Daily Prep + Announcements

Daily Preparation + Announcements


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THURS 4/26/18 -- LCD Final Review Workshop

Folks, here is a reminder: Thursday's class on 4/26 will be in WMS 013 and we'll have a final workshop on the LCD + Multimodal Component. Please do bring the following in print or electronic form to Thursday's workshop (i.e., bring it in a form that you can share with someone else):
  • your drafted introduction for the LCD
  • an outline of your main/key claims in the LCD
  • a 1-2 paragraph description of your multimodal component
  • your 3 evaluation criteria for the multimodal component
If you have not already submitted your 3 evaluation criteria for the multimodal component to me, please do be sure to submit that in the LCD slot in Canvas by the end of the workshop.

Many thanks!
-Prof. Graban

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TUES 4/24/18 -- Quiz #4 ; concept and unit review

Folks, on Tuesday we'll have an overflow discussion and concept review for the unit, after taking the quiz. It might a slightly guided review, depending on what you feel you will need at that point. I'll happily answer questions about specific ideas or passages within the readings from the unit. Finally, we may try to answer some of our representation questions (from 4/12 and 4/19).

Many thanks!
-Prof. Graban

Post-class note: What follows is our combined entry on "rhetorical theory" for the Bedford Glossary (assuming they ever ask us for it):

Rhetorical theory is a representation of ideas regarding how language works and can create meaning. It is a process deriving and expressing thoughts and ideas through discourse and deconstruction. Rhetorical theory is also concerned with how language can create/reinforce hegemonies, and how that impacts different social or class groups in a positive or negative way.

Rhetorical theory doesn’t have a static and unchanging definition but rather allows us to ask deeper and more interesting questions while providing nuanced guidelines to how we should approach critical theory. It does so while taking into consideration external factors like race, gender, culture, and history, so as to investigate the roles those factors play in our development of critical theory. It also analyzes the affects of established hegemony, post colonialism, and diaspora that are evident in today's world on the creation of literature and other texts. As a practice, rhetorical theory can serve as a tool to investigate why we privilege certain information/ideas over others.

In fact, rhetorical theory is the analysis of social cues that are reliant on a cultural lens. It is the study of how ideas and knowledge transfers within a community, or outside the community through the persuasive-capabilities of language. This  may involve observing the following:
  • how texts convey/persuades meaning through subjective to language
  • how messages transfer knowledge
  • different practices for doing the above
  • how ideas transfer through these practices.

Rhetorical theory sets the premises for how other things are written. In this way, it is performed through different practices, but operates within particular cultural lenses, which constrain both author and audience by what they can understand or appreciate in order to see how ideas transfer.

For example, a phenomenon such as "the racialized gaze" could be considered a byproduct of rhetorical theory in a postcolonial society. Through rhetorical theory, we might see that the gaze is harmful overall because it has the tendency to erase the positions of those outside of the hegemony. The racialized gaze affects communication by constraining language through erasure and alterity.

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THURS 4/19/18 -- George "Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller," Barton "Textual Practices of Erasure," in-class case study (Keller, supercrips, United Way poster campaign)

For our final reading day of the semester(!), we'll consider Ann George's unique argument: According to Kenneth Burke's own terms of engagement, Helen Keller would fit with Burke's notion of an authentic rhetorical theorist. But why?, and which of Burke's concepts or arguments from earlier in the semester could be potentially complicated by arguing that someone so differently abled is a rhetorical theorist?

We will also look at what Ellen Barton calls a discourse of disability, and discuss the causes, effects, and critical impact of this discourse in United Way campaign posters. Her use of the term “erasure” provides a metaphor we'll want to consider more closely in light of our other terms of representation.

Here are some links we might view:

We will likely work in this space.

Many thanks!
-Prof. Graban

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TUES 4/17/18 -- Discussion of Up the Yangtze; continued discussion of Gates, Jr. and Cooper; proposal peer review

Dear All Good Folks, 

We will likely finish discussing Gates, Jr. and Cooper in the context of our film discussion Tuesday, so please do bring your questions on those essays if you have questions lingering. For those who cannot attend the film screening, the film handout is in Canvas "handouts," but I will also distribute a hard copy in class. In preparation for our film discussion, feel free to browse the following sites:

 board image from today's class: 












-Prof. G

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THURS 4/12/18 -- Gates, Jr. "Writing 'Race' and the Difference It Makes," Cooper "Excerpts from A Voice From the South"

Dear All Good Folks,

Here are some questions we hope to answer by the end of our unit on (Re)Presentation:
  • What (are, can, or should be) distinctions between individual and group identification?
  • Does discourse produce identities or does it merely serve identities that already exist?
  • How do we identify people or texts as hybrid?
  • What is the role of space, time, memory, hegemony, visual lifeworld, or habit in representation?
  • When does the gaze become the object, and vice-versa?
  • Does a representative subject need to be absent first in order to become present? 
  • How much of gender, race, and ethnicity are described versus inscribed in writing?
  • It is possible to do any kind of representation without mis-representation, or mis-identification?

