Class Notes

Week 1 & 2 Notes:

 

 

Reading 1: American Artifact notes with attention to description and discussion of Prown’s object analysis assignment:

  • One must find potential in an object to uncover significant meaning
  • Culturally potent objects seem to depend on linkage between the object and some fundamental human experience
  • The most persistent object metaphors expressive of belief seem embedded in polarities (such as life/death, male/female, acceptance/rejection, security/danger)
    • These polarities find material expression in a language of formal oppositions (such as smooth/rough, hot/cold, light/dark, light/heavy, clean/dirty)
  • In searching out an object to interpret, these are factors to consider
  • Thoroughly describe the object, paying attention to all aspects (material, spatial, temporal) and small details, but keep an eye on the big picture
  • Material culture begins with a world of objects but takes place in a world of worlds
  • working with materials means refer to them using language
  • When we explain pictures, we only explain them as far as we have considered them under some verbal description
  • Description is the bridge between the realm of material and that of concepts and ideas
  • Avoiding all forms of verb to be will help make visible thematically-charged spatial and functional complexities otherwise flattened or obscured
  • Description tells us how an image has opened itself up to interpretation, rather than what the visual image means
  • The more self-conscious one becomes, the more complex one’s relationship to an object becomes
  • Recognize the ways the object has created its effect
  • Interpretive hypotheses, or questions about meaning, will flow organically out of our process of deduction
  • Although your annotated bibliography doesn’t need to be a large list, it should represent the range of your inquiry
  • Your proposed report should go beyond synopsis of others’ ideas to offer a persuasive argument with the claim regarding your objected (supported by evidence)
  • Compose an interpretive analysis that presents perceptions generated from the exercises but made as a claim with references to the object and context (sources)

 

In class notes:

  • Material culture includes every day objects, cultural objects, artifacts
  • We study material culture because
    • historic cultures may not have written sources
    • they are all, or mostly, ruined
    • we don’t understand the language
    • what was written may have only represented the classes that were educated/rich enough to write (thus history would be erased)
  • Haltman describes a general process that we will be doing (a how-to)
  • Reading responses
    • Preliminary research
  • Supplemental reading
    • could explore questions
    • could address the problems
    • could give examples
  • How could different projects in this class map onto Haltman’s excerpt?
  • Annotations can include
    • supplemental text’s evidence for support
    • events, people, or location links (ALWAYS cite)
    • images
    • unfamiliar terms’ definitions
    • main points of the argument (rephrased)
    • response to questions
  • Submitting annotations
    • attaching hashtags
    • first, middle, last initial, rr, (number of reading response) 1A 1B
    • submit link after the 2 hashtag search

 

 

 

 

 

Reading 2: Early Native Literacies in New England

  • Mohegan word for painting is the same word for writing
  • To the Mohegan, spirit and life is expressed through designs
  • Multiple perspectives can arise from this basket, particularly depicting migration

 

Chapter 1: Defining Rhetoric

  • Rhetoric is a persuasive language act
  • Rhetorical argument: carefully presentation of a viewpoint or position on a topic and the giving of ideas, thoughts and opinions along w reasons for support
  • All arguments include the presentation of a line of reasoning about a topic, thesis/hypothesis/claim, and the support of that reasoning w/evidence
  • Types of argument:
    • Makes a point
    • Aims to persuade
    • Tries to find common ground
  • Aristotle’s Three Appeals
    • Ethos: persuasion by means of credibility
    • Pathos: persuasion by playing upon the listener’s emotion
    • Logos: persuasion by using reasoning and evidence (deductive/inductive)
  • Kairos: opportune moment for the argument
    • time
    • place
    • audience
    • topic
  • Become part of the academic conversation by reading about it until you have a good grasp of the points authorities are debating, then integrating your ideas about the subject with ideas of others
  • Burkean Parlor: to do academic research, we must enter the conversation of people who already know the topic and have discussed part or all of the topic before we are aware the topic exists
  • Collaborative groups help students enter the academic conversation
    • students who participate in collab group work tend to learn more, retain longer, and are more satisfied than those that don’t
    • informal, one time groups
    • ongoing small classroom groups
    • task groups
    • peer editing groups
  • Why study rhetoric?
    • provides useful framework for looking at the world
    • less likely to be swayed by logical fallacies or ill-supported research
    • interplay of ideas in argument that help us discover answers, try new things, communicate, etc
    • writing rhetorically helps with memorization and connecting topics