viz.

Image Credit: Google Lat Long Blog

If were you watching the news in mid-January, you likely saw images like those above flashing repeatedly across your television or computer screen.  Unlike the photojournalistic, street-level portraits that tend to document disasters, these aerial shots, produced through a collaboration between Google Earth and GeoEye (a satellite imaging company), have been prominent in the visual coverage of the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010.   The above images show pre- and post-quake views of the Presidential Palace (top left; top right) and downtown Port au Prince (bottom left; bottom right), and were created using the timeline tool in Google Earth.

Image Credit: Phil Gyford

For a handout, download the PDF document outlining this assignment.

Notes for the Instructor:  The design of this unit is to teach students to do analysis of visual media like musicals, which include song and dance as well as traditional scripts and visual elements, by focusing on the issues of rhetorical delivery (specifically, the performance of the actors within the stage/camera shot, and the visual elements associated with that performance).  This unit was built to go after a more traditional unit that focused on analyzing the lyrical content of musicals’ songs, and to encourage students to tie lyric to delivery. 

The elements of the unit included as follows:

Week 1:  Introduce terminology of delivery, do comparative analysis of examples in class.

Week 2:  Watch two versions of a full-length musical and analyze them in class.

Week 3:  Write a short comparative rhetorical analysis (1-2 pages in length), bringing in new material to go with material already covered in class.

Week 4:  Write and workshop full-length (5-7 pages) paper.

Goals:  The goals of this unit were to make students aware of visual forms of rhetoric and the delivery within performance contexts, as well as to make them consider how those gestures work to constitute meaning along with more traditional elements (like words and lyrics).  This unit is also to help them expand their researching skills by learning how to research in multiple venues (electronic and non-electronic, performance reviews, books on composers and lyricists, etc).

I recently incorporated the Garry Winogrand photo below into an in-class writing exercise. The exercise is essentially the same as one that I came up with when helping Brooks Landon teach his Prose Style course at the University of Iowa a few years ago. Keep reading to learn more about the writing exercise.

I bring a photo in to class, usually one that depicts something weird, something that probably has a story behind it but that doesn't make that story explicit. I project the photo and don't tell the students a word about it, not when it was taken, by whom, nothing. Then the students have to write about the photo. It's a creative assignment and in this case I was trying to get them to think about form. Specifically, after a workshop on the subject in the prior class, I was asking them to write "cumulative" sentences. Cumulative sentences, for those of you who aren't prose style junkies, are described in Francis Christensen's essay "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence." So, the photo was just a prompt to get the students writing in a new mode that we had been working on. The exercise went very well and my students generated some whacky, but stylistically adventurous, prose. If I get their permission, I will post some of their writings in the comments soon.

Notes for the Instructor: This is a unit-long assignment, which asks the students to write first a short paper (300–500 words), in which they compare two images/objects/spaces and their respective messages, and then produce a long essay (4–5 pages), in which they incorporate the text they have already produced in the short paper, but make an argument about the rhetorical effectiveness of the two images/objects. In other words, in the short paper they discuss message alone; in the long paper they discuss both the message and its reception. The assignment involves doing extensive research into the respective culture/ideology, which produced the images/objects. Both the short and the long essay should contain a rhetorically crafted, comparative description of the images/objects, which should serve to set up the main argument, i.e., to make the reader more receptive to it.

Here are two sample arguments (quoted with the students’ permission):

Short Paper: “Two of the most well-known statues of King David were erected by Renaissance painters Michelangelo and Donatello. Both artists’ sculptures differ from previous representations of heroic figures in that their versions of David are depicted in the nude. However, these two artists’ figures differ in their characteristic representation of David’s victory: Donatello emphasizes its spiritual side, while Michelangelo expresses its power.”

Long Paper: “Designed twenty years apart, house X and house Y both claim to blend artificial, human creation with the natural landscape, in an attempt to appeal to homebuyers’ rising ecological awareness. However, while X spurred an entire trend in residential architecture, Y remains a lonely monument to its author’s efforts. Y’s rigid, museum-like aesthetic has proven unattractive compared to X’s accommodating, livable beauty.”

