viz. - assignment

New Journalism Publications: A Multimedia Mash-Up by Nathan Kreuter

Lisa Gulesserian — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:46:25 +0000

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

For your second project you will be working in groups to create a 3-5 minute multimedia presentation.

The content of the presentation should focus on one of the following publications: Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and New Yorker. Your task is to choose one of these publications and compare its print culture in two different decades. By “print culture” I mean everything printed in the magazine, from features and fiction to interviews and advertising. Your task is to argue in your multi-media presentation about what the publication in each of those two decades you choose tells us about American culture at that time, as well as to point out the changes between those two decades, and speculate as to what those changes might mean.

All of the publications listed here are held in the PCL’s stacks. While UT does have some digital copies of more recent issues, you would be better served by going to the library and looking at the physical issues. And for older issues you won’t have a choice. So you’ll need to get into the library.

The format of these projects is a multi-media presentation, which must be no less than three and no more than five minutes long. It also must be entirely selfcontained, which means that when you bring it to class you can simply press a play button and we can watch and hear the entire presentation. At the least interesting (and least likely to garner a high grade) end of the spectrum would be an automated PowerPoint presentation, and at the most interesting end of the spectrum would be some sort of video that incorporates images and words from the original publications, as well as music and some sort of narration to make your group’s observations and argument.

In the coming days I will provide you with the rubric that I will use to grade the presentations. You also need to quickly decide which publication your group will cover. I would prefer that no two groups work on the same publication. As always, you should email if you have any questions.

Important Dates:

Wednesday, February 25th—Project Assigned

Monday, March 2nd (Texas Independence Day)—Let me know which publication your group will cover, rubric provided to students

Monday, April 13th—Final Projects Due in Class

Creating a Common Class Publication: A Unit Plan by Nate Kreuter

Lisa Gulesserian — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:38:12 +0000

Image Credit: nublue

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

For our second major writing assignment we will be producing a class publication.

Everyone will contribute to the publication, albeit in some different ways (see below). I propose that we "write" a publication dealing, in the broadest sense, with "Austin." You all should choose subject to follow and write about that say something about what makes Austin different from other cities. The assignment is really that broad. And we will have a very boring publication if everyone writes an expose of a frat party. This will require you to get off campus and engage with our broader community. Keep in mind that the New Journalism often approached culture from the fringes—you might want to do the same, but whatever you do, stay safe. If you have a difficult time coming up with ideas, I'll happily help you brainstorm.

Under no circumstance should you put yourself in a dangerous or even uncomfortable position to get your story. There are plenty of great stories available without having to take such risks. Also, your grade will be low indeed if you indulge in some form of reportage that is simply about, say, getting high with your friends. The New Journalism is hip and cool, but don't let that compel you to act or write in ways that you don't want to be recorded for posterity. This, despite the cool of the New Journalism, is still a formal assignment, and should be treated as such.

We will talk about journalistic ethics and your responsibilities to yourselves, your subjects and your readers throughout this project, and I strongly suggest that you take notes when we have those conversations.

In terms of composition, I want us to expand on the typical notion of writing. You could choose to write a traditional essay for this project, but I strongly encourage you to experiment with other forms of compositions: videos, radio essays (a la This American Life), multimedia presentations, flash presentations, and photo essays are all viable options for this project. If you would like to attempt a composition in a medium you have not worked in before, Nate will be happy to direct you to one of the many campus resources available, such as DMS, to help you with your project.

Journalists—Journalists will write stories relevant to the topic of the publication. They will submit polished, well documented stories to the editors. Stories should be between 2000 and 5000 words. The editors may reduce the text as it appears in the final publication, or they may ask a journalist to add or flesh out parts of their story.

Commentators—Once the journalists' stories have been selected the commentators will decide upon a strategy for making sense of what the stories mean. They will each "write" a critical essay commenting on one or more stories and the stories' significance. They will try to tell us what the reporting means.

Editors—Three editors will be selected from applicants to review the stories submitted by the journalists. They will determine which stories to feature, as well as making constructive suggestions for how the stories might be improved before final publication. In consultation with the class as a whole, individual contributors and Nate, they will set deadlines for story submission and final publication. Editors will also "write" introductory and concluding material, as necessary.

Designer—The designer will be responsible for the layout and final publication of our work. They will need to be familiar with web-based and traditional publishing techniques. They will be responsible for bringing all the various media together in one "location" and forming them into a coherent "publication."

Grades—Everyone will get two grades for this assignment. Nate will grade the final publication, for which everyone will receive the same grade. This grade will count as 10% of students' final grades. Additionally, Nate will grade students' compositions and contributions to the final publication, grading the publication in their prior-to-editing state. This grade will count as 20% of students' final grades.

Deadlines—by 10/10 you should email Nate with two things: your preferred position on the class publication (journalist, editor, commentator, designer) and your qualifications for that position. The "default" position will be journalist. Also, everyone, regardless of their preferred position, should email Nate a brief (no more than 300 words) description of what you *think* you would like to "write" about for the publication, assuming that you are a journalist. On 10/13 Nate will inform you of your position, at which point he will also discuss your story ideas with you individually.

