Midterm Meetings (5 min)

Next week, I’d like to meet with you all to go over how things are going and talk about your progress on your rhetorical analysis assignment. Click this link now to sign up for a time to meet.

IMPORTANT: Let me know if none of the meeting slots works for you.

Take some time to look over and take a timeslot. Have something chosen by this week.

 

 

Writing Session Plans and Literacy Narrative Revisions (25-30 min)

in-class time on writing. check in with writing groups to see how it is going. take 5 min with each group

By this point, hopefully, everyone got feedback on their drafts of their Literacy Narrative Revisions. I want to spend the first 20-30 minutes in class where you continue to work on your revisions. Go to the voice channel for your writing group (and the text channel as needed) and keep working.

Before getting started on independent writing, share at least one of the following:

• a question related to feedback you got
• an update on where your revision is going (e.g., a part you are currently working on, somewhere you are stuck and need help)
• an update on how your Writing Session Plans went in terms of something that work or didn’t work so well (e.g., a distraction management technique that helped, how the time of day you tried out didn’t work so well)

I am going to come around to check in. After your updates, feel free to work on your writing. If you already submitted your revision, you are welcome to submit again if there is something you want to keep working on.

Finally, also use this time to:

• check in on how Writing Group roles are going
• schedule dates for getting in-progress first-drafts of rhetorical analyses to one another (first draft due March 17)
• schedule dates for getting feedback to one another (first draft due March 17)
• assign readers for each group member’s rhetorical analysis draft
• decide how you will exchange drafts (publish it on the website and let others see that way? paste into Word or Google Doc and share that way before publishing first draft on our website?)

 

 

 

Rhetorical Analysis: Early Stages (10-20 min)

Below is the same list of early steps to take for your Rhetorical Analysis from last week’s Learning Module 5, “Doing Rhetorical Analysis” under “Things to Do”:

1. Pick texts (which texts will help you address the prompt?). Think back to what we did on March 1!
2. Consider scale (do I want to look at an episode of a show or a whole season? why or why not?). Do you want to look at an episode vs. a season vs. the whole series? A chapter or passage of a book or the whole book? A 30 second ad or a years-long advertising campaign? Bigger the scale, than the more narrow the focus (e.g., a very specific theme across seasons, an analysis of one character across one season). Smaller the scale, than the focus does not need to be as narrow. However, a danger of rhetorical analysis is always: let me analyze everything! If *everything* is analyzed to great detail, then it might be hard to have a coherent take away other than “this piece has rhetorical qualities to it.” Of course it does! Every text has rhetorical qualities. Make an argument about the rhetorical qualities, tell me about patterns and themes to say something noteworthy or interesting about the text you are analyzing.
3. Take notes (think back to Reading Annotation assignments! Take notes where you pause, where you have questions, where things start to connect to the argument you might make). Think of this like doing your Reading Annotation assignments. Note things that are interesting, surprising, confusing, note patterns, note things that connect to research interests you have, etc. If you are watching or listening to something, you should mark where the event occurs. Note the timestamp on the video or audio file: something happens that you want to take a note, you hit pause, you look at the time so far (e.g., happened at the 26th minute, happened at approximately 26:31).
4. Find patterns/themes/etc. (look for connections, things that stand out in the notes you take). Look over your notes that you took as you read/viewed/listened. Start to note patterns, themes, connections. What sorts of arguments, images, words, phrases, etc. keep coming up? Start to do some freewriting about these patterns, themes, and connections.
5. Choose a lens (see if a lens helps you look at your notes…once you have a lens, take notes again with another reading/viewing/listening). Go back to the “Tools for Analysis” chapter from our textbook. Review the lenses offered there and start to think about which ones would be most useful for analyzing your text. Don’t just focus on “what” you see, but “how” it is put together. For example: don’t just note topics that come up in your text, but how those topics are constructed (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, the type of imagery, character traits).
6. Context (what important cultural or historical information will help you understand the text?). Make sure you are also listing out any relevant context to consider for your analysis. What media (e.g., a video, online writing, print writing, audio) is used and how does that affect how the text is made? What genre is it? What audience expectations might there be? What is the time period it was made? What cultural context was it produced in?
7. Look again.  (What do you notice? What do you think about it? How does it connect to your argument?–ask these questions as you review your notes) You can read closely here or skim a bit (or fastforward). But now that you have your lens or lenses handy, you will look at the text with a new perspective. Take some notes again with your lens or lenses in mind. Also review your old notes, too.
8. State claim/give evidence/comment on evidence (turn some of this into writing in your draft: make the claim, offer the evidence from the text, connect the text to your claim). Turn #7 into concrete writing. Use what you found when looking again to start to argue about what you see in the text. Think back to what we did on March 1 on analysis across an entire rhetorical analysis essay: 3-1-2021 Lesson Plan – ENG 2100: Writing I, Spring 2021 (cuny.edu)

 

Lenses

There are lots of options for lenses that could be useful:

• Ethos/Pathos/Logos
• Audience
• Purpose
• Genre
• Media
• Constraints
• Exigence
• Kairos
• Gender
• Queer theory
• Critical race theory
• Intersectionality
• Marxist theory
• Postcolonial theory
• Disability studies
• Ecocriticism
• Posthumanism
• Psychoanalysis

Each of  these lenses have more information on them in “Tools for Analyzing Texts” chapter in the textbook.

I just wanted to take a moment to underscore the following:

Using one of these lenses or a combination of them can help focus your analysis in ways that can be helpful. There are SO MANY things you could possibly talk about when analyzing a text, so lenses help focus us to make a meaningful analysis.

Now, not any one of these lenses can work for every single text very easily or usefully. BUT, there is a lens here in this list for every text.

However, for example: Most texts have audiences, many texts make assumptions about gender that can be useful to analyze, most texts are affected by the sort of media they are composed for, many texts can be situated in contexts of colonialism, race, larger environmental concerns, and so on.

A final note: a rhetorical analysis or criticism of any kind is never to be thought of as “well, the maker of this object should DO IT THIS WAY INSTEAD.” It can be that. But, really, the heart of criticism is to notice things and comment on them. There can be a piece of art that works really well as is, but it still is always worth it to point out aspects of it that are notable to highlight.

 

Lens Example

From Learning Module 4, you all tried out a lens for the picture introduced in “Tools for Analyzing Texts” where you posted in Discord under the text channel “# feb-24-lenses”.

You also tried out a lens in doing numbers 3-8 in the above list in analysis of that image of the two children in the gym from Learning Module 5.

I want to try it one more time with what we talked about above. Let’s use a lens for one of the poems we looked at early in the semester: “Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry”

Go back to “Tools for Analyzing Texts” in our textbook and see if you can think about how a particular way of reading can, or a “lens,” can help you write about this poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online Learning Hurdles (10-20 min)

I was wondering if we can have an open discussion about challenges and benefits of online learning. Especially in terms of taking this class.

Part of the reason why I want to ask you is because I work with the First-Year Writing Program and we want to survey all of the students in FYW over the past year. But we wanted student feedback on the kinds of questions we should ask to get the best information.

 

 

 

 

Next Time (2-5 min)

-Turn in Literacy Narrative Revision AND brief cover letter (see prompt on Blackboard) by tonight at 11:59pm.

-Turn in Writing Session Plan activity if you have not yet

-LM6 due Wednesday by 11:59pm

-Meet with me for our midterm meeting on March 15, 16, or 17 (see, again, this link for that)

-Turn in the first draft of your Rhetorical Analysis writing project as a post on our website (mark category “Rhetorical Analysis”) by 11:59pm on Wednesday, March 17. As always, if you need extra time, let me know and that should be fine.