Nathan's Rhetoric and Civic Life

Here’s the link to my portfolio. Thanks for everything, Ben!

Nathan Larkin ePortfolio

For my advocacy project, I am going to advocate fossil fuel divestment here at Penn State.  Penn State invest tens of millions of dollars from its endowment fund in the fossil fuel industry every year. I am of the belief that those investment ought to be removed and reallocated to more sustainable investment options.

My audience is the entire Penn State community, but I will focus mostly on the student body. The mode that I will use to advocate is presentation-giving. I will go to various student and faculty groups on campus and present the case for divestment, in the hopes that they will endorse the cause. This will allow for a coalition to form in support of divestment. At these presentations, I will solicit petition signatures in addition to endorsement.

While it may be beyond the scope and timeframe of the advocacy project, I plan to present the petition and case for divestment to Penn State’s Board of Trustees in the future.

For my persuasive essay topic, I am thinking of advocating for fossil fuel divestment, especially here at Penn State. Most colleges and universities invest in the fossil fuel industry through their endowment funds. I am going to argue that it is immoral and socially irresponsible for our institutions of higher education to feed this industry, which condemns the Earth to climate disaster. I will also show how it can beneficial for schools’ financial portfolios to divestment.

In researching this topic, I have read a lot about the nitty-gritty finance issues of divestment so that I can speak with financial literacy and illustrate the feasibility of fossil fuel divestment. I have also researched various divestment movements already occurring at various colleges, as well as the South African divestment movement of the 1980s and 90s, which was geared toward fighting the apartheid.

I think that this an appropriate topic for the assignment because it encompasses the larger issue of climate change, while focusing on a specific aspect of the effort to fight it. Additionally, it is a policy that college students across the country have a direct hand in.

“This I Believe” essay text:

Roughly a century ago, America’s forests were under attack. Deforestation and environmental destruction were rampant, as natural resources were being used with a sense of reckless abandon. If not for the efforts of early environmentalists, this trend of senselessness may have continued. Some of the more popular of these early stewards of the Earth include the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Gifford Pinchot. The latter was the 28th governor of Pennsylvania. He dedicated his life to ensuring the sustainability of the American wilderness, and he was instrumental in establishing our nation’s current system of protected lands as the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. I believe in the efforts of environmentalists such as Gifford Pinchot, and I believe in Gifford Pinchot State Park, or simply, Pinchot Park, as it’s always been to me.

Only a twenty minute drive from my home, I frequented Pinchot Park as a child with my father. I can remember vividly the serenity of canoeing on the lake and the excitement of reeling in a tiny sunfish, that seemed such a monstrous feat to a small boy. I can recall the sounds of autumn’s leaves crackling beneath my feet as I hiked Pinchot’s trails and the nerves I felt while trekking across a frozen lake in the stillness of winter. And I remember unknowingly upholding the principles of environmental stewardship by abiding to my dad’s rule of always leaving the Park cleaner than we found it, even if that meant scouring the area to find at least one piece of trash left by some previous park goer.

Although it was below my level of consciousness at the time, my visits to Pinchot Park in my youth fostered a deep appreciation for the inherent value of nature— an appreciation that I carry with me still today, and probably will for my whole life, because now, Pinchot Park is all around me.

I find pleasure and value in nature everyday. Whether it means going out of my way to walk through the gardens by the Millennium Science Building, or feeding a squirrel with one of the many acorns that I keep in my backpack for that specific purpose, or simply taking a route to class that has more trees along the way, experiencing the simple pleasures that nature offers is a necessity of my everyday life. Every walk that I take proves to be an intimate and therapeutic experience, and it never ceases to amaze me how simply taking a moment to breath in the fresh air and acknowledge the aesthetics of the landscape can have such a positive effect on my being. Perhaps the famous environmentalist, John Muir put it best, when he said, “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” This, I believe.

This I Believe audio track:

So, I didn’t realize that we were supposed to post about our ideas for these assignments (I’m still not entirely sure, but Ben’s email makes me think that I was supposed to. Better safe than sorry). Regardless….

For my TIB podcast, I’m thinking of speaking about conservationism. In doing so, I’d like to talk about the roots of my belief in conservationism. As a child, I frequently visited Gifford Pinchot State Park with my father. The park is only about a 20 minute drive from my house. We would go on hikes (part of the Appalachian Trail runs through the Park), we would fish, and we would canoe. Specifically, we often caught sunfish while fishing. These fish are generally small, and therefore easy to reel in for a small child. So I’m considering calling my TIB “I believe in Sunfish” or “I believe in fishing” or maybe “I believe in Pinchot Park.” Alternatively, I’m thinking of doing something along the lines of believing in imagination. But not imagination in the sense of pretending–more in the sense of imaging a more desirable vision of yourself or the world and working to make it so. Obviously, I’m leaning toward the former.

