TUESDAY

 

In Class:

Screening of George Romero's Diary of the Dead

 

For Next Time:

Write and post to the Wiki an approx. 300 word response to Diary of the Dead that addresses at least three of the questions listed below. Even though we're analyzing a film and not a piece of writing, we can use the same rubrics that we used to analyze Shooting War. It's only the formal techniques that Romero uses that will be somewhat different.

 

 

 

• What occasion gives rise to the need or opportunity for persuasion?
• What is the historical occasion that would give rise to the composition of this film?
• How does the film establish ethos (personal credibility)?
• Does the film/do the film makers come across as knowledgeable? fair?
• Does the film maker's reputation convey a certain authority?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What values does the audience hold that the film makers appeal to?
• Who have been or might be secondary audiences?
• What are the principal lines of reasoning or kinds of arguments used?
• What topics of invention are employed?
• How does the author or speaker appeal to reason? to emotion?
• What is the structure of the communication; how is it arranged?
• What genre is it following and how do the film makers make use of genre to create meaning?
• What kind of style and tone is used and for what purpose? In what ways might we describe the rhetorical strategies of film as opposed to graphic novels or written texts?
• What effect could the form have, and does this aid or hinder the author's intention?
• What does the nature of the communication reveal about the culture that produced it?
• What kinds of values or customs would the people have that would produce this?
• How do the allusions, historical references, or kinds of words used place this in a certain time and location?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday

 

In Class:

Discussion of Diary of the Dead based on your responses

Mini-lecture: Writing outlines

Group work to create outlines based on your responses

 

For Next Time:

Making use of the practice you've had working on outlines today, develop an outline for your own rhetorical analysis project using your ideas from last week's brainstorming work. Post your outline to the Wiki by class time.

 

 

Discussion of Diary of the Dead

 

--Rhetorical analysis of film v. rhetorical analysis of written text

--Your responses

 

Writing Outlines

 

--Handout: Models for making outlines

--Various stages at which you might make outlines (e.g., before a first draft v. to help in your revisions of a first draft) and how they might be useful in the writing process

 

Group Work

 

--Groups assigned based on your interests in Diary of the Dead

--Looking at your responses and any new ideas you might have, decide as a group what you would include if you were to write a group rhetorical analysis

--Considering the relationships among those ideas, create an outline of a potential paper

--Post your group outline on the Wiki