television

Community and the Rhetoric Classroom

Submitted by Eric Detweiler 13Aug
Photo of Jeff and Britta from the sitcom Community

Jeff Winger is Socrates’ worst nightmare. As an former lawyer disbarred for having a phony bachelor’s degree, and whose central skill on the NBC sitcom Community is manipulating others’ emotions with his words, Jeff bears out almost all of the concerns Socrates expresses in the Phaedrus and Gorgias about what can happen when training and skill in rhetoric is divorced from a strong moral code.

Crowdsourcing Narrative Techniques: TV Tropes in the Literature Classroom

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) 13Aug
Panel from webcomic XKCD--stick figure sits at computer clicking through website tvtropes, with caption It's like rickrolling, but you're trapped all day

I tend to be one of those lit instructors who rarely brings up the dreaded "literary devices" in the classroom.  Too often, handing out a list of tropes and techniques and asking students to recognize them in a text becomes a labelling exercise that does nothing to further the student's engagement with the work.

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