Deb Streusand's blog

Practicing Rhetorical Analysis with Music Videos

Submitted by Deb Streusand 02Apr
Picture shows Taylor Swift about to stab a cake, an image from her video for "Blank Space."

YouTube Comments as Performed Pastiche

Submitted by Deb Streusand 05Nov

For my course on the Rhetoric of Performance, my students are putting together a brief performance of their own. The idea is for them to learn how performance makes arguments by choosing an argument and putting together a performance to make that argument.

Student Comments on Technological Lesson Plans

Submitted by Deb Streusand 24Sep

In the middle of this semester, I decided to do a survey of my students, to see what they had found helpful so far and what I could do to help them get what they wanted out of the rest of the semester. One of the things I discovered from this survey was that the lessons I found most interesting were not necessarily those that the students found most helpful. Two of my three favorite lessons to teach, and two of those that most depend on technology, attracted comments that questioned their utility.

The Rhetorical Implications of a Lightning Bug: Making and Adapting Arguments in Visual Rhetoric

Submitted by Deb Streusand 17Mar
A lightning bug eating a large cookie

As part of the rhetorical analysis unit in my Rhetoric and Writing class, I created a lesson that, because I like terrible puns, I called "The Logos of Logos." My goal was to introduce the students to the idea of visual rhetoric, with an emphasis on drawing out implied arguments from images. I've written this experience up as a blog rather than a lesson plan because I find what happened in the classroom far more interesting than my original lesson plan.

Rhetorical Figure of the Day: Introducing Classical Rhetorical Figures in the Modern Classroom

Submitted by Deb Streusand 03Nov
Dictionary page showing the entry for chiasmus and related words

As a PhD student new to UT, I came to my teaching at the Department of Rhetoric and Writing with a knowledge of rhetoric derived from my experience at Mary Baldwin College's Shakespeare and Performance program. Professor Ralph Alan Cohen taught MFA students about the classical rhetorical figures Shakespeare would have learned in grammar school.

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