Saturday, November 29, 2008

Third Prompt, Section One of the Final

3. The very first words of the novel Kindred describe the loss of
Dana's arm. Octavia Butler subsequently wrote of Dana's loss, "I couldn't
let her come back whole."

What do you take to be the significance of Dana's loss? What is the
significance of the necessity of this loss to what you take to be
Butler's project in Kindred? How does the mysteriousness that
surrounds the depiction of this loss -- its specific cause, the mechanism
through which it occurs, its various implications, and so on -- contribute
(if it does) to the expression of this significance?

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Two Early Prompts for the Take-Home Final

1. Make and defend any strong claim you like about director David Cronenberg's film "A History of Violence," but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading either of the opening sequence of the film or the closing sequence of the film (around the dinner table). Your essay should include a plausible case as to why the opening or closing scene is especially key or exemplary for the film as a whole for whatever it is you are illuminating through your reading of it.

2. In Chapter 5 of Part One of Art Spiegelman's Maus, the living narrator-protagonist of a comic-within-the-comic accuses his Mother -- who has committed suicide -- of murdering him, while with his last word the (same?)
narrator-protagonist concludes Part One by accusing his father of being a murderer as well, this time for destroying his dead Mother's diary.

Here are some questions to think about. Any of these questions might provide the basis for a fine thesis.

In what sense might the completion of the book that is Maus come to substitute for the diary that was destroyed? In what ways do these books substitute for the lives they memorialize? In light of your answers to these questions, what is the significance of the tombstone which constitutes Maus's last image? Just what is it that is captured in the testimony that is Maus? What is captured (differently?) in the photographs that are reproduced throughout the narrative? What is lost? What is recaptured that was lost? Who survives?

Focus on just one of these dimensions of Maus, survival,
memorialization, testimony, or representation, and make a strong claim
that you substantiate through a close reading of at least one of the
moments in the text alluded to above and including at least one moment
that is not included above.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Arendt

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. A couple of you have found links to the piece for next Thursday. The chapters in Arendt's books On Violence and Crises of the Republic also entitled "Reflections on Violence" were expanded and adapted from the piece published first in the Review. It's the shorter earlier piece that I've assigned, links to which have been posted by your diligent colleagues. See you Thursday.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Answer Key for Rhetorical Figures, Syllogisms

From the section workshop on rhetorical figures (10/6)

Note: I eliminated the examples that were covered in Eryk’s post, with the single exception of example 1, to which we add a few possible answers.

What did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? J. P. Sartre [Rhetorical Question, Assonance (bowed down to the ground), Metaphor or Metonymy – we weren’t sure how to read the gag in the first question]

Your Mom’s so fat, she could eat the internet. [Hyperbole; the jury is out, but we may also be in the territory of oxymoron and paradox when we consider that one might “eat the internet”]

War: not so good, actually. [Litotes]

Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. [Chiasmus]

If we don’t hang together, we shall hang separately. [This is actually a zeugma, but for our purposes we shall treat it as an instance of chiasmus.]

Dead in the middle of Little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn’t do diddly. [Assonance, Alliteration]

The average person thinks he isn’t. [Ellipsis: the missing term is “average.”]

I can’t tell you how many times he’s distorted the truth. [Occultatio]

Check out my new wheels. [Synecdoche: the whole car is represented by its part, the wheels. And yes, this part is plural. Tough.]

You have to be cruel to be kind. [Paradox]

The iron curtain has lifted. [Metaphor]

I’m a cheerful pessimist. [Oxymoron]

Nice pants. [Irony]

Squish. [Onomatopoeia]

Ah, the sweet smell of success. [Alliteration]

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s Superman! [Auxesis]

I’ve told you a million times! [Hyperbole]

He’s a man of the cloth. [Metonymy; cases were also made in class for mere Metaphor]

Einstein wasn’t a bad mathematician. [Litotes]

Without laws, we can have no freedom. [Paradox]

Beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is a green-ey’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. [Prosopopoeia]

But we glory also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience trial; and trial hope; and hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us. [Auxesis]

If practice makes perfect, and no one’s perfect, then why practice? [Rhetorical Question]

Veni, vidi, vici. [Isocolon, Alliteration, Assonance]

Those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. [Chiasmus]


...And from the section workshop on logical arguments (10/13)

Part 1: Translate enthymemes into major and minor premises and conclusions, without concern for validity or soundness. Some of the following enthymemes were translated in more than one way by our class, and reasonably so; I include only one of the possible answers here in the interest of brevity.