All additional deadlines for submissions and publication to be determined by the class as a whole.

As always, email Nate if you have any questions about any component of this project.

Flickr Visual Rhetoric Assignment by Eileen McGinnis

Lisa Gulesserian — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:16:40 +0000

Image Credit: topgold

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

Overview:

At the start of the semester, my students in “The Rhetoric of Science Writing” read an excerpt from Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan’s prose meditation on a grainy image of Earth taken from the Voyager One mission. Without the accompanying text, the photograph is pretty unimpressive. However, after reading Sagan’s words, it would be difficult for readers to question the value of that image, since at stake is nothing less than our definition of what it means to be a human occupant of Earth, an argument for our responsibilities toward each other and toward the planet.

For their final short assignment, students themselves try on the role of “science writer”: they are asked to find a scientific image, contemporary or historical, and write a brief (500-600 word) argument that attempts to persuade a non-scientific audience of their image’s value. Their goal is to convince readers that their chosen image warrants a closer look and to leave them with a more informed appreciation of its contents.

Rather than submitting the assignment and accompanying image to the instructor, they will post both the image and text to the photo-sharing site Flickr. Using Flickr to collect students’ work will then enable them to present and discuss their images on the following class day. In addition, the relative “publicness” of this assignment will hopefully foster a sense of community and shared purpose (students can use content-specific tags to make their visual arguments more easily searchable by a broader audience).

Of course, this exercise doesn’t necessarily have to come attached to formal assessment.

The broader idea here is to use Flickr to create a class “image gallery,” which will facilitate discussion about both individual images and trends across a group of images. Flickr would also work for a more informal homework assignment or even an in-class activity on visual rhetoric, in which students retrieve and analyze visual artifacts for class discussion.

Pedagogical Goals:

To practice considering audience, establishing ethos, and finding voice.
To appreciate the ways in which visual and textual information can combine to create a powerful argument.

Description:

Rather than walking through the details of my particular assignment, I’ll provide a couple of logistical tips that are more broadly applicable to using Flickr in class:

On the day before the assignment is due, one would likely spend a class period on visual rhetorical analysis. So, using Flickr to post one’s own images for that class discussion might help to model how Flickr can be used in a rhetoric classroom. It would also make sense to leave time for students to set up Flickr accounts on the class computers.
Make sure that students “tag” photos with the unique number for the course, so that you can easily search for the images later. You might also link your course site to the unique-number search results on Flickr, so that there is a record of the group project.
Note that Flickr allows students to annotate photos directly, which might be helpful for students’ presentations of their images.

Modifications:

The “Groups” feature on Flickr might offer another way to organize your students’ posts versus having them tag the photos. If you were concerned about access, it would also allow you to control who gets to view the images and/or comment on them.

Credit:

Thanks to John Jones for helping me figure out the logistics.

Google Maps Assignment by Sean McCarthy

Lisa Gulesserian — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:49:17 +0000

Image Credit: billolen

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

Objectives:

In this assignment, students are asked to create a GoogleMap to map a topic.

GoogleMaps allows students to create their own journeys and annotate place markers with text and multimedia content; they can upload their own photos to their map, link to YouTube clips, write text and link to blogs and other kinds of websites. This free service encourages them to build maps that tell stories in a visually interesting, geographically situated way, and all sorts of people, from news agencies to public transportation services, are now using maps to create new kinds of content (commonly called 'mashups'). GoogleMaps shows how fun and creative writing on the web can really be. With no experience and lots of imagination students can join the most creative people currently delivering content on the web.

In this assignment students will literally "map" a topic of their own choosing that relates to globalization. In other words, they are going to use the multimedia environment of GoogleMaps to tell their story and present their research to the rest of the class (and the rest of the world, if they wish!).

Materials/Equipment:

Internet access and a Google Account.

Preparation:

Students need to be taught how to navigate GoogleMaps. Fortunately, GoogleMaps are really easy to use. These introductory videos will show you the basics. Here’s the page that gives you step-by-step instructions on how to build your map. This YouTube video shows you how to create interactive place markers. Finally, Google Maps Mania is a great blog that shows how people are using GoogleMaps around the world. It provides links to hundreds of maps and is a great place to start thinking about your own map.

Procedure:

Midterm maps due: week 10/28

Final Map Due: 12/4

Accompanying Paper: due 12/4

Assignment Specifics:

The map will be evaluated as a Learning Record work sample. So, be sure to make observations about what you are learning as you are creating your map and use the work samples as a way of building your research. A draft of the map is due the week of 10/28, when we will spend the week on presentations of your maps. The ﬁnal map is due the last day of class as a work sample in your LR. In addition, you need to produce a two-page, single-spaced explanation of your choices for the map. In this short paper you will explain the idea behind the map—the intended audience, the choice of sources, why you chose that particular layout. etc.

My criteria for assessing your map are simple: how well do you use the map technology? How clear is the story you are trying to tell? How do you balance writing in the map with multimedia content? Will this map be useful and legible for your deﬁned audience? Will they understand what this map is about without having been in this class?