On Thursday, I'll answer final questions about the nature and scope of the LCD + Multimodal Component so that you can be ready to bring a proposal to class on Tuesday for our peer review workshop.

We will also finish up with some of our discussion of Hum's "visual lifeworlds" from last class -- answering questions 5-8 in the grid below -- before jumping right into discussion of Gates, Jr. and Cooper. I'll divide the class into four groups and ask each group to argue for Gates's critical concept of "race" in one of four ways:
  • through the lens of feminist theory and/or class theory
  • through the lens of "postcolonialism" and/or "alterity"
  • as a problem of agency or anti/signification
  • as a problem of identification or disidentification.

We'll use Anna Julia Cooper's short essay as an illustration of each way we think that Gates, Jr. argues.

And finally, a reminder that our screening of Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze is on Monday, 4/16/18 from 6:30-8:00 p.m., in WMS 013 (Williams Building "common room," basement level).

-Prof. G

board images from today's class:










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TUES 4/10/18 -- Mitchell "Metapictures" (again); Hum "Racialized Gaze as Design"

Folks, I'll ask us to look at some of the still images later in Mitchell's excerpts and then we may use this workspace today.

-Prof. G
















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THURS 4/5/18 -- Burke "Terministic Screens," Butler Gender Trouble, Smith on "Identification" and "Redefinition"

Folks, we may use this workspace today.

-Prof. G










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TUES 4/3/18 -- Quiz #3, Text(uality) Overflow Discussions + Concept Review, Discussion of LCD + Multimodal Component

Folks, on Tuesday we'll have an overflow discussion and concept review for the unit, after taking the quiz. I will also talk us through some of the specifics of the LCD + Multimodal Component. Please bring the following to class:
  • Favro "The Street Triumphant" + your Rome construction handout
  • De Certeau "Walking in the City"
  • Buskirk "Commodification as Censor"
  • Sheridan, et al "Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric"
  • Devitt "Generalizing about Genre"
  • Bawarshi "The Genre Function"
  • Hayles handout on comparative media studies and hybrid texts

I'll happily answer questions about specific ideas or passages within these texts. I'd also like to finish our discussion of Rome Reborn and the rhetoricity of space, so we will most likely revisit some of the discussion questions from our 3/29 class agenda (see below). Finally, we may try to answer some of our textuality questions (from 3/6 and 3/22).

-Prof. Graban

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THURS 3/29/18 -- Discussion of De Certeau "Walking in the City" OR  Favro "The Street Triumphant" (you choose)

Folks, as we near the end of our "text/uality" unit, I'd like us to shift gears a bit from considering hybrid and hypermediated texts to thinking about the rhetoricity of space (i.e., physical space, location, and perhaps even monuments). What can a spatial study enable us to learn about text, genre, or interpretability?

Diane Favro writes a brief historical account of the Roman triumphal parade and, interestingly enough, uses that history as a way to build theory about ancient urbanity. When we partner her text with De Certeau, we recognize three questions for us all to consider at this point in the semester:
  1. What difference could Rome's urbanity (i.e., its ambient context and its materiality) have possibly made in the development of Western rhetorical theory? Could something like construction traffic really affect what we now understand to be "standard" rhetorical practice?
  2. How could De Certeau's "concept-city" enable us to raise new questions about genre, and why does De Certeau use spatial metaphors to describe history and historical knowledge-making?
  3. Favro and De Certeau each portray a unique ambient context through their writing. How does this idea of "ambient context" either challenge or complicate some of what we have discussed about commodification, censorship, authenticity, kairos, the genre function, or the sublime?

In-class cases: We'll consider Rome Reborn to help us think through these questions. An older version of Rome Reborn can be found here and to see an archived version of the original project website, go here. If there is time, we'll look at other 3D virtual constructions of historical projects, such as Victoria's Lost Pavilion. We may also look at this excerpt from "Beautiful Minds" on savant syndrome.

You can find helpful context for our class discussion in Richter background on "New Historicism" (pp. 1320-26) and in Rivkin/Ryan background on "Starting with Zero"!









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TUES 3/27/18 -- Discussion on Buskirk "Commodification as Censor" and Sheridan, et al, "Kairos and Multimodal Public Rhetoric"

(Check in with your own notes. But, here are also some board notes ....)