MjP = Major Premise. MnP = Minor Premise. C = Conclusion.

Iraq is a threat to our national security because it possesses vast quantities of enriched uranium.
MjP: All countries that possess vast quantities of uranium are a threat to our national security. MnP: Iraq possesses vast quantities of enriched uranium. C: Iraq is a threat to our national security.

Given John McCain’s health, it isn’t advisable to vote for him. (We translated this a number of ways. Here is one of the options we came up with.)
MjP: If a candidate is in poor health, it is not advisable to vote for him. MnP: John McCain is in poor health. C: It is not advisable to vote for him.

Due to the vulgarity of their lyrics, it’s doubtful that the band has any depth.
MjP: Bands with vulgar lyrics have no depth. MnP: The band has vulgar lyrics. C: The band has no depth.

In the absence of sufficient evidence, the defendant is to be dismissed.
MjP: If there is not enough evidence, the defendant is to be dismissed. MnP: There is not enough evidence. C: The defendant is to be dismissed.

Hugo Chavez admires Fidel Castro, so we can guess what he’d like to do as the head of state of Venezuela.
MjP: If one head of state admires another head of state, he will seek to emulate that other head of state. MnP: Hugo Chavez admires Fidel Castro. C: Hugo Chavez wants to emulate Fidel Castro.

Part 2: Translate the following arguments into syllogisms, taking note of validity of form.

You’ve got to be kidding me, right? I can tell by the look on your face. You made the whole thing up!
MjP: If you have that look on your face, you are lying. MnP: You have that look on your face. C: You’re lying! Valid, Modus Ponens.

Since this is his first year on the job, John can’t be put in charge.
MjP: All people who are put in charge should have more than a year’s experience. MnP: John doesn’t have more than a year’s experience. C: John shouldn’t be put in charge. Valid, Modus Tolens.

All people with things to hide plead the fifth. Tom pleads the Fifth. Tom must have something to hide. This one is already in its syllogistic form, more or less: Major and Minor Premise, followed by conclusion. It is Invalid; its fallacy is that of affirming the consequent.

If the Yankees won yesterday’s game, they are champions. The Yankees won yesterday’s game. Well, there ya go!
MjP: If the Yankees won yesterday’s game, they are champions. MnP: The Yankees won yesterday’s game. C (implied): The Yankees are the champions. Valid, Modus Ponens.

“There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal!” (Mark Twain)
MjP: If one has no ideas, one’s music is legal. MnP: Wagner has no ideas. C: Wagner’s music is legal. Valid, Modus Ponens.

Aisha went to a fabulous liberal arts college, so clearly she’s very bright.
MjP: All people who go to fabulous liberal arts colleges are very bright. MnP: Aisha went to a fabulous liberal arts college. C: Aisha is very bright. Valid, Modus Ponens.

Whenever Kristen gets angry, her left eye begins to twitch. Look! It’s twitching! She must be really pissed!
MjP: If Kristen is angry, her left eye twitches. MnP: Kristen’s left eye is twitching. C: Kristen is angry. Invalid, Affirming the Consequent.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

"Answer Key" Figures of Speech

[NOTE: As promised, an "answer key," or really more of a guideline. After a brief consultation with Dale, it was pointed out to me that some of these are quite good examples of figures of speech we do not cover in this class. Insofar as we restrict ourselves to having to rely on the 20 or so we learned, rather than the 65 that were required as part of the Rennaissance curriculum on rhetoric, below are suggestions for likeliest candidate(s). Be reassured, though, that the exam's format will facilitate having to choice between, say, paradox and irony or metonymy and synecdoche.]

