Generating your director’s statement

Take the last 15 minutes or so of class and start drafting your director’s statement for this final project. To do so, I’d like you to step back from the details of today’s editing work and remind us (and perhaps yourself) and clarify what your main purpose in making this film is. What do you hope to achieve by creating it in the way that you are? What effect(s) do you want it to have on your viewers? What would you say is the main argument or claim that you see yourself making?

Then, shift gears and start reflecting on the strategies and/or techniques that you’re using as both a rhetor and documentary film maker to develop and sustain your visual argument about your topic. What appeals are you making and how are you making them? How do you hope they will relate to your main purpose and support your claim? To what extent are these strategies similar to the ones you made as a writer? How are they different (either in terms of design or effect)?

Revising your claims

To help you continue your revisions on your first two assignments, please revisit your revision work from last week. Post a few sentences from your first or second assignment that represents the main claim of your initial final draft. Then, include your revisions from last week and post your revised (or refined) main claim.

Reflecting on your persuasive essay

Let’s start today’s class by taking a few minutes to reflect on completing your third essay for this course. As with previous reflections, feel free to comment on any significant lesson you took away from completing this assignment, but I would be most interested in reading about what it was like for you to move from analyzing other writers’ rhetoric to creating your own rhetorically effective and appropriate appeals in a piece of writing. What kinds of strategies did you use and find effective? Why did you use them? What kind of reader were you trying to reach? How did writing for this non-academic/non-specialist audience differ from writing for a more scholarly audience in your first two essays?

Drafting an introduction for your essay

Now, I’d like you to apply some of these arrangement strategies to your current essay by composing an introduction for it. (If you’ve already drafted one, take this opportunity to try out a different introduction.) Imagine your case as a difficult one, in which your audience is hostile (or at least weary) to your topic or argument. Use insinuation as a tactic to open your piece, as well as any other topics of introduction that might be helpful. How could you admit the difference of opinion on the issue, but still find some common ground on which to develop your argument?

Identifying promising sources for your current essay

Before class on Tuesday (Feb. 14), I would like you to take time to find as many credible sources as you can for your current essay, and for this exercise, you must locate them through the resources available via Penrose Library. (You’re welcome to continue using the resources we used in class like Summon@DU, Penrose Books, Access World News, Academic Search Complete, and Credo.) Once you have found at least five sources that you think will work effectively, read through them and then reflect on them in your comment to this post.

Start by explaining how you found these sources. What worked (or didn’t) as you used these library resources? Next, give an overview to the kinds of information, insights, testimony, or evidence they provide you. How will these sources help you make the argument you’d like to make? How did they enhance (or even alter) your emerging argument? Then, explain why you think they’re credible sources and how you think your intended audience would view them. Conclude your comment by giving us a sense of what your next steps are as you begin to draft this essay for our upcoming peer review workshop (which is on Thursday, February 16).

Also, please note: If you run into any problems, please email me ASAP and I will help you over the weekend. Good luck!

Generating a focus for your current essay

To conclude class today, I’d like to take the last 10-15 minutes and continue to generate some ideas for your current essay. First, share with the rest of us the topic or issue you’re most interested in writing about. How would you define this issue or explain it? How does it relate to larger questions of justice? Then, explore your current attitudes about this topic. How would you characterize your stance towards this issue? What do you already think about it? Then, consider your possible readers? Who would you like to address in this essay? How might their stance be different than yours? What story might you tell about this issue to reach them more effectively?

Reflecting on your second assignment

I’d like you to start class today by taking a few minutes and reflecting on your second assignment. What did you learn from completing this essay? What lessons did you apply from your first paper? What do you think you improved on as a writer? What remains challenging for you? As you look ahead to the rest of the quarter, what goals would you like to set for yourself as a writer?

Ethos and writing about immigration

To start class today, I’d like you to reflect on the selections from Helen Thorpe’s book Just Like Us and consider it in relation to appeals to ethos. How does Thorpe establish her ethos as a writer and cultivate good will with her readers? How does she present the stories of these young women so as to establish their good character and/or humanize them in such a way as to get readers to suspend any judgment they may have because two of them are undocumented? What makes them sympathetic figures? (Or conversely, what undermines these impulses?)

As you conclude your response, please suggest one or two questions (about ethos or other issues you found interesting) that you think could guide our discussion today.