Assignment Description: Write a short comparison, which leads to the creation of a rhetorical analysis.

Category: Individual Project.

Goals: This assignment has several goals: a) to give the students the opportunity to realize that successful arguments about rhetorical effect can be quite complex and require much research, b) to give them a chance to revise and incorporate some of their own writing into longer pieces of text with different goals, c) to help them realize that no description or comparison is “neutral;” all descriptions/comparisons have a particular rhetorical goal and audience, and their language and selection of elements is important.

Short Essay

Choose two closely related images/objects, which are at least fifty years old and write a short essay (300–500 words), in which you make a comparative claim about their respective messages. In order to make a sustainable claim, you will need to research the historical and cultural context in which the images/objects first appeared.

Before you begin, consider again the following questions:

• What is the context in which the images/objects first appeared?
• What audiences were they meant for?
• How were they meant to be used/viewed/displayed?
• What is their message? Their goal?
• How do they strike you as a viewer?

Requirements:

• Your paper must have an arguable, strong comparative claim.
• The historical/cultural context of the two images must be expounded briefly – in no more than one paragraph for each image/object. Only choose to include that information which will help your argument.
• Your may have a “block” comparison or a “running” comparison – choose the strategy most appropriate for your argument. Your comparison must include a description of the images/objects crafted so as to set up your main argument and to make your reader more receptive to your claims. In other words, concentrate mostly on the elements which will help your argument.
• Your paper must contain sufficient visual analysis to support your claim.

Grading Criteria:

• Clarity, focus, and value of your central claim/argument
• Appropriateness of selected visual elements, their ordering, comparison, and interpretation in relation to main argument
• Use of visual terms and vocabulary
• Clarity and precision of language
• Correct syntax, grammar, and punctuation

Long Essay

Building on your short paper, write a long argumentative essay (4-5 pages), in which you make a comparative argument about the rhetorical effectiveness of two closely related images/objects. Your images/objects must be at least fifty years old. In order to make a sustainable claim, you will need to research the historical and cultural context in which the images/objects first appeared. You claim must involve the ideologies and messages of your images/objects as well as the reception of those messages.

Before you begin, consider again the following questions:

• What is the context in which the images/objects first appeared?
• What audiences were they meant for?
• How were they meant to be used/viewed/displayed?
• What is their message? Their goal?
• How effective were they in their own time and place? If you cannot find direct information on this question, take your best and most educated guess!

Requirements:

• Your paper must have an arguable, strong comparative claim.
• The historical/cultural context of the two images must be expounded briefly – in no more than one paragraph for each image/object. Only choose to include that information which will help your argument.
• Your paper must contain descriptions of the images/objects, appropriate for your argument and for the comparison you are making. The purpose of the description is to set up the subsequent argument and analysis.
• Your may have a “block” comparison or a “running” comparison – choose the strategy most appropriate for your argument.
• Your paper must contain sufficient visual analysis to support your claim.
• You must cite all sources you have used for your paper in a Works Cited sheet. Please use at least three academic or otherwise reputable sources. (Wikipedia will not do.)

Grading Criteria:

• Clarity, focus, and value of your central claim/argument
• Appropriateness of the descriptions and comparison in relation to main argument
• Appropriateness of selected visual elements and their ordering in relation to main argument
• Use of visual terms and vocabulary
• Clarity and precision of language
• Correct syntax, grammar, and punctuation
• Correct use of citation guidelines and formatting

Notes for the Instructor: This proposal assignment offers visually-oriented alternatives to the traditional essay and gives students the opportunity to create a web site, a short film, or a PowerPoint presentation. Attached are two examples of PowerPoint presentations, a rough draft and a final draft that has been revised for aesthetic and persuasive appeal. To implement this assignment, the instructor will need to specify a more exact prompt and the specific guidelines necessary to complete the project (for example, the length of a short film [recommended: 5–10 minutes] or PowerPoint presentation [recommended: 20 minutes]), the number and type of sources to be used (the assignment currently requires a minimum of five), the grading specifications, and the due dates.

