DWRL Lesson Plans - Ideology

Kairos and Ideology Analysis: American Values and Contexts

Sloan — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 21:05:23 +0000

Image Credit:

Brief Assignment Overview:

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.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Historical Context

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Required Materials:

For students:

-Pen or pencil

-Worksheet (can be filled out on a computer through an LMS like Canvas or Blackboard, or in hard copy provided by instructor)

-The image and article to be analyze (either through a computer or in hard copy provided by instructor)

For instructor:

-Without classroom technology

-Hard copies of worksheet, comic book cover, and article for each student

-With classroom technology

-Projector to show image and article

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

The Captain America comic book cover published in April, 1942 features a larger-than-life Captain America physically subduing a stereotyped caricature of Japanese Emperor Hirohito. This cover appeared shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a historical event depicted on the cover itself. Students will analyze the kairos (Pearl Harbor and WWII) and the presuppositions about American values (victory through martial power, strength, an in-group mentality, patriotism, etc.) for this comic book cover.

They will compare the American values lauded in the comic book cover with the American values mobilized by the Sikh artist Vishavjit Singh. In 2013, Singh dressed up as Captain America and walked through New York City. He catalogues his experiences in the Salon.com article "Captain America in a Turban." Students will analyze the kairos (the Twin Towers terrorist attacks, discrimination against Sikhs in America) and the presuppositions about American values (diversity, inclusivity, etc.) for this article/ performance.

After filling out the worksheet on kairos and ideology, either for homework or in class, students should be encouraged to share their answers in a group discussion.

This assignment allows students to clearly see the connection between kairos and ideology by demonstrating how the same fictional character (Captain America) can be used to mobilize very different presuppositions and beliefs.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Instructors should decide whether students will be given hard copies of the worksheet, the comic book cover and the article. Instructors should also be prepared to answer student questions about the publication dates of each source, the relevant historical context and the larger performance project of Singh.

Students should also have alread been introduced to kairos and ideology.

Students should first be given preliminary information about the comic book cover and the article. They should be provided with the publication dates for each and told about the medium in which each appeared.

Instructions For Students:

I have pasted the instructions from the worksheet below. Before filling out the worksheet, students will need to know the publication dates of each source. The worksheet is also provided below in Additional Resources. The two sources are also linked below. My students took about twenty minutes to fill out the worksheet. We spent the remainder of the class discussing their answers.

Kairos and Ideology Critique: Captain America and American Values Worksheet

Name:

Rhetorical Analysis defines kairos as “both the occasion for discourse and the surrounding conditions that present the rhetor with opportunities and constraints: opportunities or openings to say certain things in certain ways; and constraints that limit what can be said and how” (9-10). We can think about kairos partially as the historical context for a controversy.

According to Rhetorical Analysis, ideology is “a set of presuppositions that influences most everything—people’s family lives, their political choices, their intimate and professional relationships. These presuppositions must be held by an entire social class, culture, or community” (185-86). Ideological analysis allows us to identify key beliefs and values held by a group of people.

Examine the Captain America comic cover from 1942 and the Salon article about the Captain America performance piece by Vishavjit Singh in 2013. Both sources are using the ethos of Captain America to make very different arguments. Answer the following questions:

What is the kairos for each source?

Are the sources “timely,” or, do they respond intelligently to their respective kairos? How so?

What does each source presuppose about American values? What values does the comic book cover ask you to share? What values does the performance piece ask you to share?

How do the values/beliefs about American culture in each piece match or mismatch the piece’s kairos?

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This exercise seemed to make kairos and ideology readily accessible to some struggling students. The widely-known historical events of World War II and 9/11 helped clarify not only kairos, but audience as well. We talked about how the recent attack on Pearl Harbor helped create the audience for the comic cover and how an awareness of 9/11 made Singh's performance all the more relevant and powerful.

I did find it important to emphasize early on that the WWII comic cover uses racist imagery to make its argument. We had a very productive discussion about how the dehumanizing of Hirohito effectively concealed certain American ideological values like diversity while emphasizing others like exceptionalism and martial power.

Additional Resources:

April 1942 Captain America War Propaganda Comic Book Cover (Captain America punches a Monstrous Emperor Hirohito while Pearl Harbor Unfolds at their Feet)

Sept. 2013 Salon.com "Captain America in a Turban" (Sikh artist Vishavjit Singh describes his experience dressing up as Captain America and walking the streets of New York City)

Worksheet for Students:

Kairos and Ideology Critique: Captain America and American Values Worksheet

Name:

What is the kairos for each source?

Are the sources “timely,” or, do they respond intelligently to their respective kairos? How so?

What does each source presuppose about American values? What values does the comic book cover ask you to share? What values does the performance piece ask you to share?

How do the values/beliefs about American culture in each piece match or mismatch the piece’s kairos?

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

I used this lesson plan in RHE 309k: The Rhetoric of Superheroes, an intermediate writing course with special topics chosen each semester by the instructors. Students are taught writing, research, rhetorical analysis, and invention.

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Introducing Ideology with HSBC Advertisements

Cate Blouke — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:16:11 +0000

Author:

Cate Blouke

Image Credit:

HSBC advertisement

Brief Assignment Overview:

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.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Visualization

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

A computer-enabled classroom will allow for the full activity, in which students create their own version of the ad campaign. This could easily be adapted to an activity without technology.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

First Day/Week

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

A relatively straightforward exercise, this in-class activity serves as a fruitful introduction to talk about commonplaces, ideology, and visual rhetoric. The ads themselves address the issue of values through their captions, such as "The more you look at the world the more you realize that people value the same things but in different ways."

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

If adapting for use wihtout technology, you might make up some handouts with three unlabeled images and ask students to come up with labels. Similarly, if you don't want to take up the full class period, you could pre-select images to provide students.

Instructions For Students:

As your reading from Picturing Texts discussed, we learn how to se the world in particular ways. As the authors argue, "we construct our realities as we learn to see."

While this has certainly been a theme throughout the course, today's exercise addresses how the way that we see/read texts tends to reflect our own values or ideology. Ho we interpret an image can sometimes say more about us than the image itself.

The international banking firm, HSBC, has an ad campaign that reflects this multi-faceted approach to people and reality.

The triptych above labels the same image with three very different value judgments, illustrating quite explicitly how the same object can retain radically different meanings depending on the viewer.

One of the goals of this course (and an essential element of visual analysis) is for you to learn to consider multiple readings of the same image. As such, and as a handy segue into our unit on advertising, for today's exercise you'll create your own version of the HSBC ads.

With a partner (or two), find an image/object that you can label with at least three different meanings - being careful to use an image that is licensed for adaptive reuse. You can find these images by either using the google advanced image search functions or the filters in a Flickr search (both of which I will demonstrate in class). We'll be talking more about Fair Use and Creative Commons as we move into our final unit, so this is good practice to get you started.

After finding an appropriate image, using either photoshop or an image editing platform of your choice, compile the three images into a tryptich and label them with your different value readings (just as in the HSBC ads).

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students had a great time with this exercise and came up with some nice examples. During the discussion, we also talked about design and parallellism.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

In this course we will explore the ways in which images can be read, analyzed, constructed, and manipulated. We will interrogate how images inform our reading of historical and political events, of personal identity, of public and private spaces. We will think through issues of self-presentation: how our stylistic choices convey messages to the world around us, and how we interpret the choices of others. We will look at the spaces we frequent and consider the rhetorical effects of everything from the architecture to the furniture to lighting. In short, we will investigate how the visual (non-linguistic, non-textual) world conveys its messages.

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