Important Locations:
The work in this course raises the questions: What does it mean to be critical? How does one develop a critical perspective? Why should one want to? Frequent writings on literature, film, advertising and popular arts help the student develop answers to these questions and to achieve authority in critical perfomance.
| COURSE OVERVIEW | EVALUATION | ASSIGNMENTS & READINGS | COURSE CONFERENCE |
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We will be exploring rhetoric in Media, as the title of our text suggests. In other words, we will investigate Media so as to see rhetoric exposed through its many modes of expression. We will begin by answering a single question: what is rhetoric? From this question, we will learn how to read Media, learning about its mediums, its treatment of gender and class, and, ultimately, we will learn about how Media creates cultural conventions.
We will also investigate our own writing. Our writing will come from our Observations concerning Media: we will gather and evaluate News and Information; we will look at Commercials and Advertisements; and, we will look at the very general category, Entertainment as Information. For instance, is Oliver Stone's JFK entertainment, information, or history? Is it none? All? Only some?
Ultimately, we will discover how Media--our own Observations and Writings about it--has a deeper purpose. Just exactly what the purpose, or purposes, may be, depends on your willingness to be WRITERS AND THINKERS.
"No one learns rhetoric in isolation,"says Gary Thompson, the author of our text. This is our first lesson. From here, we will learn that there are very powerful structures that are the foundation to all Media. So we will learn to be careful about what we see and hear; some of it may be true, some may not. This suggests that you will become a better reader, understanding the world as a text meant for your use. The question--the problem, really--is learning how to use the material world around us. This is something you can achieve in this course.
Undoubtedly, you will become a more critical observer, thinker and writer; which is to say, that you will be more apt to reflect before acting, becoming more secure in you innate ability to analyze languages trying stimulate your attention--and your actions. You'll learn to decipher the "noise" around us. And you'll learn how this "noise" can build conventions which could result in the death of culture.