ENGL 505A

"New Kids" in the hiz-ouse!
Sometimes I disappoint myself. Anyway, so here's how I think I'm structuring the final 3 basic assignments (RR4, Paper 2, Research paper).

All of this is based out of a shift to the political in class.

RR4: Very simply put, they'll be writing an Op-Ed piece on a subject of their choosing. They'll have to pick a relevant and recent news article and respond to the issue using whatever strategy they think works best (ethos/pathos/logos).

Paper 2: For this paper, they're going to write a "campaign brief." What i mean by this is they are going to pick a topic of interest for them (torture, environmentalism, etc.) and track it across the candidates (while I want to confine it to the leading 4, I'm not sure this provides enough perspective--i.e. Senator Biden is the only one who seems to talk sense about Iraq policy, and McCain is the strongest campaign finance reform guy, but a search of just the top 4 candidates would NOT yield this information). At the end of the paper they will give their recommendation: If you want _____ reform, vote for _____.

In preparation for this assignment, I'm going to have them pick a single candidate, pick an issue that interests them, do some research on the topic, on the candidate's stance, on how other's perceive and comment on the candidate's stance, and their actual voting records on that topic. A part of this is about cutting through the bullshit of political rhetoric (i.e. Jon Kerry as flip-flopper... show me a candidate who ran for president who DIDNT change their opinion on an important topic). It will also be the basis for their larger analysis in the paper. This preparation will also yield the: VISUAL RHETORIC project, where they will design a powerpoint (and create a powerpoint template design) to demonstrate this information.

The Research Paper: Well, I'm really not sure what I want to do here. I think for the research paper I'm going to give them free reign to write an "academic paper" about an international political topic. In other words, they'll have to search the foreign news sources to reach outside their bubble. I.e. Myanmar, global environmentalism efforts, torture/geneva conventions, iranian nuclear proliferaton, etc. Not Iraq.

I'm not married to these yet, and I'm looking for feedback, so lay it on me.