There are a number of ways you can ﬁll in your map. It must have at least 8 placemarkers that contain text, and some sort of reference to other multimedia resources (photos, hyperlinks, YouTube clips etc). The writing must by your own, though you obviously can use links to other text, audio and visual material to help tell your story. Part of the skill you will develop will be to decide what information to write into the placemarker and what you will leave to your hyperlinked sources. For example, how well can you tell the story within your map without forcing your audience to jump to other websites to ﬁll in the gaps? These are the kinds of important choices you must make. The success of your map will depend on the clarity of your writing, what sources you use and how you incorporate them, and the overall coherence of the project (in other words, can the reader easily understand the whole idea behind the map?).

You will need to do some research, but that research could include your own photographs (or photos you ﬁnd on the web); your own interview or podcast (or one you ﬁnd on the web), a really cool YouTube clip, or an informative website or blog. Remember, your GoogleMap and midterm paper can be on the same topic, so research for the map can count as an opportunity to develop your research for your midterm paper. The only real rules are that the map must in some way relate to the ideas we are talking about in class. It must be informative (in other words, it shows research) and there must be writing to assess. DON’T present me with just a bunch of photos or hyperlinks; it’s how you write about them that counts.

Presentations will be on the week of 10/28. The feedback you get from the class during these presentations you will be able to clarify your ideas and build a better map. After the presentations you will buddy with two other classmates. For the rest of the semester, you will be helping each other evaluate your maps using the map rating function built into GoogleMaps.

Assignment: The Flexible Final Project

Megan Eatman — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:26:28 +0000

Screenshot from student project Evolution, Not Revolution by Lacey Teer

Last semester, I wrote my final blog post about using iMovie in the classroom. This semester, I attempted to correct some of the issues that arose when I asked all my students to use multimodal argumentation for their final papers. What follows is an outline of the final project I assigned and information about the changes I made to address various problems. This information will also appear on our "Teaching" page, along with sample student projects.

Assignment

Students were allowed to make their final argument in whatever means they felt was most effective. This decision allowed students to make decisions based at least in part on their individual skill sets. Students were given specific standards for their argument that applied regardless of its form; for example, they were required to designate an audience and place of publication, use the rhetorical appeals discussed in class to persuade that audience, and construct an argument that added something to the conversation they had been studying all semester. There were also specific warnings about what was appropriate--or, rather, inappropriate--for multimodal assignments. Students were warned not to turn in a single picture with words on top of it because that would not show the appropriate effort or skill.

Preparation

Because this was a unit-long assignment, students had a lot of preparation. Our in-class preparation focused mostly on multimodal argumentation because it was the least familiar and because, after receiving project proposals, I realized that all but a few students were making a multimodal text. There was also a fair amount of overlap; we could sometimes talk about both in the same class. We spent class time learning iMovie, the basics of Photoshop, and talking about the rhetorical power of sound. We looked at a variety of sample projects, some by actual students (from my previous class and other classes) and some that were created in other contexts, to talk about their effectiveness.

Assessment

These will be graded according to the successful execution of the standards listed on their assignment sheet.

Feedback

While I have not received feedback from students on this project, leaving the project open (rather than forcing students to argue a certain way) seems to have been a good decision. The quality of projects already appears higher, and I am sure the arrangement is less stressful for students. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage students to think about the available means of persuasion, including the various media available to them, and then use them to make an effective argument. I hope that this assignment has given students a chance to reflect not just on persuasive strategies, but on the advantages and pitfalls of various media for making specific arguments.

Google Earth Pedagogies: A Survey of Pedagogical Applications

Laura T. Smith — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:33:24 +0000

(Image Credit: Google LitTrips)

As I’ve been previewing Google Earth educational applications on the web, I’ve noticed that while many disciplines (science, geography, history) are using Google Earth to engage students and invite them to create within the software, applications for the English classroom (at least those that are featured and discussed on the web) overwhelmingly take the form of teacher-made presentations. I imagine that this tendency speaks to an ongoing conservatism about the design of writing assignments, a desire to retain the five-page paper as the product of the literature and writing classroom.

In a video presentation that I’ll discuss later in this post, Sean McCarthy, a graduate student at the University of Texas, admits that there may, in fact, be an “amateurism” that attends writing in the Google Maps environment, but suggests that perhaps there are some benefits to this amateurism. This quality, he suggests, may open up a level of analytical adventuresomeness that the more formal structure of the essay quashes.

I’m interested in this suggestion, but before I explore it further, I want to address some more common uses of Google Maps and Google Earth technologies in the literature and writing classroom. I’ve noticed that the use of these technologies takes three main forms: Mapping as a Presentation Tool, Mapping as an Analytical Tool, and Mapping as a Writing Tool. Of course, these uses overlap, but the discrete categories generally reflect the way the software is actually being used in the classroom.

Mapping as a Presentation Tool

As I mentioned above, presentations are overwhelmingly the primary, much-evidenced use of Google Maps and Earth technologies in the literature classroom. The Google for Educators site offers a collection of Google LitTrips as their recommended idea for using Google Earth in the English classroom. The LitTrips include maps of The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson, James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. In the latter case, the LitTrip was created by German literature students at Notre Dame, but this student-created example is the exception.