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THURS 3/22/18 -- Good Copy, Bad Copy + Over-Flow Discussion of Genre, Hypertext, Comparative Media Studies

Folks, we'll watch a film in class today. Here are some relevant links:

We are still in our "text/uality" unit, so here are some questions to keep in mind as you watch the film, in part to help synthesize some of our discussions so far:
  • It's easy to assume a film like this is presenting a diabolical argument (i.e., "remix is good, copyright is bad") but it's more likely that the film is trying to complicate both ideas. What kinds of complications did you hear or see? What should we be noticing?
  • While "remix" is the film's argument, there are several other terms we could use to try to explain the film's principal focus, i.e., "hybrid text," "hypertext," "collaboration," "copy vs. original," etc. Which one(s) seem most appropriate, given your current understanding of those terms?
  • Given how we're understanding "genre" (and rhetorical genre theory), how does this film support or challenge these ideas of genre as process?
  • We started to differentiate between "hybridity" and "hypertext" last class, but didn't finish. Does watching this film offer you any insight into how those terms might overlap or be different?
  • Of our "Text/uality" questions -- the ones we generated together on 3/6 -- which ones do you think we can begin to answer? Here they are below ...
    • Does a text need order to be meaningful as a text?
    • How do we determine inside vs. outside a text (if that determination is even possible or useful)?
    • What are some tensions between text and the state of being (or becoming) a text?
    • When can/does the message become the medium, and vice versa?
    • How does circulation work? 
    • Does a text need form to be meaningful as a text? 
    • What is a text? Or, how is a text? 

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TUES 3/20/18 -- Continued Discussion of "Genre" (Bawarshi or Devitt) + Hayles (handout on Comparative Media Studies) + Discussion of Hypertexts

Folks, when we convene after spring break, I'd like to continue our genre discussion, as I think there is much more for us to unpack. So, if you don't mind, please read, prepare, and bring the following to class on March 20:
  • your "genre" article (Bawarshi or Devitt) 
  • your Hayles handout
  • one (1) of the assigned Landow pieces, though you are welcome and encouraged to read both
  • the PDF of Jackson's Patchwork Girl, so that we can get a sense of what Landow and Hayles would call "hybrid" genres.

All of the above are in CL (Canvas Course Library).  

WE'LL WORK HERE.

Finally, please sign up for a feedback conference on SCD2!

-Prof. Graban












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THURS 3/8/18 -- coming soon ...

I have some post-class reflections here ...












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TUES 3/6/18 -- Discussion of Longinus "From On the Sublime" and Burroughs "The Future of the Novel"

Folks, next week we begin a new unit (new dilemma, new paradox) on Text/uality, taking up questions like the following:
  • Does a text need order to be meaningful as a text?
  • How do we determine inside vs. outside a text (if that determination is even possible or useful)?
  • What are some tensions between text and the state of being (or becoming) a text?
  • When can/does the message become the medium, and vice versa?
  • How does circulation work? 
  • Does a text need form to meaningful as a text? [added during class on 3/6]
  • What is a text? Or, how is a text? [added during class on 3/6]

and more!

Our first set of readings consists of excerpts from Cassius Longinus' longer work On the Sublime (this dates to Antiquity, although it isn't clear whether Longinus resided in the first or the third century C.E.) and a short excerpt from William Burroughs' "The Future of the Novel," in which he describes what will become known as his famous "cut-up" technique. (You might know Burroughs' work if you have ever seen the 1991 film Naked Lunch, or if you have encountered any of his short stories or novellas, often involving non-linear narrative plots.)

Helpful Tips for Reading On the Sublime: In the pages we are reading, Longinus' principal question is: How to develop the nature of the writer so as to achieve the sublime in your audience? He spends the first few pages restating commonplace assumptions about writers, writing, and beauty, so if you find yourself reacting negatively or positively in the beginning, chances are you are reacting to the topoi (or commonplaces) that Longinus either wants to critique or to correct. Take note of those things that make you react, and take note of confusions or questions.

Longinus begins laying out his theory -- in the form of a letter -- on the second page. It may help you to imagine this letter as a personal tutorial, or a one-on-one writing conference. It may also help you to imagine yourself "tracing" the text for one of these concepts as you read:
  • qualities of writing/writers (What unique features of writing does he describe, i.e., large, small, structural, linguistic, etc.? What properties should good writing have or not have?) 
  • the role(s) of the reader, writer, critic (What are the responsibilities of all these roles in terms of either creating or noting the sublime? Where do their roles seem to diverge or converge? Does Longinus address them as if they were or could be the same?) 
  • the uses of language (What does Longinus have to say about the importance of words or verbal expression to the text? What can/do words achieve? What variations on language does he seem to consider, i.e., figurative language, metaphors, particular expressions, etc.?) 
  • genres and style (What types of genres does he discuss, and/or what styles of writing does he want his readers to consider? What genres or styles does he seem to prefer?)

We'll begin next class by considering definitions and variations of his main concept -- sublime -- and considering its relationship to more contemporary questions of "stylistics" today. We might do some gridding together!

-Prof. Graban








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