Dear reader, 

Taking this class has given me a new way of viewing the media that I consume that I would never have thought of on my own. I can view a simple image and see possible motivations and messages the photographer may have wanted to send. Learning to be a visual rhetorician has opened my mind in ways I didn’t consider before. This new perspective is something that I’m incredibly grateful for because it allows me to view images on topics that I care about and analyze them in ways that help me understand those topics more. This new understanding has given me so much more to write about in almost every other class as well as this one. While the focus of this class is visual rhetoric and I was taught to be a visual rhetorician by Professor Clasby, I find that I’m able to use the same techniques and apply them to other classes and view other things in similar ways. 

My favorite milestone in my training as a visual rhetorician was, without a doubt, the Curatorial Project. Being able to select eight images on a topic that I cared about deeply and being able to analyze them in ways that I would not have been able to before allowed me to fill the project with a passion that I’m incredibly grateful for. Using my skills to highlight the lives of genderqueer and trans people is something that I will always be proud of myself for and I will always be thankful to Professor Clasby for giving me the opportunity to do it.

My writing has drastically improved under Professor Clasby’s teaching and suffering through the early mornings for the 8:00 a.m. class was beyond worth it. The papers we wrote and projects we did were never wasted work and were always full of opportunities to learn and ways to improve our skills; visual rhetoric may have been outside of my comfort zone before, but it is well inside it now. 

This class gave me the skills to view the world in a way that lets me take in more information than other people and have a better perspective than most can say they would, but it has also allowed me to simply enjoy art more. Seeing a painting or photograph and being able to glean the artist’s possible intentions when making the piece allows me to appreciate it more and enjoy the craft in ways I couldn’t hope to before.

Anybody would be lucky to take this class and have Professor Clasby teach them the skills she taught me. I will never see any image as simple, and that is something I am glad for. 

Sincerely, 

Conner Mulkerrins