Assignments

Participation Cards

Starting the second week of class, you will be required to bring a 3”x5” notecard to class each day. These cards will serve to record your attendance in class. More importantly, they will structure class participation.

There are three required elements on a participation card for it to count as attendance:

1. Your name (top of card)
2. A passage that stuck with you from the reading (front of card)
3. An unanswered question based on class discussion (back of card)

At the beginning of each class, I will give you two minutes to write out one sentence from the reading that stuck with you: that you loved, that you hated, or that confused you (you may also bring a prepared card, if you like). We will begin class discussion by going around the room and reading our passages. This activity will serve to spark our discussion of the reading.

At the end of each class, I will give you three minutes to write out (in complete sentences) an answer to the following: “What topic did we raise today that is going to keep you up tonight? If nothing, what should we have asked that would keep you thinking into the night?” This is your chance to show me what you learned in discussion, what you wished you had learned, and/or what you still want to learn. I will be using these to help shape future discussions.

If you cannot attend class, please email the quote you would have put on your card and a 2-3 sentence explanation for why you chose the quote in question.

Paper 1: Modern Rhetoric

We have identified a number of problems in the first few decades of the 20th century that make the practice of rhetoric and the study of persuasion crucial for the functioning of a mediated society. What is the single most important issue today that you think require a new theory of persuasion?

In an argumentative essay, discuss your problem, explaining what it is, giving some background on the issue, and why it is a problem that can be addressed through persuasion. You will need to rely on outside sources to support your argument, whether these are scholarly arguments about the topic, technical sources to add background detail, or popular sources to provide examples or to dimensionalize the problem.

Exam 1: Rhetorical Theories

You will be required to bring blue books for this exam.

You will be supplied with a list of quotes from the material we have discussed in Unit 2. These will be quotes we talked about in class. For each quote, identify the following information:

1. Author of the quote
2. Full title of the work in which quote appears
3. Explain the importance of the quote to the argument of the work
4. In a short paragraph, summarize the author’s full argument and what they contribute to a theory of argument

Paper 2: Case Study Analysis

For this assignment, you will write what is called a rhetorical analysis. In a rhetorical analysis, the strategies of persuasion of a particular cultural object are evaluated to explain why (or why not) a particular cultural artifact is (or is not successful) at being persuasive. Rhetorical analyses could study speeches by a politician or advertising slogans in a soda commercial; they can look at paintings, books, or anything else that participates in the creation and circulation of cultural myths.

Specifically, I want you to find a cultural object relating to food in some fashion (defined how you want, subject to my approval). Then, I want you to identify the appeals the object is making to its audience. Pay special attention to the theories of rhetoric we have identified this semester.