ENG 328 8.T: Menu Project

Today’s Plan:

  • IFS Project Folder
  • Menu Project
  • Adobe Classroom in a Book Assignments
  • Calendar

IFS Project Folder

Please be sure to upload your designs into the folder. Include a .jpg or .pdf (a file I can view) AND a .psd or .indd (depending on what program you used).

Menus

For the next two weeks we will be designing a restaurant menu. This is a multiple-birds-with-one-project project, since we’ll be:

  • Learning InDesign
  • Learning Design Process and Grid Layout (developing a mock-up/sketch)
  • Practicing Typography

Pre-Writing a Design

Most of you are writers. As writers, you all probably have a different approach to pre-writing. Me? I read and write comments in the margins of a book. Then I type out quotes into a Google Doc with some transitions and some analysis. Pieces of stuff. I’m looking for terms I’ll need to explicate. Connectionss to other passages or writers. Places where I can offer a concrete example of an abstract concept. I try to identify what I have to write *first*, what idea or term I need to understand and pin down in order to explicate the other terms/materials/examples I plan on analyzing in the paper.

Eventually I start thinking of an outline (what, in my writing classes, I call a road map: first this paper explains X, then it uses X to examine A, B, and C. Or first it reviews how X and Y have defined Z. Then it compares X and Y’s treatment of Z to M, stressing A and B). Whatever. I do some math and start guessing how many pages I can dedicate to each element in the outline. As a profession academic, I often work backwards a bit on this part, since virtually anything I write will be 8-10 pages (for a conference) or 20-30 pages (for an article).

However we approach pre-writing, I think we can think of it as developing “a sketch” of what our work will look like. It is an exercise in planning organization, mapping ideas. It is also, at least for me, an exercise in space management, making sure I can fit what is needed in the area with which I have to work. I think you can see where this is going. The challenge of the menu project, the reason it is our last mini-project, is that it asks you to squeeze quite a bit of content into a rather small space, while making that content scannable and keeping that content readable.

When I used to design websites, I would always begin with a mock-up: a hand-drawn sketch of site. That would become a mock-up, a Photoshop picture of what I wanted the site to look like. This would include some basic measurements and grid work. We’re going to use a similar, but more lo-fi, approach to developing a draft for the menu project: a hand-drawn map on a piece of paper. We’ll work on this Thursday.

Working in InDesign

Things to cover:

  • Layers
  • Properties (and text styles)
  • Image Placeholder

General Design Advice and Resources for Menu Design

Schedule / Homework

For Thursday, I would like you to bring a copy of a printed menu to class. We’re going to look at menus for a bit and discuss layout for the upcoming project.

  • Tuesday Feb 27: Complete the InDesign Classroom in a Book Lesson on “Working with Typography.” According to the book, this should take around 90 minutes–I should be able to give you 60 minutes in class today. For homework over the weekend, I will ask you to also complete the “Working with Objects” lesson. If you want to get ahead, we will complete the “Flowing Text” and “Working with Styles” lessons *after* spring break. One other piece of homework: Bring a restaurant menu to class on Thursday.
  • Thursday Feb 29: Project copy. Invention. Looking at Menus. Art time. Homework: draft up a restaurant menu.
  • Tuesday Mar 5: Work day in class. End of class crit. Homework: revise menu.
  • Thursday Mar 7: Work on menus. Menu reflection assignment. Final turn-in before we leave for spring break.
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ENG 231 7.R: Tragedy Paper and Presentation Expectations

Today’s Plan:

  • Project Two: The Tragedy Paper Expectations
  • Tragedy Project Resources (and Santos 2023 post on catharsis)
  • Tragedy Presentation Expectations
  • Tragedy Presentation Sign-Ups

If you have a question regarding the paper or presentations, then you can ask it here.

Project Two: The Tragedy Paper Expectations

When we started this project back on February 1st, I promised you 4-5 weeks to complete your game and develop your papers. Today marks the end of week four. The time of writing is upon us. Many of you have done some work already both in your journals and in your presentations. My hope is that ideas are fomenting. It is time to calcify them.

