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Ideology

Kairos and Ideology Analysis: American Values and Contexts

Lego Captain America Stands In Front of American Flag

This assignment asks students to fill out a worksheet for analyzing the ideological presuppositions of two arguments that rely on a popular superhero, Captain America, to make their respective arguments. This assignment can be used to solidify student understanding of kairos and presuppositions.

Advertising Agency

Agency

Help your students realize when they're being advertised to by helping them turn the tables on the Don Drapers of the Internet.

Introducing Ideology with HSBC Advertisements

Image of an HSBC advertisement with the same image repeated three times with three different labels

This in-class activity uses the popular HSBC ad campaign (a tryptich of the same image with different value labels) to introduce students to visual rhetoric and ideology. After discussing the ads, students create their own version.

Using Flag Burning to Teach Icons, Symbols, and Speech Acts

Using Flag Burning to Teach Icons, Symbols, and Speech Acts

Students come to class having read read an analysis focused upon the importance of the seemingly minor distinctions between "icons" and "symbols" in the context of Texas v Johnson, the definitive Supreme Court case regarding the extent to which an American flag and/or the burning thereof is “speech,” and therefore protected by the First Amendment.

TX Political Stars are Big and Bright: Identifying Audiences

Rick Perry Meme

Getting students to think in more specific terms about audience, without generalizing, is challenging. Using political ads, work with students to identify audiences and think of themselves critically as audience members. 

Ethos and Online Dating 2.0 - Incorporating Visuals

Dating show from Mallrats movie

A remix of a previous lesson plan, this exercise asks students to analyze the ethos of an online dating profile and then pair it with an appropriate image - drawing on the relationship between written and visual rhetoric.

Rhetorical Analysis of "Sugar Dating" Ads and Audience(s)

Sugar Dating Sites Unabashedly Target Cash-Strapped Female Students

Students work on argumentation techniques, rhetorical fallacies, and other concepts via reading a heavily-biased article from the New York Post discussing the relatively new but quickly growing phenomenon known as "sugar dating," which consists of web sites that pair older men (sugar daddies) who are willin

Using Google Drive for Collaborative Bias Analysis

In this exercise, students research potential sources of bias within a set of assigned texts and add their notes to a Google Drive spreadsheet. The students and instructor then review the spreadsheet as a group and finish with a class discussion.

Compiling Context with Digitized Periodicals

The National Era - 1 April 1852

Students examine and manipulate digitized page images in order to consider the presentation of serialized texts. “Compiling Context” is a versatile introduction to periodical print culture suitable for literature and rhetoric courses. 

Flash Games and Visual Rhetoric

Image of Pokemon characters re-designed by Peta for its Flash game

This assignment pushes students to recognize the layers of rhetoric and propaganda embedded in something as visual and auditory as a flash game.

Locating Bias Within A Dictionary

A portrait of Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds

In the course of discussing David Foster Wallace’s essay “Tense Present,” I asked my students to compare and contrast the en

Student Digital Activism as Rhetorical Advocacy/Analysis

Social media logos juxtaposed with solidarity fists

This assignment challenges students to become digital activists/advocates for a cause of their choosing, and aids them in developing a portfolio of work in the service of that cause.

Analyzing Ethos Using Twitter and Storify

Using the multimedia curation program, Storify, students compose a short writing assignment analyzing an "author's" ethos based on his or her Twitter feed.

Using the multimedia curation program, Storify, students compose a short writing assignment analyzing an "author's" ethos based on his or her Twitter feed.  This demonstrates the ways in which ethos is cultivated over time and in a variety of different ways.

Teaching Audience and Stakes With the Colbert Report

This exercise asks students to work in groups to move past a working summary of a text's rhetoric to consider the goals of an author and their strategic approach to audiences. It uses PBworks' collaborative potentials to bridge the gap between two connected class discussions.

Using Facebook to Review Local & Global Argument Types & Rhetorical Appeals

facebook logo

In this lesson students review the basics of argument types & rhetorical appeals.  Working in groups, they look for examples of several argument types in facebook status updates.  As a class we review the examples, evaluate their classifications, and discuss the rhetorical appeals at play.  

Pre-Writing: Surveying Expectations on the First Day of Class

The Writing Process Diagram with arrows showing the interrelationships between prewriting, writing, and revising.

On the first day of class, students think about the course topic and document their personal definitions of and understandings of the topic.

Audience Appeal - Making Commercials with Animoto

blank billboard

Using the extremely user-friendly online video creation tool, Animoto, students create short commercials pitching (potentially) odd combinations of products to target audiences (pianos to businessmen, running shoes to retirees, etc.)

Mapping Memorials: Research and Public Advocacy on Campus

Chavez statue on UT Austin campus

Through this assignment, students learn to close-read (critique) monuments on campus and consider the rhetorical nature of memory.

Becoming-Imperceptible, or How to Disappear Completely

Teach students about managing their online presence

In this assignment, students learn about the importance of protecting their information and image online, and in turn, take measures to delete themselves from the myraid places where they are visible/vulnerable.

Creating Individual "Infospheres" on the Web

Infospheres are like personal tapestries of information

The infosphere assignment calls on students to identify online sources of information they regularly take in and to create a representative structure for this information. Students must build their own unique infospheres and organize them as they see fit.

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