Essay Two: Remixing Academia

Literature has the unique opportunity of being subject to a new style of learning in this digital age. Digital Culture presents many unique ways to interpret a once rigid and traditional area of academic. No longer is reading and writing papers necessary to communicate understanding of both ancient and modern authors. The digital concept of remixing allows students to demonstrate their understanding of key texts through new mediums.

Remixing is editing and reformatting of an existing idea and is an exciting trend occurring in all fields of the digital world, including music, videos, memes and pictures. If college English curriculums were to adopt this method of creation, students could transcend mere theoretical understanding through an applied knowledge. For instance, an English student would take a literary work of someone else's or his own and "remix" it through another means to communicate his total understanding of the original idea. This student might take Paradise Lost and create an encyclopedia of the classical allusions Milton uses or a video montage of key themes using artists' renditions of the literary scenes. Through remixing in Digital Culture, students transcend rote rehearsal of ideas and repetition in papers, and format the same ideas in a way that appeals to audiences beyond the classroom.

In practice here at BYU, we made memes, word clouds and videos of themes present in Moby Dick. This allowed us as students to narrow in on important concepts in the work and create artistic renditions that would convey our knowledge in an accessible and clear fashion. The art of remixing is constantly expanding, and if academic leaders choose to incorporate this idea into their studies, they will continue to be educated as new students present their ideas in innovative forums and styles. It benefits infinitely more people than the few an academic paper has the ability to impact. Overall, remixing, used as a creative tool in Digital Culture, can be applied to theories in learning, to positively influence and educate a greater audience than current traditional assignments.