i am a poster girl with no poster
"32 Flavors," Ani Difranco
[Paradox: roughly, she’s an x without x! yet the statement retains a definite provocative sense; it isn’t pure nonsense; I realize some may have put Antanclasis, but I’d say that’s subsidiary, or less compelling of an answer, to paradox in this example]

the Berlin Wall still runs down Main Street
“Subdivision,” Ani Difranco
[metonymy: contiguity of the physical and social act of separating, dividing: i.e. East from West or Socialist from Capitalist for “Berlin Wall” and black from white or rich from poor, with respect to “Main Street”]

Envy is the ulcer of the soul. [metaphor]
Socrates

I am not young enough to know everything.
-Oscar Wilde
[paradox or irony? undecided.]

Who got tha power
This be my question
Tha mass of tha few in this torn nation?
Tha priest tha book or tha congregation?
Tha politricks who rob and hold down your zone?
Or those who give tha thieves tha key to their homes?
Tha pig who's free to murder one Shucklak
Or survivors who make a move and murder one back?
"Mic Check" Rage Against the Machine
[Rhetorical Question(s) throughout; but also Metaphor (i.e. pig), Synecdoche (i.e. the “priest” or “book” as a species for the genus Religion or Authority, etc.), enallage (i.e. this be my question…), etc. and plenty more.]

So I grip tha cannon like Fanon an pass tha shells to my classmates
"Year of the Boomerang" Rage Against the Machine
[catachresis with respect to the use of the term “shells” (i.e. weaponry) in an unfamiliar, or un-usual, context, namely, that of the classroom and education rather than, say, an artillery unit or combat zone. I realize some may have said assonance for ‘cannon’ and ‘Fanon’, which isn’t technically wrong… ]

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. -Malcolm X
[auxesis]

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. [irony.]
-Oscar Wilde

the sun is setting on the century [metaphor]
“To the Teeth,” Ani Difranco

Be sincere; be brief; be seated. [illiteration & isocolon, for our purposes]
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat. [chiasmus, for our purposes]
Socrates

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt [chiasmus, for our purposes]

Don't be afraid to see what you see. [antanaclasis]
-Ronald Reagan

In heaven all the interesting people are missing. [irony]
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. [isocolon, as it’s medium, and oxymoron, as the overall point with respect to the notion of ‘military justice’]
-Groucho Marx

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt [“that you’re a fool.” would finish the statement; thus, ellipsis]
-Abraham Lincoln

I think it would be a good idea. [ellipsis & irony]
-Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

If I treat you kindly does it mean that I'm weak? [rhetorical question]
“Forgive Them Father,” Lauryn Hill

“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction [of a nation]” [ellipsis]
Bob Marley

Homer no function beer well without. [enallage]
-Homer Simpson

“Good grief!” [oxymoron]
-Charlie Brown

Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. [paradox: the last step is really only the first step!?... contradiction that retains meaning, tells a truth of some sort]
-Pascal

Said of a scratch: Look at this wound! [hyperbole]

Said of an amputated leg.: "It's just a flesh wound" [litotes… and, yes, it strongly resembles irony, which is not surprising: litotes is often employed to produce irony]
—Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It would be unseemly of me to speculate about Senator Obama’s ties to 60s radical Mr. Ayer, nor would it be useful to dwell, as so many others have, on the extremist beliefs of his spiritual mentor, the Reverend Wright…
[occultatio]

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. [prosopopoeia, animating the inanimate, namely, the moon]
-George Carlin

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal. [irony, for our purposes]
-Woody Allen

And tha riot be tha rhyme of tha unheard [enallage, if nothing else]
"Calm Like a Bomb" Rage Against the Machine

I cannot live without books. [hyperbole]
-Thomas Jefferson

Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances. [chiasmus, for our purposes]
Euripides

