Exquisite Corpse

Out of the 1920s Surrealist art studios emerged the exquisite corpse, a collaboratively drawn body made whole through a series of disjointed parts whose relevance today is the subject of Exquisite Corpse: Studio Art-Based Writing in the Academy. This collection draws from the processes and pedagogies of artists and designers to reconcile disparate discourses in rhetoric and composition pertaining to 3Ms (multimodal, multimedia, multigenre), multiliteracies, translingualism, and electracy. With contributions from a diverse range of scholars, artists, and designers, the chapters in this collection expand the conversation to a broader notion of writing and composing in the 21st century that builds upon traditional notions of composing but also embraces newer and nontraditional forms. In the section devoted to process, readers will find connections between art, design, and academic writing that may encourage them to incorporate nontraditional strategies and styles into their own writing. In the section devoted to pedagogy, readers will encounter art-based writing projects and activities that highlight the importance of interdisciplinary work as students continue to compose in ways that are more than solely alphabetic. Both sections provide insight into experimental process, inquiry-based work, play, and risk-taking. They also reveal what failure and success mean today in the composition classroom. Throughout the collection, readers will encounter a variety of stylized critical essays, poetic vignettes, lavish contemporary visual art, 20th-century Surrealist exquisite corpse drawings, and candid snapshots from the artists' own studios.