Blogging Pedagogy - visual rhetoric

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

Deb Streusand — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 05:00:00 +0000

Author:

Deb Streusand

Image Credit:

Adapted by Deb Streusand from "Cookie" by Sonoftroll

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. I'll first lay out the progress of the original lesson plan, then describe how I adapted it on the fly due to having more time than I expected, and the intriguing conversation that followed.

I began by showing the students the Walmart smiley face logo:

walmart%20logo%20smiley%20face.jpg

Image credit: personal.psu.edu/tqs5262/blogs

I asked them to point out the premises and conclusion of the argument it makes, which they did ably: shopping at Walmart makes you happy, you want to be happy, therefore you should shop at Walmart.

Next, we looked at two video advertisements depicting the smiley logo in different guises.

The first advertisement added a construction helmet to the smiley, paired it with the slogan "working hard to save you money," and showed him using a saw to cut back the prices on Walmart signs:

WalMart - Smiley TV Commercial

Video of WalMart - Smiley TV Commercial

The students quickly identified the appeal to ethos the ad created by suggesting that Walmart works hard to save you money. They discussed how this appeal to ethos became one of the premises of a logical enthymeme when combined with an implied premise about the audience: Walmart saves you money, you want to save money, therefore you want to shop at Walmart. At this point, I was already wondering how I'd fill up the rest of the class period, because the students were picking up on the arguments much more quickly than I'd expected.

They were equally adept at analyzing the next video, which featured a leather-gloved, bow-tied smiley firing lasers at the pricing signs:

WalMart - Smiley TV Commercial

Video of WalMart - Smiley TV Commercial

I asked them: "what associations does our culture have with leather gloves and lasers?" "It's badass!" cried a student. Another pointed out that this was an appeal to pathos as well as to ethos: you want to be badass, so shop at Walmart.

This was 20 minutes into a 75-minute class, and I had only one more trick up my sleeve:

walmart-high-cost-of-low-price.jpg

Image credit: chicshadesofgreen.com

Not only did the students rapidly dissect the effects of pairing the slogan with the smiley face image, but they noted something I hadn't caught: the addition of slanted eyebrows to make the smiley face look more sinister. Already, they were better at analyzing visual rhetoric than I was. We were at the 30 minute mark. What to do?

Inspiration! Since they were so good at analyzing the arguments the logos made in their original and adapted versions, why not have them adapt a corporate logo themselves? I asked them to get on the computers, find a corporate logo of their own, and decide how they would adapt it to make a different argument. They had about 15 minutes to work and the remaining class time to go around and present their choices. Since I came up with this assignment on the spot, and I didn't know their level of Photoshop expertise, I didn't require them to make an actual image adapting the logo, but merely to decide and explain how they would adapt it. After each student described his or her adaptation of the logo, I would ask the class to deduce the argument that student was trying to make, and the student would confirm or correct the class's suggestions.

Lots of delightful images, both theoretical and actual, emerged from this assignment -- one of my favorites was an evil version of the Twitter bird, intended to imply that Twitter will ruin your reputation. The most interesting discussion, however, came out of a student's use of Photoshop to adapt the logo of a local cookie store by adding a bug. I've made my own version of this logo for a fictional cookie store:

Modified Cookie Logo.png

The student's original image added a fly, which the class easily identified as creating an argument that implied the store was dirty. One student asked, "what would happen if you put a butterfly by the logo instead?" This question launched an impassioned discussion about the rhetorical implications of different types of bugs. "A butterfly is beautiful! That would create a positive image for the store!" "But it's still weird to have a bug by cookie..." The general consensus was that the butterfly's connotation was positive, though with some lingering dissenters. Then a student, my usual gadfly, smiled mischieviously. "How about a lightning bug?" The students went wild with laughter and then with discussion. They never did agree on exactly what the lightning bug would mean, but they were as excited about rhetoric as they'd been all semester. I left the classroom happy, and I think they did too.

Can I Take Your Picture? Reading Susan Sontag’s "On Photography" and the Rhetoric of Photographing Strangers

Sarah Sussman — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:38:17 +0000

Author:

Sarah Sussman

Image Credit:

Photo for "Photographing Strangers" assignment by Josh Guerra

Coupling a reading with a hands-on lesson plan like the one that I am about to share can be tricky, and I wouldn't advocate using this particular pedagogical strategy for all texts, but Susan Sontag’s On Photography (1977) seems to work well as part of an experiential lesson plan because peering into the lives of others through photographs on social media sites is what the overwhelming majority of college students spend their time doing already. The main injunction of my course, “Rhetoric of Photography,” is to put an end to passive scrolling through critical analysis, so I like this lesson plan because it asks students take up a tool that they carry every day, the camera, and to use it deliberately, mindfully, and with a cultural critic as their guide.