Assignment Description: Creating a proposal argument

Category: Individual project

Goals: This project is designed give students practice in producing visual proposal arguments; to lead them to demonstrate facility with the tools of visual rhetoric; and to think critically and carefully about the relationship between aesthetics and arguments, or between visual rhetoric and persuasion. Students will research a specific proposal and create a web site, a PowerPoint Presentation, or a short film as the medium for presenting their proposal argument. The objective is to present a well thought-out proposal that offers a viable solution to an issue that interests you, and that identifies a specific plan of action for your reader.

Tasks:

• Choose a controversial or debatable issue that is related to the material and topics of the course and that is as narrowly and clearly defined as possible.
• Identify a target audience that is affected by this problem and plan to structure your argument to reach this audience.
• Design a web site, create a short film, or design and present a PowerPoint presentation that posits a strong argument for your proposal.
• Student progress on this project will be measured in three stages: with a topic proposal, a rough draft, and a final draft.

Guidelines:

• Your project should consist of two primary components:
• A description of the situation, and what makes it a problem.
• A detailed discussion of your proposed solution to this problem. This should act as a “call to action” for your audience. You should discuss not only the reasons for your proposal, but also how it would be put into action, including both the costs (financial and/or personal) and benefits of implementing your proposal. Discuss what (if anything) has already been done about this issue, and why these solutions have been less than satisfactory.
• Your project should show that you’ve taken the time to do careful and thorough research, and investigated all relevant aspects of this issue. Some topics will require more research than others, depending on what is available and how concretely your problem can be measured, but all papers and projects should have a minimum of five sources.
• For web sites: In addition to having text in the web site itself, please cut and paste the text of your site and paste it into a word document that you also submit with your rough draft and final project; this textual component should be roughly 4-5 pages long, double-spaced (not counting the bibliography).

Topic Proposals: Your topic proposal should include the following:

• Your topic
• Some discussion of why the reader should care about this issue
• Your proposed “solution”
• Some examples of what else has been done about this problem
• Costs and benefits of your solution
• A brief description of the format your final project will take (web site, short film, or PowerPoint presentation).

Rough Draft: Your web site or short film should be fairly well fleshed out, and although they may not have all of the content you plan to incorporate into the final product, they should be close to the completed stage. If you elect to do a PowerPoint presentation, you should have all of your slides set up (even if you plan to revise them), and you should also have a Word document summarizing what you plan to say about each slide.

Grading: These projects will be graded for their visual as well as textual content; the visual component and presentation will account for 25% of your assignment grade, and the textual component will account for the remaining 75%. Be sure to include a bibliography (yes, even for short films).

Notes for the Instructor: This assigment is designed to introduce students to Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software. Students are asked to work in groups and create presentations related to the content of the course (the instructor may wish to generate a list of acceptable topics). This assignment is designed to last no more than 2 or 3 class meetings: students will choose (or be assigned) their groups and topics, work on the presentations outside of class, and then present them to their peers. Students are also asked to submit a two-page paper describing the process of working on the project; instructors may choose to tweak this aspect of the assignment according to the goals of the course.

Assignment Description: Becoming familiar with PowerPoint

Category: Group project

Goals: This project is designed to introduce students to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software and give them practice in using it by producing an organized presentation to be given in class.

Tasks:

• Working in groups of (around) four students, create a PowerPoint presentation incorporating both images and text.
• Each presentation should be organized around a clearly defined topic related to class discussions and readings.
• Presentations should focus on being both informative and interesting.

Guidelines:

• Each presentation must contain a minimum of 10 slides and last approximately 10 minutes.
• Students must incorporate both text and images into their presentation; additionally, the images need to be informative and clearly related to the content of the presentation.
• Each group must also hand in, on the day of their presentation, a 2-page paper describing the presentation and reflecting on the process of creating it.
• These 2-page papers need to be double-spaced, use a font of no more than size 12, and include the names of all four group members.

Suggestions: Groups will be given some time to work on their projects in class, but are also expected to meet at least once outside of class to discuss the topic, plan the presentation, and divide different responsibilities among members of the group.