Assignments

The major course assignments are described below. This class also includes two significant essays required as part of the learning record. This class also includes many opportunities for other, non required work. Some suggestions for further work can be found on the wiki page, How to go beyond the requirements.

Summary of a text from "Medicine"

For this assignment, you can choose any text (a piece of writing or an image) from the "Medicine" special issue of Lapham's Quarterly. Spend some time exploring the journal to find a text that catches your interest. Your assignment is to summarize the text's content, introduce its author, and explain the relevant context and audience. Basically, the assignment is the same as the summary you did for the Canguilhem article, but must include some further contextual information: Who wrote this article? Why did they write it? And to whom were they speaking? To answer these questions, you will have to do a little outside research.

Your summary should be approximately 450 words and should provide enough information to fully explain and introduce the text to your audience (in this case, your audience is your classmates who have not read the text). Please format the summary on a word processor, include your name, date, and the title of our class at the top, and a "Works Cited" section including proper bibliographical information (in MLA format) at the end. You may contact me if you have questions.

Please print your summary and bring it to class. Also, save the electronic copy in a place you can access from our class computers (such as inside your folder on the wiki, or in an email to yourself).

Blog Post 1 & In-Class Presentation

This assignment has two parts: a blog component and a presentation component.

For the blog component, you will write a summary (250-450 words) of the assigned reading, exactly as you did for a text from "Medicine" in the assignment described above. In many cases, you will be dealing with a text that makes an implicit argument, but you must offer your reader an explicit account of that argument and how the text makes it. You must also introduce the text, providing contextual information on the author, the audience, and the rhetorical situation. Cite the text using proper MLA format. This post should not contain your own opinions of the text or an extended rhetorical analysis of it. Submit your post on our class blog by midnight before your class presentation day.

(NOTE: Some of the assigned readings are quite short, and you may be wondering how to write a 300-word summary of a 200-word text. Please keep in mind that short excerpts have been assigned because they are nonetheless rich and complex, and often require close and careful reading. Furthermore, all summaries should include some information that is not necessarily found in the assigned text, and summaries of shorter assigned texts may devote more space to that information: who the author was, why he or she wrote this, who his or her audience was, what counterarguments or debate this text was responding to, etc.)

For the presentation component (approx. 7 minutes), you will introduce and briefly summarize the reading for the class. When introducing and summarizing the text for the class, you shouldn't merely read the blog post to your classmates, since they will do that on their own. You should decide on the most important points of the author's argument and make sure the class understands them. You should also provide any contextual information (on the author, audience, and rhetorical situation) that will help the class understand the argument. As far as the format and delivery of your presentation, you have almost complete freedom for this portion of the assignment. As long as you hold our attention and make us better understand the reading, you can do what you want. Your presentation should conclude with 1-3 questions for the class to think about (or discuss, time permitting).

Blog Post 2

(500-900 words) due by midnight the night before class.

Write a summary and analysis of an advertisement you found in your research that makes an argument about health. Your blog post should include an image of the whole or part of the advertisement and should also explain the context of the ad and its audience. In this post you will analyze how the ad makes its argument (its rhetorical strategies including logos, ethos and pathos) and why it makes the argument in this way. Basically, you must describe how the advertisement makes its argument, and you must explain why the advertisement is persuasive (or not) for its particular audience.

To be successful, your post must include basic elements including:

a clear and brief summary of the ad's argument
enough description of the ad so that your reader can follow your analysis
a discussion of the ad's intended audience
a discussion of the venue or location in which the ad originally appeared
your explanation of how the ad uses specific logical appeals to lead its audience to specific conclusions
your explanation of how the ad uses specific pathetic appeals to evoke specific values or emotions from the audience
your explanation of how the ad uses specific ethical appeals in order to appear credible to its specific audience
your argument about the ad's effectiveness for its specific audience

The OWL website has a helpful guide to Analyzing Visual Documents. Please see their pages on Elements of Analysis and Organizing your Analysis. But note that this guide is intended for students writing 5-7 page papers. You must be more selective for your post (which is equivalent to 2-3 pages).

What to Find

Many advertisements make arguments about health, not just ads for prescription drugs. Of course, an ad for a prescription drug to treat depression, sexual disfunction, or some other disease or disorder would work for this assignment, but you can think more broadly than that. You could choose an ad that

makes an argument about health in order to sell a medical product (drug, supplement, treatment)
makes an argument about health in order to sell a non-medical product (deodorant, a car, food, anything)
uses health or illness as a metaphor to sell anything
makes an argument about health to convince its audience to do, believe, or feel something.

Where to Find it

Look around you: in magazines and on TV, on billboards or on the web. If you find a print ad, scan it; a poster or billboard, take a picture of it; an online ad, take a screenshot. If your ad is a video, you need to find the video online so you can watch it as many times as you need. Search YouTube using keywords including the product name.

