Introduction | Sequence | Religion in Composition Classrooms | Sharing Others' Stories | Multiple Media | Multiple Cultures | Case Studies | Anonymous | Lauren Goldstein | Charissa Coleman Muhammad | Elizabeth Jones | Final Thoughts
Reflect Charissa’s literacy narrative was one of the longest I chose to work with, and as a result it unfortunately probably had the most cut out in order to create a brief, focused remediation. For the purposes of this brief remediation, the two themes I especially wanted to highlight were the role that both Islam and Christianity have played in shaping her spiritual literacies and the importance of listening to her spiritual literacy practices. Charissa identifies herself as Muslim, but she sees both the Quran and the Bible as very important and emphasizes points of connection between the two texts. She also talks about the importance of listening in her life; not only does she listen to the Bible on tape, but she also listens to Islamic lectures on CD as she goes about her daily activities. Based on her self-identification as a “listener,” and her emphasis on listening as an important spiritual literacy practice, I wanted to create a remediation that drew remediator and audience alike into that same embodied practice of listening.
Though the end result sounds deceptively simple, this audio remediation was actually one of the most challenging case studies to create. I tried interspersing her words with chanted recordings of the first surah of the Quran, since this surah is an important component of Muslim daily prayer (and she mentioned that she recites her prayers in Arabic with the help of a CD). However, this arrangement didn’t aurally reflect the dialogue between Islam and Christianity that she describes in the featured section of her narrative. I tried adding a Gregorian chant recording of the Benedictus, an important component of Christian daily prayer. However, the differences in audio quality tended to draw focal attention to the chanting voices from each tradition (which were both male). I thought about getting rid of all accompanying audio tracks entirely and just focusing on Charissa’s voice, to really highlight the importance of words and attentive listening. At the same time, though, I wanted the remediation to represent a sort of conversation between the two of us, in a way that foregrounded her voice but still indicated my engagement with it. Eventually I found a gentle piano piece that opened up a listening, reflective space to accompany Charissa’s narrative voice. I especially like that the main theme alternates back and forth between two notes, in the same way that Charissa describes her complementary experience of reading the Quran and the Bible. At the end of the track, I was especially pleased that the song’s unedited timing happened to fade out as Charissa spoke about the power of words—highlighting the fact that that in this remediation, her own words take center stage.
Respond