Study the Opposition

Find 10 articles that take a different stance on the controversial issue you’ve been working on. Aim to gather articles from a variety of sources (newspapers, personal blogs, etc.) In some cases, you may find that there are several distinct kinds of opposition:

• people who disagree with you on principle
• people who agree on principle but disagree on method

If so, take note of that complication and consider gathering articles for both categories. You may decide to focus just on one group in your speech, but by gathering more sources now, you’re prepping for either possibility, allowing you to make that big decision later on, once you know more.

Choose two articles from your collection, one that’s completely wrongheaded and another that you’re impressed by. Write a ¶ on each article, as follows:

• A ¶ referencing the wrongheaded article to dismiss the logic of some members of the opposition. Note: quoting from the source will help you pin down your opponent’s false logic or bad faith—or whatever other objection you’re lodging.
• A ¶ referencing the impressive article to acknowledge the strength of its argument, followed (possibly) by a refutation of some kind. You may decide to make this a 2-¶ sequence.

From these two responses, choose ONE to share with the class, under the appropriate heading below.

MLA Redux

As discussed in class a week ago, the MLA changed its guidance in recent years on topics like URLs. So I’ve created a new Google Forms quiz so we can hammer down these pesky details in advance of the final essay draft. The quiz (scored for completion only) should take 20-30 minutes.

Different Modes of Eloquence

For lecture today, I’d like you to watch three different speeches. Each is excellent in its own way.

Harvard Male Orator Jonathan Roberts

I heard Roberts speak at Harvard’s graduation a few years ago, and I thought of him when I created this collection of videos. What do you think makes him memorable?

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza

I found Garza’s speech in a YouTube search for Black Lives Matter activists. Her style is effective, but notably different in her approach from Roberts. What techniques does she draw on?

John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!

Columbia U linguist John McWhorter has a number of speeches up on YouTube, some of them more political than this. I chose this speech because it exemplifies the “Ted Talk Style.” What qualities distinguish Ted Talks from political speeches and graduation speeches?

Having watched all three videos, respond to one of the questions posed above and post in the appropriate space below. A bullet-point list of qualities or techniques is fine; you don’t need to write a ¶.

Research a Pressing Issue

Pick a controversial issue from the past few years. Some suggestions:

• Black Lives Matter
• #MeToo
• Immigration
• North Korea
• Global Warming
• Gun Control
• The Second Impeachment of President Trump
• "Cancel Culture"
• China: nation and diaspora
• something else of your choosing

Find 10 articles on your issue of choice that share your political outlook. Some of your articles should be from major news publications, but others can and should come from political pressure groups or personal blogs.

Since all 10 articles share your political outlook, you’re probably in broad agreement with all of them. But that doesn’t mean you like them all equally. Choose your favorite OR your least favorite and write a brief 2-¶ response, as follows:

1. Use the first ¶ to introduce the author and argument to your reader.
2. Use the second ¶ to critique the article: why is it rhetorically effective or ineffective? In your analysis, consider the article’s intended audience: pieces of rhetoric can only be judged effective in relation to an audience.

Post your 2-¶ response in the appropriate heading below, along with links to ALL 10 of your articles.

Note: if you chose a topic that I didn’t list, feel free to create your own Topic Header by typing an appropriate title into a comment, and then pasting your HW as a response to the comment you just created. I can edit your comment to make the topic header boldface later on.

Cancelled in 2021

Was:

Turning in Paper 1

When your essay is complete, Print/Export to .pdf. Give the file a name like “Your Name.pdf”

Choose a one-¶ or two-¶ sequence you’re particularly proud of. Paste that passage into a comment below, and use the “choose file” option to attach your .pdf essay to that comment.

What’s Helen to Gorgias?

One of the challenges of reading Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen” is working out why he takes the trouble to defend the reputation of a fictional character: it’s a bit like someone standing up to celebrate Scrooge or pour scorn upon Santa Claus.

Reread Gorgias (link), then consider the following:

1. When King says repeatedly “Now is the time…. Now is the time….” we get the sense that he was responding to an audience that thought now was not the time to address the longstanding legacy of slavery. Similarly when King says “We cannot be satisfied…. We cannot be satisfied….” he’s writing for people who thought that Black Americans should be satisfied with the progress made so far. By a similar logic, what beliefs about Helen, would you guess, is Gorgias responding to? In your answer, point to a specific passage in his speech.
2. Based on Bernard Evslin’s summary of Helen’s life (Gods, Demigods and Demons, pp 89-91) give a brief summary of the argument you’d make for Helen’s innocence before present-day jury.
3. What sort of precedent does Gorgias set in ¶6 of his speech, when he speaks of the power of fate in human affairs? Do subsequent ¶s make this precedent better or worse? To put it another way, if we agree with Gorgias that Helen should go free, how might that reasoning impact our future legal decisions?

Answer ONE of these questions in a short ¶ and post it in the comments below. Please reload the page before posting, so your answer doesn’t simply duplicate someone else’s answer.

Oral Eloquence

This assignment makes a start on Unit 2.

For class today we’ll be looking at two famous speeches. The first is Martin Luther King’s speech on the National Mall during the 1963 March on Washington. The second is a rhetorical exercise written by Gorgias, perhaps the most famous rhetorician of Classical Athens.

1. Watch MLK deliver his speech — or, better, close your eyes and listen. The speech runs about 17 minutes. Don’t take notes, but do pay attention to his words (link to the text of his speech). Immediately afterward, write down as many phrases, metaphors and ideas as you can remember. Bring these scribbles to class.
2. Read Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen” If this link doesn’t work, look for Gorgias’ encomium among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site. As you read, think about what it shares in common with King’s famous speech. Try reading one of Gorgias’ paragraphs aloud using King’s slow, sententious style.