For my CI blog, I am considering topics that would fall under either the environment or politics topic clusters. In the realm of politics, I believe that it would be interesting to examine the rightward ideological shift of the Republican party since the beginning of the Reagan administration. I would examine the shift’s causes and consequences. In the realm of the environment, I would examine fracking, a topic that I am extremely interested in and feel will have enormous implications in the not so distant future. This blog would be anti-fracking.

For my passion blog, I will most likely stick with my current topic–environmentalism. My blog is somewhat broad. As it says in the title, my blog can cover issues ranging from parks, to policy, to protest. If I were to change my topic, I would most likely create a blog that offers commentary and opinion on current events concerning hot political topics.

In order to enhance the ethical appeal of our video, my group has decided to utilize as many primary sources in our video as possible. To that end, we have arranged interviews with various experts in the field covered by our video topic, hydraulic fracturing, here at Penn State. Rather than simply compiling and editing clips and slides to comprise our video, we will shoot original footage of the interviews and incorporate said footage into our video. While we believe that obtaining and utilizing original interviews with experts will bolster the ethos of our video, any ethical appeal that is built up will surely be diminished, at least in part, if camera work is shoddy. For that reason, the information in the “Shooting Basics” video will have a large impact on my group’s visual and audio design choices.

There are many basic steps outlined in this video, little things we can do, that will greatly enhance the quality of our visuals. First and foremost, because we plan to show footage of experts answering our questions, we will need to ensure that we have proper lighting. This means that our subject should face the light source, enabling his or her face to be seen more visibly. Additionally, there will likely be no reason for us to move the camera, and it therefore may be best to utilize a tripod to ensure that the shot is steady. We will not film our subject head on, keeping in mind the rule of thirds. Once we have obtained good shots of the interviews, we will need to edit them. To do this, we must heed the tips provided in the “Editing Basics” video.

In editing our interviews, we will need to trim footage and use transitions. This technique will be used heavily because there may be many instances where we need only to hear our subjects answer to various questions, rather than hearing us ask the question as well. We will need to transfer into and out of the interview footage as we show various other visuals to help illustrate the points that our interviewee is making.

It’s finally here, Thanksgiving break. The week-long break from school to go home, relax with family, with friends from back home, and to chow down on some turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy. Thanksgiving traditions vary far and wide. Some people go to a relative’s house and have a big get-together with lots of extended family, and some might have a much smaller gathering. Whatever your own family’s Thanksgiving celebration looks like, however unique it may be, it has at least one thing in common with other people’s celebrations: civic engagement. Simply gathering with one’s family and talking and sharing ideas and catching up with one another can be a form of civic engagement, as it promotes a sense of community within the family unit. Another aspect of the Thanksgiving holiday that can serve as civic engagement is the collective effort of various family members to concoct a dinner. In my family, at least, making dinner is certainly a team effort with each immediate family being responsible for separate dish (mine is traditionally responsible for the mashed potatoes, my personal favorite dish). In coming working together to make a meal, the extended family is participating in collective action with a clear, focused goal. This is certainly civic engagement.

The Thanksgiving holiday is not the only part of the break that enable civic engagement. I, for one, am excited to spend some time with some of my old friends from high school. Wasting away a night in someone’s basement, as we did so many nights in high school, will be refreshing and welcomed form of civic engagement as we all share stories of our first couple of months at our various colleges. The bonding and comaraderie that is sure to ensue will represent a form of civic engagement in the community that is our closely knit group of friends. Thanksgiving break provides an opportunity for that civic engagement to exist.

A video of my talk can be viewed here.

Part 1

The TED talk assignment that we completed was an amalgamation of all the techniques and concepts that have been discussed and analyzed in CAS 137H so far.  With that sentiment in mind, I attempted to take into account much of what we have learned thus far in preparing my talk.

