how these movies are perceived by audience in each country. Taking a rhetoric lens to look at films produced in the U.S and Chile, students will use movies as objects of rhetorical inquiry to critically understand the powerful ideological and cultural messages presented.

 

Students are expected to achieve heightened rhetorical awareness, enhanced digital media literacy, and improved competence in cross-cultural communication. Students may also reap the benefits of collaborative, virtual learning across national and institutional borders.

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This project is a Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) project embarked upon by FIU students (Miami, FL, U.S.A.) in ENC 3378 (co-listed as ENC 6745) Writing across Borders course and UDP students (Santiago RM, Chile) in English Speaking Countries' Culture I (EDE 1025). A total of 62 students participated in this project during the Spring 2023 semester.