Readings
Week One
Read through the syllabus. Come to class Tuesday with three questions (in writing) that you have about the class.
Week Two
For Tuesday (9.25):
Crowley, Sharon and Debra Hawhee “Kairos and The Rhetorical Tradition: Seizing the Moment,” Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3d ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004. 36-52.
Reading questions for Crowley and Hawhee for your blog entry:
1. In your own words, explain the meaning of kairos.
2. Why is it important to consider kairos when you are making an argument?
3. Using an issue currently being debated by the presidential candidates as your example, briefly answer the “Questions Raised by Kairos” on p.43.
For Thursday (9.27):
Wysocki, Anne, “with eyes that think, and compose, and think: on visual rhetoric,” Teaching Writing with Computers. Ed. Pam Takayoshi and Brian Huot. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 182-201.
class.
Reading questions for Wysocki, “with eyes…,” for your blog entry:
1. Wysocki says that visual rhetoric is at work when persuasion includes visual strategies. Explain how paying attention to visual strategies help us “learn about and perhaps make changes in other values at work in our culture” (186).
2. Give your own example of such “paying attention.”
3. Choose several visual strategies from your own weblog, and explore the question posed by Wysocki (195): How would you text be different if it where changed? (Remember, in this context “text” refers to all aspects of the document, not just the words.)
Week Three
For Tuesday (10.2):
Faigley, Lester et al, “Picturing Texts,” Picturing Texts. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. 20-55. (handout)
McCloud, Scott, from Understanding Comics. New York: Harper, 1994. (handout)
Reading prompt for Faigley for your blog entry (we’ll talk about McCloud in class):
On p.30, Faigley uses two illustrations of toilet seats - up for Men, down for Women - that beautifully illustrate the concepts of Comparison and Contrast. My challenge to you is to find a gender-based illustration for the other key concepts that Faigley says are important for working with words and images - balance, classification, description, emphasis, metaphor, narration, pattern, point of view, proportion, and unity.
Of course, this is a visual assignment, so you’re going to have to sketch, photograph, cut-and-paste, and generally use your imagination to create these illustrations. Then blog about the process of thinking up and representing these concepts.
Extra points for a second good illustration of Comparison and Contrast. Points taken off for exceeding the limits of good taste (interpreted broadly as “Don’t do something you wouldn’t show your grandmother”). Have fun!
Week Four
For Tuesday (10.9):
Bolter, Jay and Richard Grusin. “Mediation and Remediation,” Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2000. 52-62.
Manovich, Lev, “Generation Flash,” http://www.manovich.net/DOCS/generation_flash.doc
For Thursday (10.11):
Williams, Robin. The Non-Designer’s Design Book. 2d ed. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit P, 2004. (handout)
Your assignment for today was short and, I hope, fun. You have carte blanche on how you choose to respond. If you don’t have ideas of your own, here are three possibilities:
1) describe an example where you think the information in the reading might be put to use:
2) connect the reading to what you have already done with your VOTE poster or are in the process of doing with your bumper sticker;
3) make connections between this reading and previous readings or class discussions - for example, how might this reading clarify or contradict what we have talked about or read before?
Enjoy!
Week Five
For Tuesday (10.16):
Please listen to the three examples of audio “essays” listed on the Assignments page here:
Scroll down the page and find the links under “Audio essay.”
For your blog entry, choose either “Returning to What’s Natural” or “The New Game” and describe in detail who you think the audience for this piece is. One of the best ways to imagine audience is to try to think of ONE person who would be most interested in the piece. Is this person male or female? How old? How much education? What does s/he do for a job? For fun? What does s/he read? Drive? Wear? Watch? Talk about? Believe?
You get the idea. I want you to describe the single person you imagine will be most interested in the essay, even if only to disagree with it. Come up with your own categories of description. Write a good, long paragraph in your blog about him or her. (Maybe you can think of a friend of yours who the essay seems to be written for - without naming, you could describe that friend.) The key here is DETAIL, as much as you can come up with.
Please make your blog entry before noon on Tuesday so I can read them before class.
Week Nine
For Tuesday (11.13):
Wysocki, Anne. “Openings,” Writing New Media Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2007. 1-23.
Week Ten
For Tuesday (11.21):
Sorapure, Madeleine. “Five Principles of New Media: Or, Playing Lev Manovich,” KAIROS 10.2 (2006) http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/10.2/binder2.html?coverweb/sorapure/index.html
Reading prompt for Sorapure: This is an example of scholarship that was produced, not for a print journal, but for delivery as a digital text. I’d like you to reflect on what this means for her as a composer and you as a reader to experience the text in this format.
For Sorapure as a composer: what did she need to pay attention to that she would not have if she were writing for a print journal? What could she do here that she couldn’t do in print? What couldn’t she do?
For you as a reader: how is your experience of reading this text different from reading the other texts for this course? In what ways is it a better reading experience? In what ways is it worse? Are there things you can and can’t do as you read that are different from reading print, and how does that affect your understanding? Your enjoyment? Your ability to apply her insights to your work?