The Google Earth Education Community , run by David Herring, a long-time teacher at University High School in Tucson, Arizona, similarly focuses on presentations, providing instructions for teachers to build presentations and a space for users to share their Google Earth presentations. The Google Earth presentations on Herring’s site include “The Life and Works of Jane Austen,” “Locations in Shakespeare’s Plays,” as well as maps for William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways and River Horse, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. While these presentations offer useful geospatial conceptualizations of literary works, they do not take advantage of the technology’s capacities for encouraging students to think and write in new and networked mediums.

Mapping as an Analytical Tool

In the aforementioned video presentation on Google Map pedagogies, University of Texas graduate student Sean McCarthy explains uses of Google Maps that extend far beyond getting directions. McCarthy shows how students can use the maps' built-in analytical tools such as the terrain map, satellite map, and street view, as well as the optional “overlays,” including articles from Wikipedia, photos from Panoramio, and video from YouTube to analyze geographical and social spaces and their online construction.

He suggests that students might be divided into groups to examine a city, its neighborhoods, its layout, its public transportation and other services, its parks and greenspace, and its history using such user-generated data.

He also notes that such an examination requires students to examine the rhetorical construction of Google Maps itself. Which areas show street views? Which areas include large amounts of user-generated content, such as links to Wikipedia articles and YouTube clips?

Mapping as a Writing Tool

While the above example engages students directly with maps, it stops just short of asking students to actually create compositions in dialogue with these technologies.

McCarthy has a number of suggestions for how to get students writing in Google Maps. Here are just a few:

McCarthy features an assignment designed by University of Texas graduate student Amena Moinfar, in which students map the national origin of each player on the French soccer team, Les Bleus, to help them conceptualize the reach of French colonialism and the ongoing effects of the French-Algerian War.
McCarthy features a student-created map of the history of rugby that shows the sport’s presence overwhelmingly in the southern hemisphere. The student who created this map discovered through this process the connection between rugby and colonialism.
McCarthy suggests asking students to create a map alongside a formal, five-page paper, as the map allows for reflection and for a different mode of presenting research and representating connections.
McCarthy features a student map, created in real time during the uprisings in Tibet and elsewhere in protest of the Beijing Olympics. McCarthy notes that because the student created the map in the networked space of Google Maps, linked it to his blog, and kept updating it, the map turned into a real public commentary on the protests, which in fact got thousands of hits.

As is evident in the last assignment described above, composing in Google Maps places students’ writing into a socially networked environment. McCarthy joins many composition scholars, including Sharon Crowley and Michael Stancliff, when he argues that placing students’ writing into contexts that extend beyond the classroom enriches the compositional activity and connects students to audiences, which raises the stakes of the writing activity. He further argues that creating and sharing content is, indeed, the way students are increasingly accustomed to writing: according to McCarthy, 60% of all 19-year-olds publish on the web every day through social media outlets such as Facebook.

While composition and literature instructors may prefer the familiar, formal, linear structure of the traditional essay, McCarthy's findings suggest that the "amatuerish" writing student sometimes produce when composing in digital mediums in fact bespeaks the quality and complexity of their research and analytical connections.

There are more Google Maps- and Google Earth-related assignments indexed in the DWRL’s database of technology-based lesson plans. If you plug “Google Maps” into the site’s search bar, you’ll easily turn them up.

Assignments for Visualizing the Writing Process

timturner — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:44:21 +0000

The group of assignments below present a number of opportunities to train students to think visually about the writing process. Although they are not explicitly designed to teach visual rhetoric, or to inculcate the skills of rhetorical analysis with visual subjects, they are nonetheless implicitly designed to offer students fresh perspectives on the writing process. "Perspectives" is a key term, since these projects ask students to use visual processes to reorient themselves to their writing, by producing visual objects such as annotated outlines, mindmaps, and other brainstorming projects that are more than text-based. The skills sets required here range from the simple (using the highlighting or track changes features of Microsoft Word) to the more complex (using NovaMind or OmniGraffle to conceptualize written arguments). These assignments are offered as a sample of the kinds of methods an instructor interested in visual rhetoric might adopt in the classroom in order to bring the techniques of visual analysis and visual processing together with writing pedagogy.

Organization Using NovaMind by Catherine Bacon (.pdf download)

Outlining Essays Electronically with bubbl.us – A Web-Based Solution by Ty Alyea (.pdf download)

Peer Review and Commentary with Microsoft Word by Michelle Jerney-Davis (.pdf download)

Text Coloring Assignment by Catherine Bacon (.pdf download)

Using NovaMind to Brainstorm for Papers by Liz Jones-Dilworth (.pdf download)

Using Track Changes for Peer Review Assignment by Lena Khor (.pdf download)

Assignments Section Updated

timturner — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:58:33 +0000

Thanks to the hard work and creativity of instructors in the Computer Writing and Research Lab here at UT, we at viz. have been able to expand and update the assignments section of our site with a number of new classroom activities oriented around visual rhetoric and culture. If you are looking for new ways to include multimedia, visual, and digital environments in the classroom, or for ways to encourage students to produce multimedia projects of their own, please take a look at the new offerings. First-timers and veterans alike will find a number of great projects.

