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Rhetorical Analysis

Bridging Summary and Analysis with Standup Clips

Aziz Ansari Comedy Poster

This assignment uses clips from standup comedy specials to hone student skills of summary and synethesis, for the controversy map essay assignment.

Bridging Summary and Analysis with Standup Clips

Aziz Ansari Comedy Poster

This assignment uses clips from standup comedy specials to hone student skills of summary and synethesis, for the controversy map essay assignment.

Enthy/memes: Making Memes to Teach Logos

To pratice creating and breaking down enthymemes, I had students create memes (about anything), break down the stated and unstated premises and ultimately, come to a conclusion as to the meme's argument.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with the 1491s

The 1491s Logo

This lesson plan uses the 1491s' youtube videos "I'm an Indian Too" and "Lincoln Was a Douche" to introduce students to rhetorical analysis.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with Contemporary Advertisements

The aim of this lesson is to provide students with an accessible and engaging introduction to rhetorical analysis. Students will view four brief texts—three thirty-second videos and one print advertisement—and try to identify the audience, the speaker, and the argument contained in each.

Annotation and Analysis with Genius.com (Formerly Rapgenius)

A page from Rapgenius, now called Genius, that includes an excerpt from Junot Diaz's Drown annotated by my students and a portrait of the author.

This lesson plan builds on Andrew Uzendoski's lesson on teaching close reading using Rap Genius (now called Genius), focusing on teaching students the process of annotation, as well as how to articulate the building blocks of

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.

Teaching Credibility with Twitter

Introducing the concept of credibility by analyzing tweets.

Villains versus Villains: Writing Persuasive Dramatic Monologues

Students work in groups to compose persuasive, dramatic monologues from the perspectives of famous, fictional villains.

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.

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

Teaching Ethos with Selfies

A selfie photo. Text superimposed: professional? Insightful? Outrageous? Horribly Misguided?

Students will be asked to think critically about the argumentative weight a visual picture of the author adds to a position. For homework, students will be instructed to construct a persona, capture it with a "selfie," and turn it in to the instructor.

Using Debates to Teach Rhetorical Analysis

Two debaters at podiums smile at one another

This assignment asks students to watch a debate and evaluate the participants' use of ethos, pathos and logos given their goals and their audience.

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.

Teaching Context with Album Covers

Image of the Talking Heads album cover for "Remain in the Light"

This lesson plan uses album covers and music to help students (1) utilize vocabulary and (2) consider the importance of context in rhetorical analysis.

"Creating" Visual Rhetoric Through Student-Designed Flash Games

This assignment gives students a chance to make their own (very elementary) argumentative, flash game. By actively engaging in the process of game design, students will have to think through their intentions and the process of piecing together visual, aural, and verbal rhetoric.

Shifting Focus from Content to Medium

an illustration of a tv with "the message" written on the screen.

Using various records of the Hindenburg disaster, this assignment encourages students to engage with medium over content, especially in terms of literary studies.  

Evaluating Satire With Rhetorical Analysis

Satirical image of eighteenth-century women in over-large bonnets

This assignment asks students to locate a product ad on their computers, and evaluate its use of ethos, pathos, and logos given its goal and target audience.

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.

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