Using the set of film vocabulary I provided, explain how Morris uses the documentary medium for rhetorical purposes.  What are the major claims Morris wants to put forth? How does he use interviews, images, camera movement, music, and voice overs to persuade his audience?  What worked and what didn’t. 400-500 words

HW: Read Exposure by Phillip Gourevitch and Erroll Morris (warning: it’s kinda long) and write a 200-word response that comments on the argument they’re making, especially about the nature of visuals in making a point.

Next, we’ll take a short-ish quiz on the photography terms. Here are the images.

Finally, I hope to run through a fullproof method of writing like David Foster Wallace…at least one sentence’s worth.

HW: Read any 3 of the art criticism excepts from here.  In a 200-300 word response, comment on how these critics make claims, provide evidence, and analyze the pieces of art.  Quote from each at least once.

Image: Composition VIII, Kandinsky

1st period: Read “Two Family Portraits” and write a short response: What claims about the portraits does the author make and how does he provide evidence to support them? What differing claims would you suggest and what evidence could you use to support them?

3rd period: Go to The Big Picture, the photoblog site for the Boston Globe.  In small groups, choose a picture and prepare to present and analyze the picture for the class using the photography terminology we’ve been using.

Then, we’re on to take a look at chapter 15 in Everything’s an Argument. We’ll read a selection and then I’ll ask you to render a certain part of the chapter into a visual form.

Finally, we’ll look at advertising using Duke U’s Ad*Access. Choose one of the following products from the list below. Look through the archive and choose one to analyze in an individual blog post. Next, I’m hoping we have time to imagine creating an ad for that product.

• Beauty/Hygiene
• Televisions
• Radios
• Transportation
• WWII

HW: Immersive Paper due. Quiz on photo terms.

Image Credit: Duke U Ad*Access

Reader 1: Look to see how the writer uses specific detail and showing (rather than telling) passages to evoke the experience.  Especially look for description, dialogue, scenes, and other fictional devices.

Reader 2: Look to see how the writer includes expository information about the subject without breaking the flow of the narrative too abruptly. Do we learn something while we get the story?

Reader 3: Look for the writer’s style, especially the use of strong verbs and sentence structure to create a tone.

Afterward, I’ll give you time to work.

Next, we’ll use small groups to look at Pulitzer Prize winning photos. See here and here as well. Choose one and plan on coming up to talk about it using our new set of photo vocabulary.

If we have time, I’d like to talk about a dead tree essay on Family Portraits.

HW: Finish the Immersion Essay

Image Credit: pulitzer.org (Preston Gannaway)

Next stop.  The Soiling of Old Glory and begin talking/thinking about visual grammar. Let’s read it through and write a bit about it.

Can a photo change the world? What can images do that words can’t? What can words do that images can’t? Use the example of TSoOG to explain, discuss, and give examples of the power of words vs. the power of the image.

Now, this is a pretty exhaustive list of vocabulary concerning photography analysis.  In small groups, we’ll chug through it, talk about it, and then…

Use the Big Picture website (which rocks 3 ways to Sunday BTW) and–in small groups–choose one picture to discuss with the entire class. Remember to integrate the photography vocabulary we learned. Let’s have an itty bitty quiz on it come next Wednesday.

HW: Rough draft of Immersive Writing is due!

Image Credit: Reuters/Big Picture

Here is an event list for the weekend.

Then, we’re on to Tan.

1. Why does Tan open her essay by stating, “I am not a scholar of English or literature,” then state, in the next paragraph, “I am a writer?” What is the difference Is she appealing to ethos, logos, or pathos? Why?
2. At several points in her essay, Tan relates anecdotes. How do they further her argument? Be sure to consider the anecdotes regarding Tan giving a speech, the stockbroker, the CAT scan, and Tan’s experience with the SATs. What would be the impact of omitting one of them?
3. What is Tan’s strategy behind including a direct quotation from her mother (paragraph eight) rather than paraphrasing what she said?
4. Tan criticizes herself twice in this essay. In paragraph 3, she quotes a speech she gave “filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases.” What are “nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases,” and why are they burdensome? At another point, Tan recalls a draft of The Joy Luck Club in which she wrote, “That was my mental quandary in its nascent state” (paragraph 20). Why does she call this “[A] terrible line?”
5. Tan divides the essay into three sections. Why? If there were no such breaks, what effect would this have on her audience?
6. Why does Tan believe that envisioning a reader – specifically her mother – encouraged her to write more authentically?
7. Discuss how Tan broadens the essay to have relevance beyond her personal experience. How does she raise issues that are germane to a group as well as to her as an individual?

We’ll use those questions to discuss the essay afterward. We might try our hands at some multiple choice questions based on Tan as well. Here is the link to the web-based voting.

If we get to it, I’d also like to take a look at The Soiling of Old Glory and begin talking/thinking about visual grammar.

HW: Work on your Immersive Essay. Rough draft due Mar 11th

Image Credit: mccormick.com