Drafting your first essay

Before class on Tuesday, I would like you to spend some time working on our current assignment. First, make sure you identify and read your primary text(s) carefully, taking notes and/or annotating them in preparation for your analysis. What claim(s) are these texts making and more importantly, how do they work persuasively? What claims about their rhetorical strategies can you begin to make at this point in your research?

After you engage a bit with these texts on your own, then I'd like you start thinking about what questions you have about them that you need help from other scholars or commentators to answer. I'd like you to find three secondary/scholarly sources before Tuesday and bring them with you to class. What insights do they offer that will help you as you draft your first essay?

Once you've worked through these questions, I'd like you post a comment here that summarizes your research thus far. That is, share with us your tentative claim and explain how you present your analysis in a way that effectively supports your discussion.

Generating ideas for our first essay

Here are the brainstorming exercises from today's class. Please make sure and post your response (including a response to the final question before class on Thursday).

1. What kind of rhetoric, persuasive discourse, or writing interests you (including, but not limited to, the persuasive op-ed pieces in the New York Times)? Generate a list of all the possible kinds of writing that you might focus on for this assignment.

2. Circle or highlight the three kinds of writing or discourse that interests you the most.

3. Pick one of these kinds of writing and make a list of possible primary sources, or individual texts, that you could use as a primary text and analyze for this assignment.

4. Write a brief paragraph that explores why this kind of writing and these texts interest you. What do you expect to learn from analyzing them? Why might this analysis be significant?

5. Share one promising idea for this assignment with the rest of us.

6. Before class on Thursday, post your brainstorm to our course blog. Conclude your initial brainstorm with a brief paragraph that explains how you’re planning to complete our first assignment. Identify your primary text(s) and locate at least one secondary source that you think looks promising.

7. Last, if you have any questions or are struggling with ideas for this assignment, please feel free to include them in your response as well. Thanks!

Responding to classical philosophies of rhetoric

Before class starts on Tuesday, I’d like you to identify a key passage from either Gorgias’s Ecomium of Helen or Plato’s dialogue Gorgias that you think is the most significant passage from the day’s reading. Write a paragraph in which you share this passage with the rest of class, giving context for it (in relation to the rest of the reading) and justifying why you think it is significant. Ultimately, what does this passage say about rhetoric (or oratory), language, and/or power?

Defining rhetoric

Before we start today’s discussion, I’d like you to take a few minutes and explain Covino and Joliffe’s definition of rhetoric in your own words. Recall that they define rhetoric as “a primarily verbal, situationally contingent, epistemic art that is both philosophical and practical and gives rise to potentially active texts” (5). What do you think this definition means? What is interesting or significant about it?

Identifying and explaining rhetorical strategies

Before class on Thursday, select an editorial or op-ed piece from the New York Times that interests you. First, summarize the main claim of the piece and briefly characterize how the writer supports this claim. Then, identify one of the rhetorical strategies—or means of persuasion—that Covino discusses in “What is Rhetoric?” that you see the columnist from the New York Times using in his or her writing. Write a paragraph in which you present a few key sentences or a brief passage that you think illustrates this strategy and then explain how this appeal strengthens the writer’s persuasiveness. Aim for about 250 words and post your response here as a comment to this post.

Welcome to WRIT 1733! Post a profile of your classmate here as a comment.

For your first post to our course blog, I’d like you to get into pairs and interview one of your classmates. Using the questions we generated together as a class, take about ten minutes to ask your classmate more about him- or herself. In addition to the usual questions about who he or she is, where she or he is from, or what he or she does for fun, please pay particular attention to this person's past experiences as a writer. What does your classmate remember about his or her previous writing instruction? What kinds of writing appeals (or doesn’t) to your classmate? Why? What meaningful or significant experiences has he or she had with writing? What hopes (or reservations?) does your classmate have about this course?

Once you complete both interviews, spend the next 20 minutes writing a profile (aim for 250-350 words) that vividly represents your classmate. Whatever issues you focus on, take care with this short piece, for it is our first impression of you as a writer, as well as the first impression of the person you interviewed. Have fun with this piece—make it interesting! Use quotes, brief stories, and any other vivid details you can discover to enrich your profile of this person.