If you are still generating ideas, then refer back to the heuristic I shared last class.

Final papers will be due March 10th. I will respond to papers over the break.

Vitals:

  • The paper should be 7 to 10 pages (say 1700 to 3000 words)
  • The paper should be written in MLA or APA format with a corresponding Works Cited / Reference List. You should use the OWL MLA or OWL APA websites for formatting.
  • The paper needs to develop a definition of catharsis. This should include citing and explaining (the ambiguities) in Aristotle’s definition and explaining at least two of the competing definitions Curran presents. It will likely take you 2 pages (double-spaced) to do this. You might explain two versions of catharsis relevant to your paper, or contrast two and ultimately only use one. The learning objective for this part of the paper is that you can summarize/explicate intricate theory in your own terms.
  • The paper needs to work with one additional term we’ve discussed this project (see resources below). You might have to look up other sources to help develop your understanding of the term (Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, etc). Be sure to include these in your Works Cited / Reference List (check formatting in OWL). It is your job to talk about how/why this term relates to catharsis and then, in the paper, to talk about why that term is specifically important to understanding your experience of that game.
  • Taken together, these explications build what we, in the humanities, often call the Theoretical or Critical Lens for analyzing a game. The interpretation of catharsis you champion here HAS to show up in your analysis. Did you feel clarification, purge, refinement?

The paper should then close read 2-4 scenes from the game that help me understand the answer to one (or more) of the following questions:

  • Is this game a tragedy (by Aristotelian standards)?
  • Did you have a cathartic experience? What is that experience? To what extent does it concern “pity” or “fear”? Might you suggest a different word/emotion?
  • How/does the interactive nature of the game augment/diminish its potential as a tragedy capable of producing catharsis? Think of the Joel scene: what amplifies there is that we are not *watching* Joel shoot those doctors, but doing it ourselves. HOWEVER, if you were to focus on Joel’s final lie to Ellie, then we aren’t “acting,” we are merely witnessing, watching. (And, were I to write about this game, I would have 3 sections of the paper: Loss (focusing on the opening scene, Tess’ death, Sam’s death), Murder (detailing the hospital scene), and Lies (detailing that final epilogue).
  • Explore the complex relationship to the game’s protagonist / argue for the agent of the tragic action etc. What other term comes to mind when you think of your game?

Remember that this part is mostly advisory. Meaning–you have to show me you can read several academic sources and define catharsis–the stuff in the first bulleted list is non-negotiable. The stuff in the second bulleted list is offered as potential avenues for analysis. However, what you do in the paper is up to you. I want to read a paper that uses the concept of catharsis and another Greek aesthetic term to say something smart. Point to specific elements, scenes, choices, dialogue in the game. Don’t merely summarize plot, but analyze aesthetic intent and effects.

Finally, the paper needs to have an introduction that details your argument. Your answer(s) to that/those question(s) is your thesis. It is the point that your paper is attempting to prove. Make sure your introduction lays the argument out and “road maps” the route the paper will take to get there. The paragraphs examining scenes are your evidence in support.

The exact argument and organization of the paper is up to you: I cannot predict or assure that the questions I lay out above will work for every person’s experience with any given game. They are starting points. If you analyze specific scenes of the game using the theoretical readings we’ve read and discussed in order to reflect on your play and the designer’s intentions, you are ensured at least a B on the paper (see the rubric in Canvas).

Catharsis Resources

Note that there should be .pdfs of all readings in Canvas.

Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy:

VI.2-3
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of emotions.

What if Catharsis Wasn’t Merely Fear and Pity?

One more resource. Here is a blog post I wrote on Catharsis last year. You are free to cite this. You are also encouraged to argue against it (should you decide to do so).