If you are having trouble finding an ad, browse the database Ads of the World. You can search by media type and by keywords.

Advertisement (group project)

Work in a group to create an FDA-approved “product claim” advertisement for an imaginary prescription drug for a venue of your choosing. This project will allow you to exploit the rhetorical strategies you have identified in your blog posts. The purpose of your advertisement is to sell your new pharmaceutical product to your audience. However, your advertisement must meet FDA standards: this means that you will have to include information about the side effects assigned to your drug while remaining persuasive.

Your advertisement can be

a 30-second TV commercial
a screenplay for a 30-second TV commercial
a full-page magazine print ad
a half-page newspaper print ad
a poster or billboard
an informational website with at least three pages

Choose one format from above. You are creating a “product claim” ad and must follow FDA regulations. See the FDA website on what “product claim” ads must tell you.

In addition to the commercial/print ad/website you create, you must also submit an informational sheet, including
Drug information:

one approved use of the drug
all drug side effects
people who should not take the drug

Audience information:

your intended audience

Venue information:

for a TV spot, on what specific channel and during what programs will your ad run
for a magazine ad, the specific Magazine(s) that will feature your ad
for a newspaper ad, the specific Newspaper(s) and sections that will include your ad
for a poster, in what specific public space(s) your poster will hang
for a billboard, at what specific location(s) your billboard will be posted
for a website, a specific strategy to get viewers to arrive at your page

Resources
The Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL)
FAC 8
Your class is in the DWRL, which has a library of equipment available for its members. To check out equipment, contact your instructor with your name, the specific piece of equipment you need, and a time when you can go to FAC 8 with your instructor to check it out. FAC 8 is only open in the mornings and some afternoons.
DWRL available equipment.

Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS)
MEZ 1.116
512-471-0407
The College of Liberal Arts has audio-visual equipment available for checkout for professors and instructors for 2-3days. To check out equipment, contact your instructor with your name and the specific equipment you need.
LAITS available equipment

Open Lab, part of the DWRL
PAR 102
512-232-1710
M,W 8am-8pm; T,Th 8am-7pm; F 10am-1pm
Parlin 102 has Mac desktop computers for your use with the following software and more:

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro
Adobe Photoshop CS5
Adobe Dreamweaver CS5
GarageBand
iMovie

~~Annotated Bibliography (5 sources or more)~~
Create an annotated bibliography in proper MLA format. Each entry should be followed by a brief explanation. Opinion sources should include a summary of the argument. Background sources should include a statement about how this source will contribute to your Essay. All sources should include information about credibility. Why and to whom is this source credible?

Final Essay

For the final essay you will write a 1000-1250 word essay in which you make an argument about health. You have two options for your final essay. Both require you to craft an original, convincing argument that you believe in. Both options require you to accurately summarize another argument, then to put your own argument in dialogue with that one, either by rebutting it or explaining its origins. Both require you to say something original and important. This is not merely a writing exercise, but a chance for you to communicate meaningful ideas about issues that you and your audience care about. You are encouraged to look for a suitable online or print venue to make your writing public.

1. Public Controversy

Stem cell research, pharmaceutical regulations, mental health treatment, and medical education are just a few topics that come to mind when we think of “controversy” in health. A controversy is a question that people are trying to answer or a problem people are trying to solve, such as, “How should drug research be funded?” But a controversy is specifically a problem for which people do not agree on the solution. For this assignment, you will intervene in a specific current controversy that you have identified. In your essay, you must describe the current state of the controversy and argue for your own position in that controversy by setting up a counterargument, rebutting it, and making your own argument as convincing as possible using all the appropriate rhetorical appeals and strategies you have learned and observed throughout the semester. This essay should make use of at least two sources (one as a counterargument, one or more to support your own argument). Additional sources could be used to provide background on the controversy or represent other major positions in the controversy.

2. Past and Present

Remember Hippocrates? He argued that health was balance between the body’s four humors. That was two thousand years ago, but his argument is still alive. In this assignment, you must find an argument about health in the present (in public controversies, in the media, in medical writing), and explain how this argument has its origins in one from the past. However, it is not enough to argue that two arguments are similar (in structure, in their terminology, etc.); you must also explain why this is important. In other words, what does this similarity—between one argument in the past and one in the present—teach us? This essay should make use of at least two sources (one from the past, one from the present). Additional sources could provide context for the past and/or present arguments.

Reading

Assigned readings for our class will either be found in the three required texts below, or made available by the instructor in .pdf form on the online course wiki. If you have a legitimate problem using the .pdf files please contact the instructor by the end of the second week of class.