Calendar Post for December 7 and 9 + Workshop/Visual/Analysis Handouts Posted

• Meet back in class on Wednesday for a discussion of visual rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. In preparation, please read a handout on analyzing and presenting the Public Essay (at drop.io).

• By Wednesday evening, as your last Writing Studio forum post, practice analyzing a text rhetorically by applying what you know to one of four essays we read last week. In at least 100 words, propose and analyze just one relationship in the essay you chose to read––writer and audience, purpose and context, text and genre, or a different combination of rhetorical elements. Additional elements and questions to guide your analysis can be found here.

• For Wednesday and Friday, review PHG chapter six, "Analyzing and Designing Visuals." Pay particular attention to pages 214-222 and 231-235. A handout on designing visual rhetoric has also been uploaded to drop.io.

• Instead of holding class on Monday, we will continue drafting the Public Essay and participate in the Google Docs workshop discussed elsewhere on our blog and at the library on Friday. At drop.io you'll find a guide to commenting on the Public Essay. Please note that first drafts and invitations to collaborators are due online Monday by noon and that second drafts and invitations are due Thursday evening.

• Guidance on submitting your Public Essay online or via e-mail will be posted later this week.

Calendar Post for December 2 and 4 + Interview/Survey Forum

• Meet in Morgan Library Classroom Two on Friday and bring materials to support your Local Inquiry/Public Essay writing process (newspaper articles, books, interview notes, survey findings, et cetera).

• As a team, be prepared to profile the person you spoke with during a lightening interview on Wednesday. If your team wasn't able to reach someone during class, tell us how and why your interview failed.

• For Friday and Monday, study one of the following admired essays: Chuck Klosterman's "Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy," about actor Val Kilmer; Elizabeth Kolbert's "The Truthteller," about scientist James Hansen (it appeared in print as "The Catastrophist"); Charles Komanoff's "Whither Wind," about the aesthetics of wind turbines; or Coco Henson Scales's "The Hostess Diaries, My Year at a Hot Spot," whose title says it all (an alternate version features illustrations). All four essays can be found at drop.io.

• For Wednesday, please read David Boerner's "Our Town (Music) Superhero" as an example of how to profile a local personality.

• In preparation for field research this week, based on what you know about your topic, draft a set of interview or survey questions. Then, by Wednesday night, post them to a Writing Studio forum along with a one-paragraph explanation of your specific purpose in conducting this type of inquiry. (Why do you feel you need to talk to this professor, for example, or ask people in Old Town Square these questions?) As you draft your questions, consider our handout on field research, PHG pages 320-322, and the following guidance.

Interviews:

- Are the bread and butter of field research.
- Can be formal or informal, arranged or impromptu.
- Don’t always lend themselves to recording, but recording allows you to be most accurate.
- Provide you with more control because you’re there to guide the discussion.
- Allow you to ask for more elaborate answers.
- Allow you to clarify confusing questions for more accurate responses.
- Allow you to adjust your purpose in light of your interviewee's knowledge.
- Provide a more comfortable atmosphere for raising personal questions.
- Lend themselves to witnessing body language.

Surveys and questionnaires:

- Allow you to gauge information from large groups of people.
- Are easier to tabulate numerically.
- May lead to more honest responses since writing is more anonymous than talking.

Effective interview questions will:

- Start with objective or factual questions, or at the beginning of a chronology.
- Gradually approach more subjective or controversial questions.
- Almost always invite more than a yes or no answer.
- Avoid assumptions about what the interviewee will say, but reflect some knowledge of his or her situation.

Effective survey questions will:

- Be clear and focused.
- Avoid confusing or ambiguous language.
- Be shaped for a target audience.
- Be respectful and objective.
- Avoid skewing responses or leading respondents.
- Take into account different uses for open-ended and closed questions.
- Not take more than a few minutes to answer.

Most importantly, effective questions will address the writer’s purpose, which is generally to find out what people know and think about the topic at hand. Interviews and questionnaires, in other words, will give you a sense of the conversation surrounding your essay.

• There will be no further news quizzes, as you should have an essay topic in mind by now.

Inquiry Questions Forum, Part Two

• Ballots from Friday's voting on research questions that will drive our group inquiry assignment have been tallied. Questions that received the most votes in each section now appear on our Writing Studio forums page.

• At the Writing Studio, by 9:00 PM on Saturday, October 3, please review the seven questions available to your section (CO150.37 meets at 1:00 PM, CO150.44 meets at 2:00 PM), and cast three votes for three different questions you would prefer to research. Your votes should appear as posts (click "Create Message") simply titled with your numerical preference: “1” being your top choice, “2” being your second choice, "3" being your third choice. The body of each post should contain a short paragraph explaining why you feel motivated to research this question. (Groups can later adjust the wording or scope of their questions in consultation with Raul.)

