Your Repurposed Genres

Dear Class:

Thank you for your hard work and enthusiasm all semester. I look forward to seeing your final projects next week. As promised, here is a list of your "real forms," or repurposed genres, so that you may witness them as they take shape. If your project has evolved beyond what is indicated below, or if I have misstated or misremembered your most recent revision, please feel free to let me know so that I can update the list:

Benyam B. - lay literature that raises awareness of legitimacy claims and of the various "terministic screens" acting on the food consumer (for pickup in Bloomingfoods and other food co-ops)

Megan B. - a brochure for distribution at IU's office of Disability Services that describes the most prominent barriers to campus accessibility before suggesting how to overcome those barriers (tri-fold, double length)

Kreigh C. - a curricular overview for students, parents, and administrators that explains the duality of approaches to elementary biology education and suggests how to solve the dualism

Kimberley C. - a series of editorials for the Indiana Daily Student, each one presenting a different suggestion for sustaining discourse about racial conflicts on campus

Shelli G. - an open letter to nationally syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, calling for a new way for to enact the public debate about same-sex marriage (for National Review Online)

Kae G. - a lecture demonstration on various ways that the "new" Internet literature (i.e., 140-character tweets) has influenced or not influenced authorship, readership, and valuation of texts (for her Communication and Culture class)

Ieshia H. - a 2-page spread for Essence magazine on "natural vs. permed" hair and the ways this debate acts as a metaphor for more fundamental questions about black standard of beauty in the 21st century

Lily H. - an article for the Daily Herald Fence Post on the importance of understanding how popular media (especially recent critical documentaries like The Lottery and Waiting for Superman) argue for educational assessment

Lacey H. - a curricular overview for elementary school teachers of various multiculturalism and anti-bullying resources that can be used to overcome barriers to teaching racial tolerance at early ages

Jeff L. - an illustrated punk rock 'zine that editorializes what punk rock communities can do to refocus the movement from a perception of infighting to a perception of counter-cultural discourse

John L. - (genre under revision: on media portrayals of war)

Cindy M. - an editorial for young filmmakers and producers-to-be that suggests different ways that messages about drugs are made in television media, and offers guiding principles for understanding actual and probable outcomes of media portrayals of drug use

Elizabeth M. - (genre under revision: on how dystopic genres such as sci/fi films can affect public perceptions of climate activism)

Tim M. - an article that editorializes the problem with simplifying rock and roll history as "from glam-metal to grunge," especially when this oversimplification causes media portrayals of these two rock genres to be juxtaposed or pitted against each other

Kellin M. - a pamphlet introducing a new campus activism group that promotes homelessness awareness and aims to educate its peers, first on the difficulties of talking about homeless as a concrete social problem, and second on the measures they can take

Dipti P. - a guest column for the Indiana Daily Student that explains social networking as a discourse that impacts the millennial generation in certain ways

Tak S. - (genre under revision: on attitudes towards recycling and the various social, cultural, and intellectual factors that affect whether people do or do not recycle)

Rebekah S. - the introductory chapter to an edited collection of essays that addresses the need for more publicly available information about adult self-injury

Aaron T. - a lecture demonstration with PowerPoint to be delivered to a business communication class that explains the various discursive, philosophical, and technical factors involved in how coal companies communicate to their publics

Kyla T. - a documentary film that interviews several experts on the issue of women's educational attainment, specifically to demonstrate the ways in which evangelical religious discourse deters or supports women in higher education (for local circulation as a discussion tool)

Zayin - "My Turn" essay (Newsweek) arguing for the importance of developing a critical etiquette for personal cell phone interaction

Signing off the blog,

Professor Graban
12/12/10

Revision Plan

Hello, everyone.

Your issues have shaped nicely and your historical-causal claims are smart across the board. Several of you are showing yourselves to be very apt discourse theorists, and all of you have demonstrated real expertise or ownership of some of the theorists we have read. Welcome to the final stretch!

Sometime between now and 5 p.m. Thursday, please do two things in a single post:

1) Write a revision plan for your Historical-Causal Analysis, a.k.a. "research form," based on how you will rework it after today's peer review. Believe it or not, this post is not meant to be busy work, and it is not only for my benefit. Consider this the last public statement you'll make (in this, class at least) about your writing and try to construct an empathetic audience. Please be specific so that we can understand your justification for why you will revise something, where you will revise it (in the paper), how you will revise it, and what concepts or principles from the class will inform that revision, if any. Remember that we need to be filled in on the details of your project and we need to understand your whole discursive aim with the paper.

2) Discuss more concretely the Repurposed Genre (a.k.a. "real" form) you would like to create. Remember that that genre should stem from your historical-causal claim, rather than broadly address an issue. What do you have in mind in terms of audience, aim, venue? What main principle must you keep in mind for its rhetorical construction? If at all possible, as part of your post, include links or references to similar genres so that we can see what you are aiming for. And don't forget that you can browse sample genres below.

Good luck and have fun with this. The more you can show, the further along you are! Please post by "commenting" below.

-Professor Graban

Conservation Discourse Browsing Project

Hello, everyone.

As promised, I have posted the handout with browsing and discussion questions for Richard Lieber's materials at the Lilly Library.

See you next week,
Professor Graban

"Real" Forms and Resources

Hello, everyone.