Preparation for this activity begins one week in advance, when I provide a carefully curated 30-page excerpt of the text. While handing out the reading I tell students that in addition to preparing to discuss the excerpt they should also select one passage in particular to write about in a blog post which will be due the following week. I tell them that I’ll give them more specific instructions the following class, but that for now they should sketch out some general thoughts and reactions to the reading. At this point, I also tell them to bring cameras to the next week’s meeting, saying that I’ll reveal what the cameras are going to be used for on the day of the activity. The mysterious call for cameras is useful for cultivating excitement about the upcoming activity.

For Sontag’s particular text, I find a de-centralized atmosphere, in which the students are made to feel like the teacher, to be most useful. To facilitate this environment, I’ll start with a broad question, like, “would you say Sontag is generally a pessimist, or an optimist when it comes to photography?” and we’ll delve into more nuanced questions from there. Once we've all shared our thoughts and students have shared their chosen passages (this is usually a 30 minute conversation), I’ll explain why they brought their cameras. They’re to go wherever they want in the space of 25 minutes, I tell them, and to use whatever strategy they devise, in order to procure a picture of a stranger. At this moment, they usually express some excitement at the open-ended possibilities and begin brainstorming strategies like so many contestants on a game show. Will they ask nicely? Use a zoom lens? Many liked the idea of pretending to be texting on their iPhones while snapping photo surreptitiously. Some form alliances, while others prefer to go it alone. The only caveat, I tell them, is that they must write about the entire experience and relate it back to a chosen passage from On Photography while incorporating what we’ve learned about rhetoric so far. Finally, their meditation is to be uploaded to our class Tumblr.

For obvious reasons, however, an assignment like this also poses numerous challenges to the instructor and the students. A lot can go wrong when you tell 23 college students to photograph strangers and upload them to Tumblr. Will they be respectful? Will they be conscientious? Is the whole process inherently voyeuristic? It’s a difficult position to be in, but according to On Photography, taking photographs is itself a precarious, and at times, an outright violent pursuit. For that reason, I try to do this assignment towards the end of the term so that students have already taken part in guided conversations about the topics of surveillance, voyeurism, and objectification that we find in On Photography. In this way, rather than giving them space to say or do something that becomes a teachable moment (read: a moment in which they might be disrespectful or hurtful to others knowingly or unknowingly), I give them tools to demonstrate their savviness to conversations we’ve already had about ethics, civic discourse, the gaze, body image, gender and sexuality, race, the precarious nature of ethnographic photography, and other subjects. Essentially, I’m inviting them to think further about social norms, culture, and how (or if it’s even possible) to photograph strangers in an ethical way.

When they have finished with their snapshots, they return to the classroom before or at the appointed meet up time with a lot to say. They’re usually eager to talk about their experience and each other’s photos. Depending on the length of the class, I will have them continue the discussion on Sontag in light of their experience (usually for about 20 minutes). The most important thing I’ve found with re-introducing students to the classroom environment is to remind them of where we left off in our discussion of the reading. A technique that I’ve found useful for connecting their experience to the reading is to immediately have them get out their notebooks and review their chosen passage from Sontag, and begin drafting an outline of their blog post (perhaps for 5-10 minutes). After they’ve done that we’re able to return as a group to the discussion in a more focused manner. In the past, when I had a 45 minute summer class, I had the students write their blog posts at home and then share them during the following meeting – I found both methods were equally efficient.

Ultimately, this hands-on approach is appealing to me because it turns what might have been an otherwise inert text into a more deeply impressed memory. When I look back on my time as a student, the lessons that I remember were the ones which I engaged with on a personal level. In particular, this assignment is designed after a photography class that I took with the inspiring Professor John Grzywacz-Gray who would lead his classes in group photo shoots and art critiques which inevitably led to remarkably productive, free-ranging discussions about the personal interests of students in the class. Because civic discourse and photography will remain with students throughout their lives, I hope the discussion that the “Photographing Strangers” activity engendered will give them the tools to continue this conversation after the semester has come to a close.

Identifying Visual Conversations

Megan Eatman — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:12:29 +0000

Author:

Megan Eatman

Image Credit:

Chris Metcalf via Wikimedia Commons

In my RHE 309K, Rhetoric of Tragedy, I often ask students to analyze or otherwise engage with images. It seems appropriate to the content, since images often play a large part in how violent or disastrous events are defined, and it creates less reading, which my students seem to like. With my Using Images for Invention lesson plan, I hoped that an engagement with images related to their tragedies would expose some of the students’ own assumptions and feelings in relation to the event, as well as make them aware of affected parties that they might not have otherwise considered. However, I now think that the assignment was both too rushed and too structured. With some modifications, I think it could be more effective.

