We have included an example of the pop-song template Blaauw-Hara created for his class, for which he followed much the same process as detailed above: importing a drum track created in FL Studio to Sonar, and then adding guitars, bass, and keys.

For the initial recording, we used the cheapest, Sonar LE, which came bundled with an audio interface that Blaauw-Hara used to get the sound of the bass and keyboard into the computer. Together, the audio interface and Sonar cost around $79. Users interested in doing as much of this for free as possible should look at Audacity, an excellent free software package with enough functionality to produce a good-sounding recording with minimal work. We would still advise instructors to purchase an audio interface, though, as the built-in microphone input on most computers is inadequate and cumbersome to use. Options abound, and many are available for both Mac and PC for under $100.

. Many Apple users are familiar with GarageBand, a multi-track recording package available for the Mac and iPad.

We used the demo version of FL Studio for our sample song.

When we speak of remixing the personal narrative essay, what we mean is encouraging students to become co-creators of the assignment by giving them space to re-envision the essay in a multimodal way that allows them to build on the media-creation experiences with which many of them are already familiar.

students are more than ready for the English classroom to go multimodal.

In one such depiction, Antinous wears a style of headdress associated with the Egyptian god Osiris, who also drowned in the Nile and was reborn from its waters.

Julien upends traditional portrayals of black and gay subjects, forcing viewers to question accepted stereotypes.

After subsequent arrests, he fell into poverty and alcoholism.

countering oppression

The experience, the awakening of one’s true self, after being so long suppressed, can never be adequately explained with language.

An accomplished example of traditional academic practice, Still-Life with Geometric Forms sensitively renders and presents an eerie, symbolist quality in its focus on clustered and overlapping forms.

Hartley emphasized Daigle’s strong physique, exaggerating his anatomy and originally painting him nude (subsequently adding the brief covering). Ironically, critics in the 1940s applauded the work as a display of heteronormative masculinity.

I want the world to see what I see in Black women … This is the desire, this is the love, this is the beauty, this is the intellect, this is what we [Black women] have to give to the world.

The love she offers in her paintings is more expansive, more radical, allowing us to understand portraits of her mother and of herself as equally queer as the ones in which her female subjects are in obviously intimate poses.

My queerness was a wedge that was slowly separating me from a sick society.

expressing his anger about the inequalities and disenfranchisement of people living with HIV and AIDS.

At least 18 states in the past few years have banned or restricted critical approaches to teaching about race and racism, allegedly to “protect” white children from any discomfort that might come from facing racial realities.

My favorite subject that year was history.

will not only leave white students badly educated about racism but will undermine the self-esteem and limit the potential of many non-white students, especially Black children.

Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act,

I have learned more about myself through the underground political education that occurs in prison yards, chow halls, and day rooms — supplemented by a few college courses and lots of reading in the prison library — than I ever learned in the public education system.

a sanitized story about America both deprives their children of the knowledge they need and puts Black children at greater risk of despair.