Today's Agenda:

"Housekeeping":

• Discussion Facilitation: Have you signed up? There's already a change in dates needed (because I missed a revision workshop date!) Working together or divvying things up? Let's talk procedures for a minute.
• Q&A board established (in Blackboard, under Discussion Forums). 

Discussion of Readings: (approximately 20 minutes)

"Rhetorical Analysis" (online)

• I want to talk briefly about the three main rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos, and logos. Here's an entertaining way in: a student project entitled "The Art of Rhetoric."  
• One of your facilitators for today gave us the following to think about:
• Q: "I found it interesting that whenever the author referred to a speaker, the speaker was always female." Why do you suppose the author made this choice?
• Q: "My only question is: How do we use these techniques to write a paper?"  A: We'll talk about the idea of "rhetorical analysis" lots (probably more than you want to), and "read" some texts together in this way as you work on this project. Over time, I think this will help, but first, you probably need to make a shift in how you're thinking about what the paper content should be. You are not making an argument, you are revealing one, exploring the strategies the author used to build it,  and analyzing it. You're doing this in order to build more critical, rhetorically based, reading skills, which will be useful in reading, researching, and writing texts of your own. If you go into this thinking you're writing "a research paper," you'll have a hard time envisioning this. Instead, you're going to write about whatever "text" you choose, and tell us how THAT works. It's more like a report than what your'e probably used to writing, but extremely analytical and well supported with examples from the text.

"The King Herself" (2-13, Gender Roles...)  

I want you all to help me think through this article, as always, considering both rhetoric (as a text, written by a specific author, to achieve a purpose, with an audience, in a very specific context) AND content. Here are some questions and resources posed by today's discussion facilitators, Caitlin Fairchild (9:30) and Amy Krigsman and Amy Summers (11:00). (They set the bar high, y'all!)

• Resources
• How much did you retain from this reading? Let's play with the quiz one of you found to see!   
• About Hatshepsut 
• Photo Gallery (Photos by Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic) 
• Hatshepsut's Family Tree  
• Women in Ancient Egypt 

• Questions to Consider
• Consider the author, purpose, and audience:
• Who wrote this? for what purpose? For what audience? (How might it be different if positioned in a different rhetorical situation? (different author? purpose? audience? context?)
• Brown has two focal points in this article: how Hatshepsut’s mummy was found and how she ruled. Do you think that the article should be split into two so that each part could be dealt with in more depth? 
• Consider strategies:  
• How were you feeling as you read the graphic description of the mummy at the museum? Did it add or take away from her power? 
• How were Hatshepsut’s remains discovered? What investigative and scientific methods were used to discover Hatshepsut’s mummy? Why do you think Brown spends so much time describing these methods? 
• Why do you think Brown includes information on why Hatshepsut tried to preserve her legacy? How does that information relate to the other details he provides about her? 
• Why do you think Brown included a section on how archaeologists overturned historians’ view of Hatshepsut as an “evil stepmother”? Was this relevant to his main focus? If so, how? 
• Where did you find irony in the reading? 
•  Where did you think the author's choice of words significant to the overall purpose of the piece? Are there special terms, or images, that reoccur, or seem terribly important? Tropes? Wordplay? Humor? (Etc?) Why did the author make these choices, and how does it help achieve their purposes, or connect with the audience?
• Are there any citations, or quotation, used? For what purpose? To what effects? 
• Which of the ancient rhetorical appeals do you think is used (ethos, pathos, logos) ? Where/how (and why)?  
• Consider content:
• Why do you think Hatshepsut took over the role of king rather than continuing as queen regent and passing control over Thutmose III? / What motivated Hatshepsut to rule ancient Egypt while her stepson stood in the shadows?
• What traditions did she break in order to successfully rule?
• Why did Hatshepsut change tack and suddenly portray herself as a man? Did she feel that she was a man, or was it a political maneuver? 
• Do you think Hatshepsut truly worried what the people thought about her? Why do you feel that way?    
• What was the significance Hatshepsut's references to Lapwings?  
• How and why did she try to preserve her legacy? Why did Hatshepsut work so hard to preserve her legacy? Did she truly “fear anonymity more than death” as Brown suggests?  
• What do you think really happened that lead Thutmose III to destroy all that Hatshepsut had built? Why did he wait until 20 years after her death to do so? 
• What did the author mean by, "After so many thousands of years, you can still feel the flutter of her heart."?  
• What do her artifacts tell us about her reign?  
• If you could attempt to erase someone from history, and destroy all of their accomplishments, would you/who would it be and why? 