It is early in the process, but we will spend the next five weeks imagining, drafting, analyzing, revising, and rethinking your Public Awareness Projects in two forms: the "research" form (or, the historical-causal analysis essay) and the "real" form (in a suitable genre of your choice). I thought I would post some genre forms here for your perusal. What follows are links to various white papers, technical reports, digital ethnographies, advocacy documents, blogs, informational web sites, and brochures that may inspire some creative thinking on your own projects.

Of course, your genre form should grow out of your "research" form, so I am not suggesting that you decide on a genre first, and then try to shape a research project to fit it. Nor am I suggesting that you construct a genre form independently of how we have been theorizing empathetic, engaged, and civil discourse. I simply want to help you imagine the possibilities by viewing other genre forms that have grown from research projects.

• an informational website built around a Sustainability report distributed at Indiana University
• a related chain of documents for the National Resource Defense Council's "Call Off the Guns" campaign, responding to the bill allowing open hunting of protected gray wolves. It includes a webpage and message to members of the NRDC, an article, a television advertisement that aired on cable television, and an ENS news release on the outcome of the television advertisement
• digital ethnographies by Mike Wesch (Kansas State University) including "Information R/evolution," "The Machine is Us/ing Us," "A Vision of Students Today," and "Twitter and the World Simulation."
• the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (IPCC) for 2007
• report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
• informational websites for the "Bloomington Center for Sustainable Living" and the "National Park Service" (both are linked to our Course Resources page)
• blogs such as "Bloomington Alternative" and "Climate Storytellers" and "Tom Dispatch"
• any of the archives and repositories linked from our Course Resources page.

If you decide to incorporate images into your project and/or if your "real" form will be constructed around them, be sure to check out these resources for free, downloadable files:

• Associated Press (AP) Photo Archive
• New York Public Library Digital Gallery
• free public domain images
• Morguefile.com (another source of free public domain images)

Have fun browsing!

-Professor Graban

In-class work on "Argumentation as Representation"

Hello, everyone.

For Tuesday's in-class analysis, here are your concepts and questions. Please read ahead and examine your chosen genre samples for concepts listed below. On Tuesday, I will ask you to spend a few minutes with your partner discussing them and locating explicit examples in the text. However, you will spend most of your time talking through and composing your post. We will break for discussion after the "synthesis" questions.

Lung: "A Question of Civility: An Open Letter to Hu, Jintao"

preparation for synthesis:

1. cite the passages that hold Lung's main argument and list them in a logical progression

2. "value" terms (terms or definitions that carry value in the argument)

3. tropes (Killingsworth)

4. identification/association/representation -- use of metaphors, metonymy, or synecdoche (Killingsworth)

5. forwarding -- illustrating, authorizing, borrowing, or extending (Harris 39-48)

6. stasis in which the letter is primarily conducted

synthesis:

Lung originally wrote her open letter in Chinese for a Taiwanese audience, before it was translated into English and circulated widely in other countries. Considering the complexity of her cultural context and her multiple audiences, discuss how you think this letter strikes a balance--if you think it does--between embodied voice and voicelessness. How does it promote complexity in the way that Lazere defines "complexity"? Discuss whether and how the letter demonstrates some kind of reciprocity of ideas, rather than mere opinion or egocentrism.

Linzey: "Why Animals Deserve Special Moral Solicitude"

preparation for synthesis:

1. claim with reason, grounds (evidence), and warrant (the unstated premise that connects the claim with the grounds)

2. Kaufer conflict level (or value pair) that is most visible (58-60)

3. possible competing analogies if it represents a "level 5" disagreement (Kaufer 63-66)

4. relationship of human to the environment on the continuum of perspectives (K/S 171)

5. evidence of or against oversimplification (Lazere)

6. stasis in which the article is primarily conducted

synthesis:

Select up to two passages from the handout and discuss how they resonate with Linzey's principal aim. Discuss whether and how you see Linzey opening up spaces for debate and/or making spaces for a proactive response. What are all of our options for responding?

Ledbetter and Daniels: "Is there a Decline in Literacy?"

preparation for synthesis:

1. Kaufer conflict level (or value pair) that is most visible in the disagreement (58-60)

2. possible competing analogies if it represents a "level 5" disagreement (Kaufer 63-66)

3. "value" terms (terms or definitions that carry value in the argument)

4. embodiment or authenticity of voice (Matalene)

5. forwarding -- illustrating, authorizing, borrowing, or extending (Harris 39-48)

6. stasis in which the debate is primarily conducted

synthesis:

What kind of audience does each writer seem to construct (or to write for), and how could that have impacted their decisions about how to argue? (Please note specific differences where you can.)

The 11th Hour Film (chapter 8 or 10)

preparation for synthesis:

1. claim with reason, grounds (evidence), and warrant (the unstated premise that connects the claim with the grounds)

2. Kaufer conflict level (or value pair) that is most visible (58-60)

3. possible competing analogies if it represents a "level 5" disagreement (Kaufer 63-66)

4. "value" terms (terms or definitions that carry value in the argument)

5. relationship of human to the environment on the continuum of perspectives (K/S 171)

6. identification/association/representation -- use of metaphors, metonymy, or synecdoche (Killingsworth)

synthesis:

Select up to two passages from the handout and discuss how they resonate with the film's principal aim. Discuss whether and how you see the film opening up spaces for debate and/or making spaces for a proactive response. What are all of our options for responding?

Please respond by commenting to this post.

-Professor Graban