course material | Rhetoric and Civic Life course material | English 137H, Fall '13 / English 138T, Spring '14

e-portfolios to workshop

April 21, 2014 by Adam Haley

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e-portfolios, as far as the eye can see

April 14, 2014 by Adam Haley

successful Excellence in Communication Certificate portfolios
two friends/former colleagues of mine: Andrew Pilsch and Shawna Ross
some samples from LA101H, RCL’s predecessor: Madeleine Williams, Coral Flanagan, Krista Holobar, Kaylin Mansley, Lauren Chelli, Jeong Park, Alexa Lewis, Everleigh Stokes, Erin Ryan, Taryn Codner, Chelsie Rimel, Ashley Sausman, Joe Turk, Thomas Hader, Kaitlyn Leahey

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persuasion and policy

March 5, 2014 by Adam Haley

And a handful of policy/position papers worth looking at as models of how to overview the policy questions surrounding a given issue:

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advocacy and the production of encounters

March 5, 2014 by Adam Haley

Earth Hour
the Free Hugs Campaign (and other random acts of kindness)
the faux-Victoria’s Secret “PINK Loves CONSENT” line
two very powerful photo essays: “Photographer As Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence” and “I Am Unbeatable”
Rick Santelli’s tea party
SlutWalk Toronto
direct confrontation with the Willard Preacher
PSU student leaders’ anti-State Patty’s Day video
Facebook advocacy: Hurricane Sandy relief, the red equal sign (and critique)

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some of the many thises in which some “I” believes

January 15, 2014 by Adam Haley

Jocelyn Fong – “Rice for Thanksgiving”
Corey Harbaugh – “Truth and the Santa Claus Moment”
Scott Shackelford – “The Wonders of the Future”
Erin Blakemore – “The Sisterhood of Roller Derby”

And, on a somewhat different note: “A Rejected Submission to NPR’s ‘This I Believe'”

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some paradigm shift examples

October 25, 2013 by Adam Haley

Clive Thompson on the death of the phone call
Pew on how Americans get their news now
“Artists Find Backers as Labels Wane,” on the shifts in the structure of the music industry (counterpoint: “The Web’s Elusive Promise of a DIY Career in the Arts”)
“Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age”
Pete Holmes on Google
Louis C.K. vs. smartphones and Daniel Engber’s rebuttal
“The infertility timebomb: Are men facing rapid extinction?”
100 years of style in 100 seconds
“Ancient Aliens, Scientism, and the Need for Myth,” on the rise of the “paranormal edutainment complex”
“The Rise of the NBA Nerd”
“From Hogwarts to Harvard: Survival Games for the 21st Century”
“Brain Gain,” on the rise of neuroenhancing drugs
three things on drones: how robot drones revolutionized the face of warfare, “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man”, and the “Living Under Drones” report

Lastly, here’s one more example from RCL’s own Jessica O’Hara, who has posted a link to an essay she wrote for an edited volume on the philosophy of horror. The essay is entitled “Making Their Presence Known: TV’s Ghost-Hunter Phenomenon in a ‘Post-‘ World,” and you can find it on Google Books here. She calls particular attention to the “Spectres of 9/11” section, near the end of the essay, as an example of paradigm shift argumentation. Here’s Jessica talking about the development of the essay:

When I developed this essay, at first, all I knew was that I wanted to write on ghost-hunter shows because I liked them and the Paranormal State people were local. The section about 9/11 came out of my realization that the structure of ghost-hunter shows mimicked HGTV home-improvement shows. Once I made that connection, which amused me, I started to wonder why both genres of shows appeared this past decade. Then I connected their rise to the rhetoric of home improvement, which imagines the home as a “sanctuary.” Why does the home need to be a sanctuary? I thought about this question in relation to 9/11, the emergent dread of public spaces, and the decline in organized religion.

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objecting rhetorically

October 7, 2013 by Adam Haley

Here‘s a useful critique, by David Sirota in Salon, of Chipotle’s wildly successful “Scarecrow” ad. A sample:

In other words, his solution to the meat-producing factory farming system he hates is not just a meat-based system that slaughters animals in a more humane fashion — but a plant-based system that wholly avoids such slaughter. The contrast between the first and the second half of the ad is the story here. The first half is all about meat eating and animal killing, while the second half — the solution part — has nothing to do with meat eating and avoids blatant references to the act of killing animals.

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