In the coming weeks, we hope to add a few more assignments to the pages, and to that end, we encourage assignment submissions by viz. readers. Have a successful assignment or classroom activity on visual rhetoric and culture that you'd like to share with the world? Please use the contact page to get in touch with our editors. Pending review, your assignment would be posted, with attribution, for other viz. readers to adopt and adapt for their own classes.

We would also be interested in hearing about successful tweaks to existing viz. assignments, many of which are designed as templates for implementation in more specific classroom contexts. For example, our friends over at www.auburnmedia.com found a way to tweak the Comparison and Rhetorical Analysis assignment by pairing it with a video about the developing world called "The Other Side of the Coin is Rusting."

Visual Rhetoric and Violence I

timturner — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:24:28 +0000

By Tim Turner (Contact)
See also Propaganda and Visual Rhetoric

What is the relationship between rhetoric and violence? Are they mutually exclusive?
Is violence only conceivable as a failure of rhetoric? Can rhetoric itself be violent?
Isn't violence often employed as a means of persuasion?

These questions may pose challenges to the prevailing pedagogical models employed in introductory rhetoric classes, which tend to be organized around the "common ground" model of civic or "civil" discourse. As I have suggested elsewhere, while this model is desirable for many reasons, it may also be challenged by the uncivil or unethical modes of persuasion with which we are often confronted in the public and/or private sphere, including, for example, propaganda. In other words, when the "common ground" model privileges or presumes arguments made in "good faith," it may do a disservice to students, who will frequently be confronted by arguments made in "bad faith," that is, arguments that do not adhere to some presumed or assumed notion of what constitutes "good argument" in the public sphere.

The very notion of "good argument" raises questions about what is at stake in the teaching of rhetoric, however. In theory, "good argument" is argument that is persuasive. Taken in this sense, the theoretical and practical concerns of an introductory rhetoric course coincide: instructors teach students how to recognize effective, persuasive arguments written by others ("rhetoric" conceived as a theory of persuasion) and encourage students to model these techniques of effective persuasion in their own writing ("rhetoric" conceived as a practicum in writing). "Goodness" in this context is nonetheless complicated by the ethical stakes of persuasion. People are often persuaded by ethically suspect arguments: arguments that are dishonest, demagogic, or that persuade the listener to engage in morally untenable acts. (Of course, the definition of what constitutes "moral" is itself open to interpretation and, therefore, argumentation; moral critique may be subjected to rhetorical critique.)

Yet there is also a connection between ethics and rhetoric in that both "disciplines" insist that one be responsive to the needs of someone else: in rhetoric, this means listening to what the other person has to say (as in the "common ground" model) and responding, sometimes by making concessions, and in ethics, for example, in considering how one's actions will impact others or those situations in which one ought to act to give assistance to others. In both cases, what is implied is a certain claim that the other person makes on me, or that I, in my turn (when I make my argument or when I act in the public sphere) make on them. Both revolve around a certain susceptibility, and this is one reason why the common ground model is attractive: it insists on notions of responsibility, or response-ability, in public, civic life. At the same time, this susceptibility potentially has what we might think of simply as a "dark side": or rather, the abstract susceptibility we have in thinking, in argument and debate, has a physical corollary in our susceptibility to bodily violence--this is susceptibility as vulnerability.

In thinking about pedagogical strategies for teaching rhetoric in the past, I have tried to allow these considerations to impact the content in my courses. Most often, this means I have asked students to think about the relationship of violence to rhetoric; about texts that encourage violence; whether, as is sometimes said, violence is what happens when rhetoric fails; and even whether rhetoric itself, the forms of an argument, can be violent. To consider these questions, I have often relied on depictions of violence to conduct such arguments. In my RHE 309 course, the Rhetoric of War and Peace (a topic chosen with many of these questions in mind), these included images of violence including war films, documentaries, and photography. Including such images was not only a way to introduce some of the ethical questions at stake in the teaching of rhetoric. They also had the effect of introducing, often in uncomfortable ways, the visceral into our discussions in a non-gratuitous way. I saw such a strategy as integral to teaching rhetoric in part because persuasion itself is not always only about thought/thinking; it is usually persuasion to action.

A survey of some of my fellow instructors indicates that while violent images and imagery often form part of the 309 curriculum, the role played by depictions of violence in pedagogical strategy may remain undertheorized. However, the prevalance of such imagery (which may simply be related to the overall prevalence of violence in forms of popular culture) in 309 courses indicates that instructors recognize the pedagogical uses to which violent imagery may be put. One instructor writes, for example, that "Students actually seem drawn to the most violent imagery; it illicits a real response from them. I think that when they see violent imagery they feel compelled to respond." This notion is echoed in the response of another instructor, who writes,

Many of them reacted physically to this violence [in the course materials] (turning away, burying face in hands, squirming, covering eyes, etc.) and we got to discuss revulsion as a claim made on behalf of a larger argument about violence against the body (it's wrong, it shouldn't be seen, etc.). Of course this has a lot to do with breaking down of socially enforced barriers (inside/outside, public/private, self/other - my favorite one to point out - when they literally feel for the person they are watching with tingling hands and aching arms) that allows us to understand the political projects of such performances.