In considering similarities and contrasts between these speeches, think about how they sound, how they approach their topics, and (not least) their occasions: what the speakers were trying to accomplish.

For each of the following rhetorical devices, highlight a passage in both speeches (you should have no trouble finding the text of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech online).

• Metaphor
• Isocolon
• Antithesis
• Homeoteleuton

Finally post several of the passages you highlighted under the appropriate rhetorical device. (Reload this page before you post, so you can make sure you post a passage that no one else has posted.)

Essay Draft Due

Turn in your essay draft on the draft assignment page. Instructions at the bottom of that page.

Prep for Class

Check out this survey on using Argument vs. Background sources. We’ll discuss in class.

Classes Remote

To facilitate draft discussion, I’m shifting all classes remote for today.

Peer Review Prompts

1. Introduction
2. Evidence
3. Deepening Structure

Is Justice a Shared Fiction?

During Rhetoric Lecture, , via this special Zoom link.

Reading: Harari, Chapters 6 and 8.

In recent classes, we’ve read roughly the first third of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, in which he argues that large-scale human organizations depend on shared fictions. Because everyone buys into these myths, mere acquaintances—even strangers—can engage in trade, collaborate on projects, and simply socialize. Looked at from this angle, the concept of justice is itself a shared fiction, one that helps resolve disagreements by identifying who’s right and who’s wrong, channelling outrage in ways that reaffirm rather than trample the social contract.

Yet even as Harari helps us understand how an ancient Babylonian thought he was doing right in owning another human being, Harari’s model would seem to deprive us of the capacity to judge that Babylonian as wrong in his thinking—or (more pressing) to judge a 19th century American slaveowner. In Ch 8, Harari suggests that all social hierarchies are in one way or another “unjust”, but on what grounds does he make this judgement? Two chapters earlier, didn’t he assert that there is no way to escape the “prison walls” of an imagined order?

In preparation for the first in our series of Team Forums, read chapters 6 and 8 in Harari, then post either:

• your answer to this philosophical quandary,
• an insight of your own, applying Harari to the world we live in, OR
• a question that you’d like for Team D faculty to address during the forum.

We will be reading your posts the morning of the Team Forum, so to aim to submit yours by 6am, .

Straddling the Divide: Orality v. Literacy in Ancient Greece

Reading: David Abram, Ch 4 from The Spell of the Sensuous.
If this link doesn’t work, look for Ong’s essay among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site.

Writing: Choose one idea from Abram that strikes you as particularly insightful or counterintuitive. In two ¶s, present this idea to your reader and explore its implications. Just as in the last HW, the challenge is to ensure that your second ¶ does something different from the first, making it meaningfully distinct. Doing so may be a bit harder this time, since both ¶s draw from the same source, but consider the following possibilities: (1) move from confusion to understanding, (2) move from one step to the next in a logical argument, (3) move from certainty to new doubt. (Here’s a longer list of possibilities: link.)

Paste your two-¶ sequence into the comments below. (Once again, make sure to skip an extra line between ¶s so they look good on this website.)

Using Sources
With the essay draft due early next week, we should talk tomorrow about methods of using sources. It’s a complicated question, since we have four distinct ways of using a source. Here’s a quick survey to get our conversation started in class tomorrow: link. The survey should take you just 5 minutes.

Setting Idea Sources in Relation

Reading/Viewing:

• the opening pages from of Ch 3 of Walter Ong’s “Orality and Literacy.”
  If this link doesn’t work, look for Ong’s essay among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site.
• Harari, Ch 7.
• Matt Parker, “What was the first (known) maths mistake?”

The goal of today’s writing assignment is to present the ideas of two authors in meaningful relationship to one another. From the three sources listed above, choose two that strike you as having “something to say” to one another. I encourage you to think of idea sources as characters, identifying each text with the author who created it. So when two idea sources encounter one another in the space of your brain, how do they get along? Are they allies? Enemies?

I’m giving you TWO paragraphs to present your thoughts on these sources. The first ¶ should focus our attention on a curious idea from one of the sources (Author A). The second ¶ then brings in the second source (Author B), but note that this can be done in any of a number of ways:

• Author B objects to the account given by author A in the prior ¶.
• Author B offers a deeper explanation of a phenomenon described by Author A.
• Author B offers a curious example of a broader phenomenon described by Author A.
• etc.

Try to keep your ¶s short. Make sure to include both authors as characters, using phrases like “Harari suggests,” “Ong argues,” etc.). Try to express each author’s idea in clear, vivid language. And, finally, give a clear signal at the top of ¶2 as to Author B’s relationship to Author A’s idea: agree, disagree, complicate, challenge, etc.

Post your response in the comments below. Note that in posting HW on this website, you should make sure that there are two carriage returns between your ¶s. Formatting your response this way will make them show up as separate ¶s, each with a first-line indent.

In Class

“Once upon a time, as a walk through the woods was taking place on the part of Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf’s jump out from behind a tree occurred, causing her fright.”

What's wrong with this sentence?

Looking Ahead to Essay One

Essay one asks you to work independently from the readings we’re doing in class, writing a short analytical essay on Columbus’ objectives during his discovery of the new world. Take a few minutes to read the Synthesis—Draft assignment, linked at top right. I’ll set aside the last 15 minutes of class for questions about this assignment.