In the interest of allowing students to explore the various points of view, I would in the future give students more time and allow them to compile a collection of images on their blogs. I would also give the assignment more weight, given the increased time investment. The lesson as I had originally conceived of it was in-class activity, but students seemed rushed and probably used whatever image they found first, regardless of their level of interest or engagement. Giving students time to collect images (probably some time in class, but mostly out of class) might help them engage more with what they find, thereby making the exercise more helpful overall. I have also considered following this activity with mind-mapping; students have enjoyed mind-mapping in class before and seem to find it particularly useful for invention, and the images may help improve the quality of their maps.

I think this exercise could also provide some preparation for the image production students complete as a part of their final major assignment. Right now, the image production assignment is fairly open, but I provide students with in-class instruction on Animoto so that everyone has at least one means of producing a visual argument with which they feel comfortable. Compiling a collection of image could segue into this more significant assignment fairly easily, particularly since the guiding questions ask students to identify what is missing from the representations they find. Identifying what the images lack (individually and as a group) could better prepare students to intervene in a broader visual conversation.

Poetry in Images

Mike Widner — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:30:12 +0000

Author:

Mike Widner

Image Credit:

Steve A. Johnson

Students often have difficulty reading and interpreting poetry. It's an alien skill, it seems, for most of them. The challenge is even greater when there's a significant language barrier, such as trying to read Chaucer in Middle English. In my Banned Books course this semester, therefore, I had students collaboratively annotate passages from The Canterbury Tales with relevant images. This exercise would work, however, for any poem.

We began with a wiki page that had the introductory passage from the "General Prologue" in place. Students then searched for images that would annotate an individual line or phrase. For example, the famous first line ("Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote") received an image of flowers in the rain to illustrate April showers. The image at the top of this page remarks upon the Miller's portrait, in which Chaucer regularly compares him to a hog.

Once students annotated most of the lines, a visual narrative arose that gave the students an easier entry into the meaning of the lines. The prevalence of nature imagery and ideas of generation and rebirth in the first 18 lines of the General Prologue came through clearly. By making these themes visible, we were then able to return to a discussion of the text while also increasing student confidence in their ability to navigate the difficulties of the poem. We also were able to discuss how the images did not always match the precise meaning of the words, thereby re-emphasizing the textual specifics.

Because this exercise was done with a class-restricted wiki, we did not need to worry about making sure the images used were licensed appropriately. Only students in the course could see it. For a different method of interpreting poetry via images, see Elizabeth Frye's lesson plan "Teaching Poetry with Image Databases."

Inventing with Images

Megan Gianfagna — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:20:26 +0000

Author:

Megan Gianfagna

Image Credit:

Will Bailey

I’ve often had students work with images in past semesters, but in those activities I’ve used them as texts for analysis or tools for organization, as when students constructed visual-verbal-aural outlines in Animoto to help them prepare for their formal essays. This semester I decided to have my RHE 306 class focus on using images to aid in invention and construction of a succinct argument. Specifically, I asked them to create a bumper sticker through an in-class activity meant to help them explore commonplaces and introduce them to visual rhetoric. As I note in my lesson plan, students created their bumper stickers, along with a short reflection, in one class period.

Because the activity acted as a bridge into our rhetorical analysis unit, I wanted it to call their attention to basic design decisions like placement, size, color and typeface as well as the rhetorical impact of these elements. Most importantly, I wanted them to focus on how they were responding to or incorporating a particular commonplace in their bumper sticker and crafting a message to accompany the image. To accomplish these goals, I suggested they use PowerPoint or even Word unless they had past experience with more sophisticated image-manipulation software. I found they were familiar with importing images into PowerPoint from making presentations in the past, and that when they had questions about what to do or how to do it, they were able to collaborate with those around them to arrive at a solution.

Using familiar technology in a low-stakes assignment made them feel more comfortable as they were building confidence in their capacity for visual and verbal invention and composition. Though they were uncomfortable at first with what they perceived as a more creative exercise than they’d encountered in most other writing courses, they were able to write copy that employed a variety of very effective rhetorical strategies and convey their ideas in a genre-appropriate way. I was particularly impressed at how they were able to use each other as resources for brainstorming and thinking through how their bumper stickers might be read differently if actually applied to a car.

I believe the added value of this assignment was in how students used familiar software in an unfamiliar way. It pushed them to think about the program’s capabilities and not just the particular rhetorical situations and genres it has become closely associated with. As Stuart Selber says in Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, one marker of students’ functional literacy is “mak[ing] use of the specialized discourses associated with computers” (45), a goal that instructors can help them reach by encouraging them to “appropriate the various discourses of literary technologies” (58). As much as I enjoy showing students the possibilities offered by newer, shinier programs, I found that helping them see alternative uses and greater composing potential in a familiar platform was simple and rewarding.