Like many of the rhetorical strategies discussed in rhetoric classes, depictions of violence may be said (in general terms) to "move," both literally and figuratively, the audiences to which they are shown or at which they are aimed. Depictions or representations of violence may be deployed as rhetorical strategies, and this point complicates an easy sense that violence and rhetoric are mutually exclusive or that violence is only conceivable as a failure of rhetoric or in the absence of rhetoric.

Finally, the status of violence in rhetoric classes is further complicated by the potential disruptions of meaning it may impose. More straightforwardly, this analysis begs an important question: what is violence? This may well be a question for definitional argument: how do we, or even how can we, think about, discuss, represent, or understand violence? Recently, for example, this question has especially been an issue in discussions of the Holocaust (as I have discussed in an earlier blog entry). In Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben argues that it is politically untenable to "lend a sacraficial aura to the extermination of the Jews by means of the term 'Holocaust'" (114) because treating these events as a matter of what he calls "religion" obscures the mechanisms which led to the unfolding of such events in the first place. Agamben's work confronts the view, widely prevalent, that the violence of the Holocaust is essentially unrepresentable or untranslatable in ordinary terms. Perhaps relying on the simple axiom that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, Agamben urges engagement and confrontation with an issue to which, as he argues, insufficient attention has been paid.

Agamben's arguments are well worth consideration, but it remains an open question whether such forms of violence are ultimately reducible to purely intellectual analysis. Two issues seem to be at stake here. First, Agamben's work has the benefit of reminding us that violence is sometimes an inescapable part of the public sphere (in popular culture or in political life). He asks us to think critically and carefully about the work of violence, about its meaning and status in everyday life. In short, he asks us to think about what violence is and how it works. He asks us to see its political/civic dimension. At the same time, the potentially affective dimensions of depictions of violence challenge, in useful, productive ways, the notion that violence and rhetoric are "opposites" or mutually exclusive. While the "common ground" model of rhetorical pedagogy privileges or presumes the existence of a civil public sphere, approaches to the teaching of rhetoric that incorporate some discussion of violence offer a "rhetoric-from-the-margins" approach. Incorporating attention to violence, to the visual rhetoric of violence or to violence as visual rhetoric, asks students and instructors to think critically about the constitution of a public sphere in which, ultimately, we are asking our students to responsibly (and response-ably) participate.

Questions for assessing the status of violence in the rhetoric curriculum

What materials, if any, did you include on your syllabus that you consider "violent"?
Did you include any kind of disclaimer on your syllabus or policy statement letting students know that the class would include violent materials?
To what extent did you foreground violence as a topic for discussion or a subject for critical scrutiny?
Did your class include any assignments that asked students to reflect on, write about, or critique depictions of violence?
In what ways, if at all, did you ask students to respond to the violence of your course's materials?
Was the inclusion of violent material in your syllabus incidental to your topic, or did you specifically choose your course topic with rhetoric and violence in mind?
How do you think about the relationship of violence and/or representations to the teaching of rhetoric and persuasion?
What role do these materials play in terms of pedagogical strategy?
How successful were your efforts to incorporate violent material into the teaching of rhetoric in your course?
How did your students respond?

Image credits

Upper-right: Francis Bacon, Painting (1946; Museum of Modern Art, New York City)
Middle-left: One of Zbigniew Libera's concentration camp faux-Lego sets
Lower-right: John Galliano's most recent collection was influenced by a "torture aesthetic" (Photo by Marcio Madeira, for men.style.com)

Visual Rhetoric and Violence: Propaganda

John Jones — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:56:14 +0000

By Tim Turner (Contact)
See also Visual Rhetoric and Violence

Contemporary introductory rhetoric classes are often (understandably) ordered around the exploration and promotion of the "common ground" model of civic discourse. Students are encouraged to look for continutities among various perspectives in order to demonstrate that they understand and can synthesize various points-of-view. Furthermore, students are encouraged in such pursuits with a particular purpose in mind: so that they might, as a kind of capstone project for any given course, produce well-written, well-reasoned arguments of their own--including fair prolepses demonstrating that they can respect the arguments of their opponents. While in a partisan society this model is both desirable and healthy, it may sometimes foster either a tendency to overlook forms and methods of persuasion that eschew such approaches altogether, or privilege the "civic/civil" discourse surrounding public controversies while ignoring other, perhaps more pervasive forms of rhetoric, such as advertising, "spin," or propaganda.