Viewing "Killing us Softly 3": (34 minutes + approximately 15 for discussion)

• For your consideration: 
• "As I was watching Killing Us Softly 3 I couldn’t help but feel angry, much the way I felt as I was reading Hardball for Women for my Women in Business course. But I wasn’t angry with the advertising industry or in the case of Hardball with men, for the way women are treated in our society. I felt annoyed with the speaker, merely for bringing up the subject of women being objectified or for being treated as anything less than a man. Maybe I have a different mindset than most women, but I think a lot of what Kilbourne was talking about is blown out of proportion. Yes, I can understand how some of those ads are degrading to women, even offensive. However, most of them were just, for lack of a better word, stupid. The thought going through my head when looking at some of these advertisements was, 'Why are you getting so upset about this?' Nonsense. Advertising agencies are just doing their jobs. They put out these images because that’s what America wants to see. I honestly don’t think one can attribute to and place sole blame on advertising companies for violence against women and eating disorders. I see the same advertisements as girls with eating disorders. That hasn’t caused me to be bulimic or anorexic. There is more at play in these kinds of situations than a simple advertisement seen in a magazine or on television. Almost every day there is some headline in the news about how Americans are too overweight. Aren’t these news stories just as much to blame as advertisements for the growing number of eating disorders? As for the argument about violence against women, there are again numerous other sources of influence: video games, movies, pornography. The list goes on. Furthermore, some of the conclusions Kilbourne was drawing from a simple picture, to me, seemed like a stretch. I think Kilbourne placed far too much importance on most of the advertisements she presented. As I said before, I will give her some credit. Some of the advertisements were rude and offensive and a bit suggestive. Most of them, however, just didn’t rub me the wrong way like they did her." 
• Rhetorical reading prompts for Kilbourne: 
• Who is the author? What is the context for this "text"?
• Who do you think is the intended audience?
• What are her main points? What is her purpose?
• What "strategies and structures" build the piece? 
• Do you think Kilbourne means to suggest that ONLY advertisements effect us?
• What support (evidence) does she offer for her assertions? 
• What further support would you  like to see? 
• Where do you think there are logical fallacies? of what kind/type?  
• There IS a new version of this-"Killing us Softly 4" (2010). What do you think she changed? How would YOU change it, if delivering this to both men and women, on this campus, today?

• Resources
• About Jean Kilbourne
• Study Guide, "Killing Us Softly 3" 
• Study Guide, "Killing Us Softly 4" 
• "Julia Roberts Makeup Ad Banned In UK for Too Much Photoshop" (PetaPixel, July 27, 2011) 
• "AMA Adopts New Policies at Annual Meeting" (American Medical Association,  June 21, 2011)

Exploring Portfolio 1/Project 1:

I decided, given the rich and wonderful questions and resources your facilitators came up with for today, to wait until Thursday to share this assignment with you all, when we can focus on it at greater length. So: stay tuned! (But as you read "Cholitas Strike Back," practice rhetorical based, critical reading. And continue looking for a "text"/item, or maybe even a small set thereof, you want to analyze in this first paper. Bring that item/those items to class Thursday when, I promise, you will finally get that assignment and be able to start doing some exploratory writing in response.) (And yes, you'll still have time to make up or change your mind about what item{s} you will analyze for project 1.)

For next time:

Respond to new post on blog re. Jean Kilbourne. Read "Cholitas Fight Back" (14-25, Gender Roles...)  + skim Ch. 13 ("Cueing the Reader", 14 ("Narrating") and 15 ("Describing") from The St. Martin's Guide to Writing. (What do I mean by "skim"? Follow the link!)