The first step in preparing my talk was to decide which aspects of my paradigm shift paper to utilize and expand upon. To do this, I had to decide which parts of my paper were too dry or relied too heavily upon statistical evidence for a talk. It is oftentimes ineffective to recite statistics in a speech and far more effective to convey qualitative concepts. In making a decision as to the concept of my speech, I kept in mind the principle of rhetoric that we learned earlier in the course. I made sure that my topic gave me an opportunity to ethically, emotionally, and logically appeal to my audience. I also ensured that my topic was kairotic, and that I could allude to the exigence of said kairos.

After deciding upon the topic of talk, I began drafting a script. I found that the most effective way to discover what phrasing worked best in the spoken medium was to write out loud, so to speak. Keeping in mind the goal of what I wanted to convey, I would simply speak aloud and attempt to articulate my ideas, rather than trying to do so on paper. This allowed me to discover what sounded natural in the spoken medium; after all, TED talks are meant to be conversational. I also found it helpful to record myself speaking with my phone. Listening to myself speak helped me to realize what flowed well and what sounded awkward in regards to word choice and vocal inflection.

In future talks, I believe it would be beneficial to spend more time memorizing my script. Because I was not speaking strictly from memory, I found myself searching for the correct words to articulate my ideas at certain points throughout my talk. I do partially attribute my lack of memorization to having spoken on the first day; still, I will focus more on memorization.

Part 2

After watching my talk, I realize that I am mostly pleased with how it turned out. One specific aspect of my explanation of the topic that I thought worked very well was the background information that I provided in regards to each couple that I highlighted. I think that this enabled me to emotionally appeal to the audience, to appeal to pathos. It did so by connecting the macro issue of marriage equality to micro instances; I successfully showed that there are real human consequences to policy decisions regarding marriage.

While I was happy with the explanation of content in my speech, I was somewhat underwhelmed with my delivery. I thought that my vocal inflection could have been better at certain points and that it suffered the most when I found myself searching for the correct words to articulate my ideas. I believe that more rehearsal and attention to detail in preparing my talk could have helped with this. Also, as a side note, when watching the video I realized that my hair was in my face much of the time. Though I was aware of this while speaking, I did not think it looked as foolish as it did. I thought it would look to stupid to be brushing my hair out of my face during a talk, but after watching the video I see that it looked stupid not to brush the hair out of my face.

Happy Halloween everybody! Ahh yes, it’s that time of year again. Halloween is probably a fond pastime for a lot of us. Whether we liked trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, or simply brainstorming about what to wear for a costume, most all of us participated in Halloween festivities and continue to do so today. What we may not realize is that a lot of our favorite Halloween traditions are a great form of civic engagement.

There is the obvious, trick-or-treating. Getting together with friends and deciding what everyone will dress up as and which housing developments to trick-or-treat through is a prime example of civic engagement that most of us took part in during our childhoods. Even this year, as a young adult, I found myself having the very same conversation with friends as we tried to decide what would dress up as for Halloween parties. We went with Mystery Inc. from Scooby-Doo. I’m going to be Shaggy.

That brings me to my next point, Halloween parties in town. Halloween also represents a good opportunity for civic engagement because of all the chances to dress up and go out with friends. While it is possible to go out with friends on any given day here at Penn State, such opportunities are especially plentiful during the Halloween season. Everyone seems to have to plans to dress in costume and go out. This simple collective action is a form of civic engagement.

Opportunities for engagement are not only found on Halloween in the company of friends. Opportunities can be found within the family unit as well. One of my favorite pastimes was always carving pumpkins with my family. This was an example of civic engagement because myself, my parents, and my sisters would all work together toward the common goal of creating the best possible jack-o-lantern that we could.

Whether we ever realized it or not, mostly all of us took part in civic engagement through some of our fondest Halloween traditions.

I am going to do my TED talk on the same topic that I am did my paradigm shift paper on–gay rights. However, unlike in my paper, I plan to parallel the modern gay rights movement with human rights movements of days past. By finding the relationship between the gay rights movement and other movements, I hope to provide insight as to the trajectory of the gay rights movement. My thesis, which is yet to be finalized, is that the modern gay rights movement is reminiscent of past movements, especially the African American civil rights movement of 1960s, and that an analysis of that movement therefore allows us to foresee the likely trajectory of the gay rights movement. Of course, that wording needs to be heavily workshopped.

To support my claim, I plan to utilize logos mainly. I will draw historical parallels between the gay rights movement and previous human rights movements that are logically reasonable. Additionally, I will use pathos in order to engage my audience and hopefully render them sympathetic to the cause of the gay rights movement, much the way that I assume my audience is sympathetic to the cause of the black civil rights movement.