It may, however, be useful to incorporate or implement focused units around these culturally central phenomena that are sometimes marginalized in classroom discussions of rhetoric. In exploring and emphasizing these questions, it may be especially useful to incorporate units on propaganda. These units may include some classical rhetorical theory (Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle"), a historical discussion of the use of propaganda in the West in the 20th century (although its history, of course, is much older than that), film screenings of recent documentaries like Control Room or Outfoxed, and formal and informal writing assignments about examples of propaganda. Additionally, units organized to explore the use of propaganda also have the advantage of helping introduce the concepts and vocabulary of visual rhetoric into classroom discussions.

Such conversations are useful because they illuminate for students a range of rhetorical possibilities, including the fact that "bad" arguments can be quite influential and that modes of persuasion cannot (and should not) be divorced from ethical considerations. From this perspective, discussions of propaganda may also be useful in that they help illuminate discussions of the fallacies of argument (in which case, "bad" is taken to mean specious, illogical, or poorly reasoned). But discussions of propaganda may also lead to discussions of the ethical dimensions of persuasion (in which case "bad" is taken to mean ethically or morally suspect).

A unit on propaganda might have the following structure:

Week 1: Read and discuss Burke's "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle." Accompanying assignment: study questions on the article
Week 2: Read selections from Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (Pratkanis and Aronson, 2001)
Week 3: Readings from the course rhetoric textbook on visual rhetoric and fallacies of argument. View and discuss in class selected historical examples of poster propaganda from WWII and beyond (click here for a PowerPoint slide show of some examples). Accompanying assignment: short paper or blog entry, rhetorical analysis of one example of a propaganda poster
Week 4: Film screening and discussion; possibilities might include Control Room, Outfoxed, Farenheit 9/11
Week 5: Peer review and long papers due for an extended rhetorical analysis of examples of propaganda (click here for a "compare-and-contrast" example involving the propaganda remix project)

A note about sensitivity issues: many of the historical examples of propaganda in the attached slide show include images of an offensive nature. It is extremely important to foreground their presentation with a careful discussion of the context of these images, as well as disclaimers about offensiveness and, of course, non-endorsement. At the same time, the presentation of such images is in a way precisely the point of such a presentation; however specious, these examples are modes of persuasion that were influential in their way. The point of approaching conversations about rhetoric from the margins, as this discussion of propaganda allows, it to confront the non-civil modes of persuasion that are sometimes employed in ideological contests. Part of what this approach to rhetoric assumes is that such modes of persuasion cannot and should not be ignored. As Burke puts it in his essay on Hitler's Mein Kampf,

Here is the testament of a man who has swung a great people into his wake. Let us watch it carefully; and let us watch it . . . to discover what kind of 'medicine' this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America (191).

Further resources on the web:

Dylan's Theme Time Radio enters the visual realm

Justin Tremel — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:32:49 +0000

Those of you who subscribe to XM satellite radio may have come across Bob Dylan's weekly radio show Theme Time Radio. Recently comic artist Jamie Hernandez created an imaginative promotional poster for the show.

Boing Boing reader Simon Nielsen took Hernandez's poster one step futher and made a short movie tribute using Hernandez's artwork and the audio from Ellen Barkin's evocative voiceovers that open each episode of Theme Time Radio Hour. Nielsen writes:

"Barkin introduces each episode of Theme Time Radio Hour with an evocative vignette describing the nocturnal activities of the restless characters living in the big city. It is from these spoken word vignettes that Hernandez was inspired to create his artwork. The illustration is detailed with many of Ellen Barkin's night time characters - some asleep, some consumed in thought, others burning the midnight oil long into the night. Prostitutes, homeless men, drunks, lost souls and lovers intersect near a street corner of the Abernathy building. I was so fascinated by the world within this poster I set about finding all the spoken word vignettes and weaving them together into a whole. I started from show number one and worked my way through the spoken word introductions of all 50+ episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour. The following movie is my modest attempt to bring to life the inhabitants of the mythical Abernathy Building and the art created by Jaime Hernandez."

One can find a YouTube link to the movie here

I find the amateur video a striking example of how one can very easily but also very evocatively join the visual elements to the auditory, to create something new, an enhanced experience of both media transferred into a third. It also seems a good example/model for a student exercise to make a movie using a single image to tell a story/make an argument by exploring it in depth and detail, joined with audio commentary.

‘Robot Chicken’ deconstructs ‘Law & Order’

John Jones — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:50:09 +0000

When I teach writing, I like to occasionally give my students imitation exercises to point out the features of a particular text. Robot Chicken, Seth Green’s stop-motion-animation show, has provided a pretty funny video example of this practice (my favorite touch is when they bleep out the bad language). It would be interesting to assign this type of video exercise for students to familiarize them with video conventions.

See the video here.

Proposal websites

Mariela — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:03:02 +0000

Notes for the Instructor: This version of the proposal argument focuses on a realistic choice of topic that demonstrates the "think globally, act locally" principle. The goal is to encourage students to write their proposals as if their audience is made up of people with the power to solve the problem. Some student samples are included below. Instead of writing a traditional essay to make their proposals, students will create websites to explain and argue their claims. To implement this assignment, the instructor will need to relate this prompt to the content of the course (by specifying what type of prompt is appropriate) and determine exactly what format the website should take (that is, how many pages it should include, what type of layout is to be preferred, and what sort of content is appropriate).