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? "Black Orpheus," Jean-Paul Sartre
[rhetorical question]

you had an army of suits behind you [I’d say: metaphor for ‘army’, substituting for a given collection of agents, metonymy for ‘suits’.. as contiguity of ‘suits’, the body/corps/corpus, standing in for corporate attorneys and executives… ]
"Napoleon," Ani Difranco

We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. [litotes]
-Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20, 1989)

What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. [paradox or irony? or both?]
-George Bernard Shaw

yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
"Self Evident" Ani Difranco, referring to the events of September 11, 2001 [prosopopoeia]

I must be cruel only to be kind. [paradox: I must be x in order to be not x! yet it has meaning…]
-Shakespeare, Hamlet

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope. [irony]
Karl Marx

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. [assonance, for our purposes]
Benjamin Franklin

friendly fire [oxymoron]

"Give us this day our daily bread." [synecdoche, “bread” as species of genus “food” or “nourishment”]
-- Matthew 6:11

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?
--Fidel Castro [rhetorical question, if nothing else]

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death. [prosopopoeia]
--Angela Davis

Graduate student instructor [yes, exactly…]

The Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of the broad base of the American people. This is an outrage. This was democracy’s Black Friday.
-Dennis Kucinich, referring to the bailout legislation [metonymy for Wall Street as well as for Black Friday]

Why would I highlight Governor Palin’s lack of foreign diplomacy experience, or her questionable knowledge of economic principles, if the true nature of my talk today is… [occultatio]

The buzzing of innumerable bees. [onomatapoeia]

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Recorded Lectures

Hello,

My hosting service is working again! I've been able to upload all of the lectures to date and will be linking to them below; you should be able to stream or download them directly from here. I will also keep the xdrive account open and up to date for anyone who is accessing them there.


  1. 09/02/08 - Aristotelian Rhetoric
  2. 09/04/08 - Hecuba
  3. 09/09/08 - Four Habits of Argumentative Writing
  4. 09/11/08 - Kant
  5. 09/16/08 - Pragmatic Analysis
  6. 09/18/08 - Letter from Birmingham Jail
  7. 09/23/08 - Rogerian Synthesis
  8. 09/25/08 - Toulmin Schema
  9. 09/30/08 - Declaration of Independence
  10. 10/02/08 - Schemes and Tropes
  11. 10/07/08 - Logical Syllogism

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Recorded Lectures

I have found a way to upload the recordings! Thanks to a suggestion I have opened an xdrive account and am now hosting the lectures there. However, in order to access them I will need to add your email to a "share list;" so, if you're interested, I will add any email addresses that arrive at:

rhetoric10@thebookish.net

to this list.

Hopefully this time the hosting site will continue to operate!

Ernesto

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Key Rogerian Ideas

Just to be sure you've got these down...

I. Carl Rogers's Principles of Communication:

1. Threat hinders communication. (When a person feels threatened by what another person is saying or writing, however correct it may be, she or he is apt to stop listening or reading in order to protect the ego and reduce anxiety.)
2. Making strong statements of opinion stimulates an audience to respond with strong opinions. Once people have expressed such opinions they are more likely to be interested in defending them than in discussing them.
3. Biased language increased threat while neutral language reduces it.
4. One reduces threat and increases the chance at communication with someone by demonstrating that one understands, or is actively striving to understand, that person's point of view.
5. One improves communication by establishing an atmosphere of trust.

II. Rogerian Rule for Negotiation:

"Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker, and to that speaker's satisfaction."

III Typical Stages in Rogerian Synthesis (in a version of Young, Becker, and Pike 's formulation):

1. An introduction to a problem and a demonstration that the opponent's position is understood.
2. A statement of the contexts in which the opponent's position may be valid.
3. A statement of the writer's position, including the contexts in which it is valid.
4. A statement of how the opponent's position would benefit were it to adopt elements of the writer's position. If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better.

Hope that's helpful. d

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Recordings of the lectures...

Prof. Carrico has give me the o.k. to record and post his lectures on-line; I'll try to link to them here every time I upload them to my hosting site.

