II.

Seeing and Hearing Texts

This progressions essay requirement asks you to create an idea of your own with the aid
of a piece of visual media, an image of experience, and a written text. In the essay itself
you will develop your idea in light of these questions:
o What are the larger implications of texts and ideas?
o What do the various pieces of evidence you have collected tell us about your
idea?
o Why should a general reader care about your idea?
o Remember to focalize on the recurring themes in our readings and pieces of
media. For instance:
o War
o What is a hero? What is a villain?
o Policing the Police
o How do images influence meaning?
o What is Propaganda?
o Media and Manipulation
o Resisting the Known
o An Alien Among the Masses
o Defying Archetypes
o And etc. (we will discuss in class)
By the end of this progression, you should understand the following key terms: wordpicture and scene. You should also understand some basic concepts of structure. You will
be expected to follow MLA documentation and to perform both surface editing and deep
editing.

Exercise #1: The Word-Picture

Your recent work in reading essays should have demonstrated to you the importance of a
reading process that is active, and it should have reaffirmed the rigorous demands of
good, clean writing. In this next writing sequence, you will extend the active reading
process to a different kind of text: a visual object such as a painting, a sculpture, or a
photograph that represents one of the themes that you observe. You can discover this
visual object from your life, your readings, and even your viewings of media, but it must
have meaning to you.

Create a word- picture of a visual object so that readers can see the object through
your words. Select a visual object such as a painting, a sculpture, or a photograph

that interests you or triggers a strong response within you. (Choose carefully you
will be working with this art object for the next month.) Describe only what you
perceive so that others who do not have access to the object can see it too; that is, do
not mention names and historical dates.

Manuscript Notes: Try to keep your word-picture as short as possible (about 100
words) without sacrificing precision; produce something more evocative than a
laundry list of features.

Exercise #2: The Scene

Your second exercise in this progression is to make use of your visual object in a scene, a
scene that puts you and the object in relationship with one another. The scene may shed
light on your attitude toward the object.

Write a scene that will help your readers begin to understand what idea your visual
object has sparked in you. In this scene, you should try and focalize around the issue
you would like to discuss. Remember that a scene is dramatic and constructed so
that readers in order experience the action. Readers may be drawn into the scene by
a dramatic action, an interesting conversation, or by the sheer force of your creative
language. Your scene need not focus on your visual object as long as the object plays
some part in the scene.

Manuscript Notes: Your scene should be no more than three, double-spaced pages.

Exercise #3: Shitty First Drafts

Your third exercise asks that you produce a Shitty First Draft. By Shitty First Draft,
I mean you should try and write a rough version of your essay. After you read Lamotts
essay on Moodle, you will understand this assignment more. Although this assignment is
a partial essay, you should at least have your introduction written and the rest of the essay
outlined.

Write a Draft of your paper that shows your awareness of the issue or ones own
identity. It is not a complete draft, but a partial draft. You should use the Word

Picture and the Scene as pre-planning work.

Manuscript Notes: Your Draft should at least be two pages. At least, it must
include an introduction, body paragraphs outlined, and the beginnings of a
conclusion.

ESSAY II
Imagine a more general audience and widen your focus to suit it. Examine what theme or
message the piece of media is trying to purport and use evidence to support it. Your
evidence for this essay may focus on Watchmen, another piece of visual media (i.e. They
Live, and etc.), and research. Your paper should not consist of a personal experience.
You may choose to focus on the rhetoric of the different medias and how each piece of
perpetuate a certain theme or idea. Other evidence for your argument may consist of your
research and your scene, but you do not need to confine yourself to this early work: there
may be other visual objects, images of experience, or written/visual texts that now seem
more helpful to you in terms of developing your idea.
See me if you choose to use an alternate visual media, which was not presented in class.

As in your previous essay, keep in mind that though your evidence provides
the foundation for your work, the purpose of your essay is to explore the
meaning of your idea. Keep your voice and your thinking front-and-center.

Remember to use a thesis at the end of your introduction. Your thesis is your
argument road map, without will not understand your reason for writing the
paper.

Use outside research to refine your thoughts and your ideas. Here are some
research ideas:
o What kind of evidence can you use to support your arguments about
rhetoric?
o What are the functions of Heroes/Villains?

o How does rhetoric make an impact on a reader/ observer?

o Why is rhetoric important?
o What is visual rhetoric? What is written rhetoric? How are they
different/similar?
o Propaganda and War
o How can ethos/logos/pathos make a text more impactful/less
impactful?
o How does the rhetoric of a graphic novel impact an audience more
so/ or less so than a book/movie/television show?

This is not a book report. Dont simply summarize; prove something

arguable with your quotes and analysis.

Optional Assignment:
Write a rhetorical analysis of a text of your choice, where you explore the
message or meaning of the text through the rhetorical strategies the author of the
text uses (ethos, pathos, logos).
Note: For the subject of this paper, you may use any of the texts we worked with
in class or you can choose a new text. You can use poetry, music/lyrics, paintings,
photography, your own work (writing or artwork). A student last semester wrote a
rhetorical analysis as a means of gaining understanding of a confusing ad she saw.
Another student wrote about the movie Mean Girls use of ethos, logos, and
pathos and other rhetorical devices.
Manuscript Notes: This essay should be four to six double-spaced pages and calls
for MLA documentation; you must include a Works Cited list at the end of your
essay. When you quote key phrases or clauses from your written text(s), you must
provide parenthetical documentation.