Emotional reasoning and the rhetoric of social justice

Before class on Tuesday, I'd like you to respond to the question we started our discussion with today: What role do appeals to pathos play in arguments for social justice? Using today’s (and Tuesday’s, if you like) readings and film, draft a few paragraphs in which you make a case for how arguments for social justice—especially those in relation to the murder of Fred Martinez, the acceptance of Native American third and fourth gender roles and sexual identities, or the documentation and memorializing of the Sand Creek Massacre—draw on or are built upon emotional reasoning. How does such reasoning contribute to the persuasiveness of claims made about these issues?

Reflecting on Two Spirits

Before class on Thursday, I would like to reflect on the film Two Spirits, especially in contrast to The Laramie Project. First, share with the rest of us what you think this documentary’s main purpose and argument is. How is it different from The Laramie Project? Second, what do you think are the film’s primary rhetorical appeals? How does it support its main claim and what makes these rhetorical proofs persuasive? How do these strategies differ from those used in The Laramie Project? Aim for about 250 words for your response, and post it here as a comment to this post.

Reflecting on Our First Assignment

To start class today, I’d like you to take a few minutes and reflect on what it was like to write your first essay for this class. Describe your writing process and tell the rest of us about how your piece changed from your initial ideas to your final draft. How did our course reading, class discussion, or blogging shape the argument you made about The Laramie Project? What observations or feedback did your peers give you about your draft that helped you as you continued drafting and revising it? Ultimately, what did you learn about rhetoric, persuasive writing, social justice, or yourself by completing this assignment?

What’s your argument?

To begin class today, I’d like you to take a few minutes and reflect on this passage from Jim Corder’s essay, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love”:

The narratives we tell (ourselves) create and define the worlds in which we hold our beliefs. Our narratives are the evidence we have of ourselves and of our convictions. Argument, then, is not something we make outside ourselves; argument is what we are. Each of us is an argument. (18)

Consider Corder’s point in relation to your sense of identity. What narrative(s) do you tell yourself (or others) about yourself? What does this narrative say about your values or your beliefs? What argument does your narrative, or do you, represent in the world?

Rhetor’s Notebook Post #2: Framing the Rhetoric of The Laramie Project

To help you draft this essay, I’d like you to identify a concept (like rhetoric, audience, rhetorical constraints, appeals to ethos, pathos, or logos, argument, love, or social justice) from any of the essays by Covino & Joliffe, Corder, or Miller, which you think will help you develop your claim about the film. First, use the reading to help you define this concept and explain what it means to the rest of us. Then, use this term to open up an initial discussion of The Laramie Project and explain how it helps us understand the film's persuasiveness. How does this concept help you analyze the film and deepen your claim about its persuasiveness? Please post your response to this post before class on Monday.

Responding to The Laramie Project

Now that you’ve finished watching The Laramie Project, I’d like you to take five minutes and reflect on your initial response to the film. What was it like for you to watch it? How would you characterize your response to it? What do you think the film’s main point is? What claim do you see it making about its subject matter?

Kairos and The Laramie Project

Before class on Thursday (Jan. 5), I’d also like you to post a brief reflection to our blog using concepts from our reading to comment on the opening scenes of The Laramie Project. (Please read the article by Covino before responding to the following questions.) How does the film represent its rhetorical situation? That is, what is the exigency for this film? What need is it filling? What audience(s) does it seek to reach and influence? What rhetorical constraints—that is, beliefs or values—does the film portray as shaping its message? (Another way to think through these questions might be: Out of what context does this film emerge? What gives it urgency or timeliness? How does the film respond to the particular situation that evolves out of Matthew Shepard’s murder?) As you explore these questions, include evidence from the film to support your response and aim for at least 250 words. Post your response as a comment to this post.

Introductory Post: Welcome to WRIT 1622

Welcome to WRIT 1622! I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you as students and writers in the next ten weeks. To start us off, I’d like you to use your first post to our course blog to introduce yourself to the rest of our class.

In your post, tell us a little more about who you are. What’s unique or interesting about where you’re from, your family, the high school you attended, your first quarter at DU, or your dreams for your future? (Or anything else about you that you think might interest the rest of us.)

Reflect a bit, too, about what kind of writer you are. What do you like to write? What are your strengths as a writer? What do you think makes writing “good”? How would you define the word rhetoric? (Have you ever studied rhetoric? If so, what did you learn about it?) Last, please conclude your introduction by telling us what you hope to learn about writing from this course and you're looking for as a writer or as a student?

Please post your response as a comment to this post. Aim for at least 250 words. I look forward to reading more about all of you.