  • MLA Citation: Santos, Marc C. “What if Catharsis Wasn’t Merely Fear and Pity?” Insignificant Wranglings, May 2022, https://www.marccsantos.com/eng-231-7-r-tragedy-paper-expectations/
  • APA Citation: Santos, M.C. (2022, May). What if catharsis wasn’t merely fear and pity?” Insignificant Wranglings. https://www.marccsantos.com/eng-231-7-r-tragedy-paper-expectations/

Okay, here goes:

First, let’s clear up what catharsis might mean, especially the idea that catharsis is a kind of pleasure. We all get that catharsis for Aristotle means that we watch something painful and then (sort of) feel good about it. But why do we feel good about it? How do we flush out the particulars? This is where things get tricky. Let me introduce two/ interpretations–I roll with the second more than the first.

Okay, the first is that we recognize in the protagonist something that plagues ourselves, one of our foibles, weaknesses, flaws. Hence we pity them. Or we see that they are the victims of the bad circumstances and we pity them. And, at the same time, because we identify with them, we fear that we could make the same bad decisions or find ourselves a pawn of a similarly unjust fate.

Perhaps the play resolves itself, and through the play we learn to overcome those bad things, to fix our flaw, to be better. Thus, we are purged, cleansed, of our pity and fear. The pleasure here is tied to the pleasure of learning, of becoming better.

I don’t really buy that model. Rather, I think we reconcile, accept, those flaws. Perhaps we learn the importance of overcoming our flaws, perhaps we are better at avoiding them. But I think catharsis more as a coming to terms with our frailties, learning to live with them, coming to recognize humanity as something over than divine, ideal, or perfect. The rhetorician Kenneth Burke once said that humans are “rotten with perfection,” with the idea of perfection, with creating ideals and then comparing ourselves to them. Judging ourselves lacking for our inability to meet the impossible ideal. I think the cathartic “pleasure” of coming to terms with our frailty is timid, subdued. It is a kind of peace that eschews from a contentment with our/selves.

I’ll also say that I don’t think the purpose of tragedy is to release just fear or pity. That’s feels too narrow to me. Both in the sense that I don’t think tragic exploration limits itself to what we fear and who we pity (for suffering what seems injust or caprice whims of fate).

Catharsis reaches out to us and reminds us, rekindles, relights, what is already there. Our fear of death. Our fear of loss. So, yes, fear is certainly part of us. But what about our struggle to find meaning in our lives? Our desire for a soulmate. Is there a fear that we won’t find meaning or love (we could spin it that way). But rather than fear, what about the frustration love (or its absence, or its betrayal) causes us? The pain of rejection or betrayal. Catharsis is a term for the resonance between what we see on the stage, the screen, the page, and our own troubles, thoughts, feelings. And we can have powerful relationships to characters that do not necessarily amount to only pity.

This isn’t to say we can’t have a powerful sympathetic response to a narrative to which we have no lived correlate– I find Eli Weisel’s Night to be incredibly powerful despite the fact that I have not experienced genocide. Night is doing powerful work; I would simply insist that it is not cathartic work, because there is no personal resonance for me. It operates in the realm of sympathy (feeling for) rather than empathy (feeling with). This does not mean it is not “pedagogic,” i.e., instructive– it certainly aims to teach us how (not) to live. But there is no connection to my life (and, without falling into the “universal” rabbit hole, etc. etc), no identification. I experience it from a distance.

So, if I had to lay down a fundamental first principle for catharsis, it would be that there must be a fundamental identification between the action of the tragedy and the audience/reader/player.

Tragedy Presentation Expectations and Materials

First let me say that these are not supposed to be formal or stressful. If you are not a fan of public speaking, you are welcome to put together a video recording of you giving a talk or produce a narrated PowerPoint presentation that we can listen to in class.

As of today, we have 23 people who are active in the class. We have 150 minutes to complete these presentations. Leaving about a minute and a half between presentations for a few quick questions and transition, you each have 5 minutes for your presentation. So that’s about 650-750 words. I want those words to be your best words, for you to show us your best thing.