Assignment Description: Creating a website that makes a proposal argument

Category: Individual project

Goals: For this project, you will construct a proposal argument on a controversial issue of your choice. Your central claim must make a proposal, and it must be arguable. Additionally, you are to make your argument as though you are writing for an audience with the power to solve the problem. A proposal argument answers the question, "What should we do?," although you might argue against a proposed course of action instead. The final product will be a website designed and written to make this argument.

Building a Proposal Argument:

Does something at UT or in your hometown need to change?
Does a group that you belong to need to figure out how to get more members?
Has someone proposed a solution that you think won't solve a problem?

After you've identified a problem, you'll want to think about a solution. Is it something we can live with? Or do we need to address it immediately? You'll need to consider a variety of solutions, including steps that might already have been taken.

Once you've examined several options, you'll want to propose the solution that you think is best and give good reasons. Things you should take into consideration:

Would it be a good idea to do nothing? Why or why not?
Does your proposal do the best job of correcting the problem?
Is your solution feasible--is it doable, practical, and affordable?

Finding a Topic:

Consider the topic of your earlier papers and find a proposal angle on it. If we understand the causes of binge drinking, what can we do at UT to address those causes and solve the problem? If the Top Ten Percent law has bad effects, what can we do to solve the problems the law creates?

Developing Your Content

To write an effective proposal, you'll need an effective problem statement. You have to argue to establish (or deny) the existence of a problem, its significance, and its major causes.
You'll also need to make it clear that you are arguing for a particular solution (even if that solution is not opting for one that someone else has suggested). You will argue that a solution will or will not reduce or eliminate a problem and that the solution will or will not be desirable, affordable, and feasible to implement.
Remember that your solution doesn't have to solve the world's problems. Your proposal should solve your problem, but don't get carried away with the idea that your solution might solve all problems.
You'll need to have fair consideration of alternative positions on the problem and on the solution, with responses in the form of concession and rebuttal.

Choosing an Audience

For this project you will choose the best audience for your proposal. This audience might be an individual or group with the authority to enact your proposal. (You may need to do some research to determine who this is.) Or, you might choose an audience that is indirectly involved with the actual decision making. For example, you could aim to persuade a relevant group to attend a particular event or write their own letters to an authority suggesting a particular course of action. Be sure to construct the website so that this specific audience will find it persuasive. Along these lines, you'll need to organize your website to reach this audience and choose appropriate appeals, style, and tone. You will also need to think carefully about the kind of content (images, charts and graphs, links to other pages, etc.) that will strengthen your proposal.

Choosing a Format:

Your choice of audience will determine your writing style and the format of your web site. For example, your web site proposal might include links to other pages and an introductory page encouraging your audience to visit the site.

To creat multiple pages within your web site, you will want to try breaking your argument into sections with clear headings and subheadings. Likewise, you might experiment with using bulleted lists, tables, and charts as appropriate.

Grading:

Demonstrated ability to construct a proposal argument.
Choice of a significant and arguable claim.
Demonstrated ability to use well-chosen, fair and sufficient appeals to ethos, logos and pathos to support your claims (including appropriate graphics)
Serious consideration of alternative solutions, with appropriate use of concessions and rebuttals.
Effective and fair use of other authors as allies or as opponents.
Confident but civil advocacy of your own position.
Proper use, citation, and documentation of source material.
Effective organization to create a clear line of argument.
Clear and precise sentence-level rhetoric (grammar and style).

Student Samples
Brown Paper Towels by Yumiko Nakajima
FAC Building Renovation Issues by Sundew Shin

Proposal assignment

tang — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:26:12 +0000

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).

Assignments

yeom — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 06:35:44 +0000

These pages include collections of assignments and activities used on a wide range of topics. Each assignment asks students to engage with some aspect of visual culture and/or visual rhetoric, sometimes by analysis and sometimes by creating original visual content in either traditional written, digital, or multimedia environments. Additionally, many of the assignments introduce students to technologies designed to foster visual thinking, including Google Maps, Google Earth, MindMaps, OmniGraffle, and other software.

For a brief overview of visual rhetoric and discussion of why and how it might be useful to incorporate instruction in visual rhetoric into the composition curriculum, see the Guide to Teaching Visual Rhetoric.

viz. - assignment

New Journalism Publications: A Multimedia Mash-Up by Nathan Kreuter

Creating a Common Class Publication: A Unit Plan by Nate Kreuter

Flickr Visual Rhetoric Assignment by Eileen McGinnis

Google Maps Assignment by Sean McCarthy

Assignment: The Flexible Final Project

Google Earth Pedagogies: A Survey of Pedagogical Applications

Assignments for Visualizing the Writing Process

Assignments Section Updated

Visual Rhetoric and Violence I

Questions for assessing the status of violence in the rhetoric curriculum

Further Reading

Image credits

Visual Rhetoric and Violence: Propaganda

Dylan's Theme Time Radio enters the visual realm

‘Robot Chicken’ deconstructs ‘Law & Order’

Proposal websites

Proposal assignment

Assignments