• Inquiry groups and their members will be announced Sunday here on our blog, based on your rankings. Once you know the question guiding your group's research, locate one credible source of information that appears to answer that question. Begin to draft a one-page academic summary of that source, and bring the source to class on Monday.

• E-mail Raul (see "Contact" on the right side of the page) with any procedural questions or deadline concerns.
  

Inquiry Questions Forum

In preparation for forming the inquiry groups that will drive our next assignment, which entails posing a specific research question about climate change, finding sources to answer that question, and narrating those findings, visit our forums page at the Writing Studio.  

There you will find two forums, one for section 37 and the other for 44.  Click on your section, and propose (in one post) three possible research questions about climate change that seem genuinely interesting.  In proposing each specific question, think of the range of ideas we have been privy to in our readings, and the "questions at issue" that drive each author's inquiry. Realize that these questions (for instance, "Why Bother?") avoid binary (yes or no) answers. In your post, you should also identify the broader discipline or topic to which the question belongs.  An example:

• Epidemiology: How are temperature fluctuations linked to climate change affecting diseases among human populations?

Two of your disciplines or topics could come from the following suggestions, which draw on our inquiry list, but another should be new and different (such as gardening or aerospace):

• Community organizing
• Biology and genetics
• Economics
• Ecology
• Education
• Energy
• Engineering
• Health and epidemiology 
• History
• Literature and rhetoric
• Security and diplomacy
• Physics and chemistry
• Politics and government
• Psychology and sociology
• Health and epidemiology
• Transportation
• Visual and performing arts

Once you have proposed three possible research questions, print out your post and bring it to class on Friday.

Forum: The 11th Hour

"The 11th Hour," which is currently available via Google Video, is being screened today on campus by the English Department as part of the composition program's curriculum. Vanity Fair published excerpts from the 2007 film shortly before its release by Warner Independent Pictures. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) also lists commentators featured, including David Suzuki (pictured above). With their help, a civic action website related to the documentary produced a time capsule for viewers to watch in 2100. You can view their messages here ahead of schedule, courtesy of YouTube:



Below this post, please leave a public comment of at least 100 words that directly quotes and paraphrases the remarks of two people featured in the film whom you find compelling. (Some of the remarks you quote should fall outside of the Vanity Fair excerpts.) As with our previous forums, you can question, analyze, interpret, respond, compare, contrast, or elaborate, but try not to engage in outright argument. In constructing your comment, pay particular attention to the rhetorical situation: has the source text already been introduced? What kind of author tag seems most appropriate? Has another comment already addressed the substance of your comment? How might you respond to that previous comment?

How to comment: Click on this post's "comments," then compose your comment in the box provided, select "Name/URL" under "Comment as," click "Preview" to proofread your draft, and finally click "Post Comment." Since we're practicing commenting on a public forum, rather than selecting a username from an account (such as Google) that might not reflect your real name, please provide at least your first initial and last name under "Name/URL."

Forum: Graeme Wood’s "Re-Engineering the Earth"

• Using notes from your critical reading, post a public comment of 50-100 words about Graeme Wood’s "Re-Engineering the Earth," which appeared in the July/August 2009 edition of The Atlantic. Update: also post a response to another writer.
  

• How to do this: Click "comments" below this post, then compose your comment in the box provided, select "Name/URL" under "Comment as," click "Preview" to proofread your comment, and finally click "Post Comment." Update: since we're practicing commenting on a public forum, rather than selecting a username from an account (such as Google) that might not reflect your real name, please provide at least your first initial and last name under "Name/URL."

• Think of this comment in terms of inquiry: you can question, analyze, interpret, respond, compare, contrast, or elaborate, but try not to engage in outright argument. The comment should also incorporate a paraphrase of, or quotation from, the text it's addressing. In constructing your comment, pay particular attention to the rhetorical situation: has the source text already been introduced? What kind of author tag seems most appropriate? Has another comment already addressed the substance of your comment?

Forum: Edward Wilson’s "Apocalypse Now"

• Using notes from your critical reading, post a public comment of 50-100 words about Edward Wilson’s "Apocalypse Now," which appeared in the September 2006 edition of The New Republic. Update: also post a response to another writer.
  

• How to do this: Click "comments" below this post, then compose your comment in the box provided, select "Name/URL" under "Comment as," click "Preview" to proofread your comment, and finally click "Post Comment." Update: since we're practicing commenting on a public forum, rather than selecting a username from an account (such as Google) that might not reflect your real name, please provide at least your first initial and last name under "Name/URL."

• Think of this comment in terms of inquiry: you can question, analyze, interpret, respond, compare, contrast, or elaborate, but try not to engage in outright argument. The comment should also incorporate a paraphrase of, or quotation from, the text it's addressing. In constructing your comment, pay particular attention to the rhetorical situation: has the source text already been introduced? What kind of author tag seems most appropriate? Has another comment already addressed the substance of your comment?