Today’s Plan:
- Free Write!
Free Write on the Rest of Our Semester
So I’m a bit pressed for time today. I’ve got about 90 minutes until class starts, and a lot of thinking to do. I’m going to do that thinking here, and I’m saying right up front that I don’t know if I’ll have the time to circle back and revise this thinking into thought. We’ll see.
This week marks the halfway point in our semester, and I must say I am thrilled with this course so far: the quality of your work, and the individual improvement I’ve seen from many of you this semester has been amazing. I am really proud of y’all. As I was sitting down to map out the rest of our year this morning, I was thinking about how impressive your work has been this semester, given how fucked up our world has been these last 2 years.
I was also thinking about our world, and this moment, while thinking about our final project options. Right now I have three final projects in mind, and I see two of them as different kairotic responses to this current moment. So, here’s the three/four/five projects:
- Crucible Spring 2022 Issue Design
- Visual Argument: Representing COVID
- Designing Someone’s Christmas Gift(s) / Design Something Awesome
- Random Acts of Rhetorical Kindness
When I am planning a course, I count on having 6 hours a week of your time. Counting this week (but not counting Thanksgiving, cause y’all probably need some downtime), that gives me 48 hours of homework time the rest of this semester. Divided equally, that’s about 16 hours per project. But I don’t think the three projects divide equally. And we still have a few Adobe Classrooms in a Book to complete.
The Crucible Design Project
Starting in week 11, we will work to design the Fall 2022 issue of the Crucible literary magazine. We’ll explore zine design a bit, to get a sense for how other literary magazines experiment with typography and layout. This will be a design competition–and the winning design will be chosen by the magazine’s staff and produced before the end of the semester.
Visual Argument: Representing COVID
This project kills two of the proverbial birds with one deliverable:
- Ethically and Responsibly Presenting Data
- Designing an Infographic that Doesn’t Suck
Normally, when I teach this class, I have a visualization project that asks students to choose something complicated, research it, and present their research in a visually engaging and coherent way. In short, to take something complicated and make it seem simple.
This semester I want to tweak that assignment a bit, and in the process make it a bit less open-ended. As a rhetorician, I have found COVID to be incredibly problematic given the amount of misinformation and disinformation it has engendered in America (while mis/disinformation are problems world wide, they are particularly problematic in America, which has a more divisive political field, a history of freedom of the press, a lack of social programs, a greater mistrust of government, etc etc than most other places). Also, Emerson and Thoreau. Fuck those guys. I digress.
This semester, I’d like the visualization project to focus on designing some kind of infographic that deals with some element of COVID 19. In Wednesday’s class, we are going to spend some time collaboratively collecting information, looking at/for existing visualizations, and thinking about different possibilities for projects.
Hey Subaru thing. Hey look at you CDC. Hey look at you statista.
Ideally, this project would require you to read some really dense research on COVID and illustrate it, while making a subtle argument and urging for action (what action I leave to you).
Designing Someone’s Holiday Gift(s) and/or Designing Something Awesome
People need gifts this holiday season. People need love and connection. So, instead of buying them crap, make them something special. While it sounds sappy: it will probably be sappy because it comes from you.
What might you make? If your friend is a poet, you could steal some of their poems and design them their own volume of poetry. Get that thing printed. Hand it to them.
If your friend is a gamer, then you could make them some kind of calendar with collages of their favorite game characters. Print that thing. Hand it to them.
You could also make a calendar about your relationship with someone. I hope the relationship lasts as long as the calendar. Or maybe your parents have a dog. No cats allowed.
Maybe you want to make a photo essay about a Colorado location, or person, or historic event. Maybe you are familiar with the work of Maria Kalman? Maybe you could make a photographic Kalman essay.
Maybe there’s a professor you really like and you could surprise them by turning their syllabus into a kick ass infographic.
Maybe there’s a novel you love and you could turn it into a zine. Or a visual essay. A poet, and a volume of their poetry. Maybe you could make your favorite professor a volume of poems, or a visual edition of a short story. Or turn a novel they teach into a movie poster that you could print and frame.
Maybe you have a favorite author/game/person. Make yourself something.
I used to teach a rhetoric class that concluded with the following assignment: make something that says something significant to someone. This is a bit of a rebrand: make something significant for someone. I leave it to you to fill in the details (though I will ask you what you made, why you made it, what design decisions you are particularly proud of, etc).
Random Acts of Rhetorical Kindness
About 6 years ago, I gave a conference presentation on “Kinecism,” a neologism I used for a form of pragmatic rhetorical engagement aimed at combatting cynicism. Here’s how I defined cynicism:
But realizing the engaged political world Latour describes requires more than a public shift on the part of academics; it also requires addressing the problems of a cynical public. PEW center recently reported that the “Turnout in this year’s primaries rivals 2008 record”; what might get buried in that headline is that only 29% of eligible voters have even bothered to vote (and that is significantly lower than the measly 24.7% that bothered to show up in 2004). No doubt a wide range of factors contribute to this, but I want to suggest that a major factor is cynicism, particularly the flavor of cynicism as “enlightened false consciousness” that Peter Sloterdjyk describes in his Critique of Cynical Reason. Sloterdjyk describes how modern economics (neoliberal capitalism) and philosophy (the individualistic, Kantian tradition) combine to Darwinistically produce a dismissive detachment that severs individuals from social problems and from feeling responsibility to act on those problems. This detachment is often produced by a hopelessness, a belief that structural problems transcend the agency of an individual actor; in short, a belief that problems are too big for anything I do to make any consequence.
My answer to cynicism–the hopelessness and paralysis it imposes–was to develop a rhetorical theory grounded in action. In getting people to go outside and do things. To see how doing something small (doing Just One Thing) could make a difference.
I’ve been thinking about kinecism lately. For a long time, I’ve thought about designing a class project in which we all agree to design a kind of guerilla campaign meant to engineer happiness, awareness, or acknowledgement. To help people feel seen. To make them smile. To spread a bit of joy or laughter. So, I’m thinking we can agree on a kind of theme (maybe?), and then everyone designs a poster/flyer that has something to do with that theme? And then we each agree to print 12 copies of our thing, and hang them up over campus?
Maybe we make an instagram account with all of the things and our hash tag and include it on our things?
This would be the week 15 and 16 (post Thanksgiving) project. Something light and fun.
Calendar Sketch
- Week 8: COVID Infographic (Wednesday, What is an infographic, COVID collaborative research, sketch, templates)
- Week 9: COVID Infographic (Monday, (un)ethical data and charts; Wednesday Work and submit draft)
- Week 10: COVID Infographic; Gift Design ((Monday share/revise; Wednesday Gift Design)
- Week 11: Crucible Design (Monday: WTF is a Zine; Wednesday: Provided Final Copy, In-class image/text layout exercise)
- Week 12: Crucible Design; Gift Progress Check
- Week 13: Crucible Design
- Week 14: November BREAK
- Week 15: Random Acts; Gift Share [Show us the physical thing
- Week 16: Exam week w/ Random Acts
Homework
Really think about what you want to make someone/yourself.