The last two lectures can be found at:

09/02/08 - Aristotelian Rhetoric
09/04/08 - Hecuba

Cheers,
Ernesto Lopez

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Syllabus for Rhetoric 10, Fall 2008

What Is Compelling? The Rhetoric of Argument

5-6.30pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 106 Stanley

Course Blog, http://arguere.blogspot.com

Instructor, Dale Carrico: dalec@berkeley.edu
TAs, Emily Carpenter, Eryk Morales-Franceschini

Attend/Participate: 15%; Workshops: 15%; Mid-Term: 35%; Final 35% (Provisionally & Approximately.)

A Provisional Schedule of Meetings

August

Week One
August 28
Course Introduction
SKILL SET: An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.

September

Week Two
September 2
SKILL SET: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

September 4
Euripides, Hecuba

Week Three
September 9
SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1 Formulate a Strong Thesis, 2 Define Terms, 3 Substantiate/Contextualize, 4 Anticipate Objections; Audience/Intention

September 11
Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose"

Week Four
September 16
SKILL SET: Intentions -- Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation

September 18
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail"

Week Five
September 23
SKILL SET: Audiences -- Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Rogerian Rhetoric

September 25
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema

Week Six
September 30
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

October

October 2
SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes

Week Seven
October 7
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes, Formal Fallacies

October 9
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes, Formal Fallacies

Week Eight
October 14
SKILL SET: Informal Fallacies

October 16
SKILL SET: Informal Fallacies

Week Nine
October 21
Mid-Term Examination, Part One

October 23
Mid-Term Examination, Part Two

Week Ten
October 28
Screening and Discussing the Film, "A History of Violence"

October 30
Screening and Discussing the Film, "A History of Violence"

November

Week Eleven
November 4
Art Spiegelman, Maus

November 6
Art Spiegelman, Maus

Week Twelve
November 11
Holiday

November 13
Hannah Arendt, On Violence

Week Thirteen
November 18
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish

November 20
Frantz Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth

Week Fourteen
November 25
Octavia Butler, Kindred

November 27
Holiday

December

Week Fifteen
December 2
Mike Davis, from Planet of Slums

December 4
Judith Butler, from Undoing Gender and Precarious Life

Week Sixteen
December 9
Concluding Remarks

Friday, December 12, Hand in Take-Home Examination by Noon

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Thoughts on the midterm and final papers

We’ll be handing out the midterm at the end of class today, and Dale will, I believe, be posting an answer key on the blog later tonight. The key should hopefully answer most of your questions, but since we probably don’t have enough class time to do this, I thought I’d offer a little bit about the essay question on the exam, and some generally issues I saw a lot of people having. All of these thoughts certainly apply to the final papers, which definitely ask you to do some close reading and rhetorical analysis – you might want to think about them as you begin to put your papers together. Anyway:

When we do close reading, which in this class involves looking for rhetorical figures, language, tropes, schemes, etc., we’re asking for you to do more than merely point those figures out. Indeed, knowing that the text uses figures like this is an all-important first step to providing a good reading, but the next step is to say what they mean, what they do, how the use of these figures expands our understanding of what might seem an otherwise straightforward surface reading.

For example, on the Frederick Douglass passage at the end of the midterm, a lot of you wrote essays that basically said something like “The claim here is that the slaves really wanted to go to the Great House Farm. Douglass uses litotes, analogy and metaphor to show this. Those figures help make his claim stronger than it would have been otherwise.” So: identifying that Douglass uses litotes, analogy and metaphor (for example) is a great move. But you can’t stop there – merely identifying these figures in the text doesn’t say much about what they actually do, how they work, what his specific choice of figures says about what you take to be the claim that the slaves wanted to go the Great House Farm. Douglass did, after all, employ an extended analogy between slaves and politicians. Why might he do this? He didn’t have to, after all – instead of saying “a representative could not be prouder of his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm,” he could have said “a teenage girl could not be prouder of being selected by a boy for a date, than a slave…” for example. Or “a dog could not be prouder of being given the largest bone in the bowl, than a slave…” Or any number of other comparisons.

