II. Rhetorical Analysis and Close Reading
- 1,800-2,100 words / ~ 6-7 double-spaced pages
- 25% of course grade
- Close reading/comparison of texts with a similar thematic focus across a variety of genres: essays, film, short fiction, poems, songs, film, cultural artifacts such as video games, television shows, music videos, using interpretive methods based on:
- Rhetorical criticism (audience, purpose, genre, medium, delivery/circulation);
- Literary criticism (metaphor, plot, setting, point of view, theme); and
- Historical and cultural criticism
Ghenwa Antonios: A Journey through the Archives
Would work for hybrid classes
Students search for advertisements and analyze how they portray cultural artifacts. Students dive into two archives to find ads spanning several decades of their chosen artifact. Using their findings as a visual history of their artifact, they create a timeline and write a critical essay exploring how representation evolves and reflects societal change. Finally, students create a new ad for their artifact, either reimagining a past ad, creating a counter-ad in response to a past one, or envisioning the future portrayal of a past ad.
Andrija Matic: Scaffolded Critical Analysis
Would work for hybrid classes
This assignment is divided into two parts. In the pre-writing stage, students use Hypothes.is to reflect on a provided article and respond to other students’ annotations. Based on the knowledge gained in the first part of the assignment, students write a critical analysis of the article. Given the collaborative annotation, this assignment could work for an online, hybrid, or in-person modality.
Lisa Blankenship: Two Texts
Students compare two writers/thinkers for how they have wrestled in some way with the relationship between race and “the American Dream.”
Kate Eickmeyer: Rhetorical Analysis of Pop Culture Artifacts
This assignment asks students to analyze the visual rhetoric in a cultural artifact of their choice using terms and concepts from Section 2 of Join the Conversation.