The purpose of this writing project is to ask you to gather discourse and messages (visual, sounds, etc.) that you identify as reflecting, arguing for, or resisting the dominant values of United States "culture." We have been looking at how cultural identification has much to do with shared values and beliefs as well as ideas about what exists, what is good, and what is possible (to draw on Therborn). For those values and beliefs to be "shared," they must be communicated and agreed upon. Your project will examine the ways that communicative process happens.
Part 1
For Tuesday, October 2, you will want to collect your data and create a collage to present that data.
Find as many snippets or pieces of text, messages, symbols, pictures, poems, advertisements, newspaper/magazine articles as you can that you see as playing on, appealing to, arguing for, or resisting dominant United States values. We discussed and you brainstormed some of these values (such as "freedom," and "equality), but you do not have to limit yourself to what we discussed in class. As you collect the artifacts, be sure to keep in mind that the second part of this assignment will have you writing an analysis of the messages, so more will probably be better than less.
Take your artifacts and construct some form of collage to present in class. You may make this collage in any way that works for you (digital, on construction paper, videotaped, whatever). As you construct your collage, take note of surprising patterns, contradictons, repetitions, and anything else that seems interesting to you. The point of the collage is for you to disrupt these messages we take for granted in our everyday environments, take them out of context, and see them working within and around each other. That is, I am hoping we all see some surprises and newness in these collages.
Part 2
In class, as you are presenting your collages, we will also discuss some ways to analyze artifacts. We'll discuss "cluster criticism," "metaphor," and "dramatic" approaches to analysis. You will then write an analysis of your collages and draw some conclusions about how language and discourse in general works rhetorically to persuade us of and naturalize certain values and beliefs. You will also be looking at how that rhetorical work of these messages tends to hide contradictions and some of the implications of those values.
Your essay will be rhetorical criticism. You will have a reading on rhetorical criticism, but for now, Henderson and Brown provide a brief definition to get you thinking:
Rhetorical criticism:
A term used by Wayne Booth to describe the kind of criticism that regards fiction as the art of communicating with readers. According to Booth, such criticism focuses on the rhetorical resources available to a writer as that writer tries, consciously or unconsciously, to impose his or her fictional world upon the reader. To foreground the author's means of controlling the reader, Booth isolates narrative technique and other means of achieving effects on readers from the sociohistorical and psychological forces that affect authors and readers.
Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown, Dictionary of Literary Terms. From the University of Toronto Library. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Rhetorical_criticism.html
Your final essay will be due Tuesday, October 9th.
(100 points total)
August 28, 2007