I hope you’re starting to get the point. All of the examples I’ve just given are examples of analogy or comparison or what have you, but they all do something very different with that comparison. Once you’ve identified that there is a comparison at work here, your job is to analyze it, to explain it, to show why that specific comparison makes a difference. Once you start to do this, you may begin to notice that what you took to be the original claim, that the slaves highly esteemed going to the Great House Farm, may be a little more complicated than you might have thought. What does it mean that he’s comparing not only slaves to politicians, but politicians to slaves? We normally think of slaves as un-free and democracy as the free expression of values; might Douglass’ comparison be commenting on the stakes of that difference, especially when it is those free politicians, after all, who have made and kept slavery a legal practice?

It’s questions like these that make the actual figures significant and meaningful for us, that make the figures matter. They all help inflect what seems to be the surface claim of the passage with new and more complicated vectors of meaning, and help us see a type of the argument the passage is making, perhaps without explicitly doing so. Most importantly, however, none of these questions would be available to us had Douglass used different figures in the passage. Which means that the figures he did use make a real difference in the passage – they’re not just there to emphasize that the slaves highly esteemed the Great House Farm, but to help Douglass make a broader, more interesting claim about the relationship between slavery, politics, American democracy, etc. As a point of comparison, you might want to think about our classroom discussion of Maus. Many of you started that discussion liking Maus for its alleged “realism” or “truthfulness,” the way it told a “realistic” story. As the discussion continued, however, you hopefully started to realize that “realistic” might not be the best descriptive when talking about a book in which all the characters are talking animals. Instead, we started to talk about and figure out ways to understand the relationship between the story being told and the fact that most of its characters are animals.

The point here is that, briefly, details matter in their specificity. I’m not saying that there’s a right answer here or for any text; indeed, it’s up to you to come up with an argument about how and why these details matter. But any good reading will necessarily take those details into account.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Toulmin Schema

Are we going to have to apply the Toulmin Schema to a given situation? If so, does anyone have any example situations? ( I had to leave class early this day, so I am not entirely sure whether we applied it to situations...) Thank you!

Monday, July 07, 2008

Syllabus for Rhetoric 10, Summer, 2008

Rhetoric 10
What Is Compelling?
The Rhetoric of Argument

Summer 2008

2-4.30pm., Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 88 Dwinelle

Instructor, Dale Carrico: dalec@berkeley.edu
T.A., Ben Lempert: blempert@berkeley.edu

Attend/Participate: 15%; Workshops: 15%; Mid-Term: 35%; Final 35% (Approximately)

A Provisional Schedule of Meetings

Week One

July 8
Course Introduction
SKILL SET: An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.

July 9
2-3 Minute Introduction Speeches
SKILL SET: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

July 10
Euripides, Hecuba
SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically; Four Habits of Argumentative Writing; Audience/Intentions

Week Two

July 15
Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose"
SKILL SET: Intentions -- Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation

July 16
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail"
SKILL SET: Audiences -- Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Rogerian Rhetoric

July 17
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema

Week Three

July 22
Art Spiegelman, Maus
SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes

July 23
Art Spiegelman, Maus
SKILL SET: Syllogisms, Enthymemes, Formal Fallacies

July 24
Art Spiegelman, Maus
SKILL SET: Informal Fallacies

Week Four

July 29
Mid-Term Examination

July 30
Screening Film, "A History of Violence"

July 31
Discussion of Film (among other things)

Week Five

August 5
Hannah Arendt, from On Violence and "Why Eichmann Must Hang"

August 6
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish, "The Body of the Condemned" and "Panopticism"
Octavia Butler, Kindred

August 7
Octavia Butler, Kindred

Week Six

August 12
Frantz Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth

August 13
Mike Davis, from Planet of Slums

August 14
Take Home Final Examination Due
Judith Butler, from Undoing Gender and Precarious Life