The presentation should probably spend about 150 words summarizing the plot of the game for us. THAT IS NOT A LOT OF WORDS–but you should give everyone a big picture view of the topic/action/main character in a very tight paragraph.

The main part of the presentation should focus on a particularly interesting scene that produces catharsis. Given that we are all pretty familiar with catharsis, you should simply identify what flavor of Curran’s menu you are tasting and give us no more than a one sentence definition.

Then take us to a scene and give us a close reading. Think of my explication of Marlene and Last of Us last class. I would have more work to do on that–but that sample is 380+ words.

If you are concise, then you can discuss two scenes of the game. During your talk, I will signal when you hit 4:00 minutes and shut you down when you hit five. Practice your speech enough that it fits in that 4:00-4:45 minute window.

Your presentation should be accompanied with a slide show. Unless you are recording your presentation, I strongly prefer you use Google Slides for this–you can submit a link to the presentation to Canvas and it will make transitioning between speakers much faster as everyone presents. These do not need to be fancy–just share materials relevant to your presentation. Or maybe like this. Note how those speakers put notes in some of the slides–copy and pasted from their paper. They know when to read and when to speak. Again, if anxiety is a problem, you are welcome to read a paper. When I present theoretical material at conferences, I tend to read more than speak, and I write [change slide] in my paper to remind me when to advance my presentation.

There isn’t any one right way to do this, and the presentations will look and feel different. To provide some clarity, I will grade on three things:

  • Time and Polish [whether spoken or prerecorded]
  • Identifies a type of catharsis
  • Close reads a scene
  • Has “good” slides

Tragedy Presentation Sign Ups

Back to the Conference Sign Up Google Doc.

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ENG 231 7.T: Last of Us as a Tragedy

Today’s Plan:

  • Watch: Last of Us Final Scene
  • Last of Us as a Tragedy (group discussions)
  • Last of Us as a Tragedy (class discussion)
  • Checking in with our project calendar

Last of Us Final Chapter (“Hospital”)

Let’s watch.

  • Open:9:17:45
  • Skip to 9:33:45

Last of Us as a Tragedy Prompt

Today I want to spend some time using the theoretical terms we researched at the beginning of this project. Working in groups of 3-4, I want you to think about how the following terms/concepts apply to our class playthrough (and, um, watch) of the Last of Us’s opening prologue and first chapter.

I’ve created a set of heuristic questions at the beginning of this document to help with this. Because we haven’t finished playing the Last of Us yet, some of these might be more difficult to discuss than others.

Hypothetical Timeline (Updated)

Here is what I am thinking:

  • Thursday, Feb 1st: Santos lecture. Discussion of Meakin et al. Building a vocabulary for analyzing tragedy. Homework: Identify a game you will play outside of class. Play it for two hours.
  • Tuesday, Feb 6th: Introduction to Aristotle’s Poetics (and the best/worst definition of tragedy). Close reading activity. Homework: Read Curran.
  • Thursday, Feb 8th: Start Developing our Handbook of Tragic Terms. The Last of Us, “Hometown / Prologue.” Homework: Play your game for 2 hours and finish Gaming Reflection #1.
  • Tuesday, Feb 13th: Last of Us, “The Outskirts: Capitol Building.” Play your game for 1 hour.
  • Thursday. Feb 15th: Santos lecture: Player complicity. “Reading” Sicart together. Last of Us, “Suburbs”. Homework: Read Potzsch and Waszkiewicz. Play your game for 2 hours and finish Gaming Reflection #2.
  • Tuesday. Feb 17th: Discuss Potzsch and Waskiewicz. HW: Play your game for one hour.
  • Thursday. Feb 19th: Last of Us, “Hospital” (time for “Epilogue”?). HW: Play your game for 2 hours.
  • Tuesday. Feb 20th: [Changed to Last of Us and tragedy discussion]Writing the Paper Workshop. HW: Start drafting your paper.
  • Thursday. Feb 22nd: [Changed to Writign the Paper Workshop / Overview]. Presentation expectations. Conference Sign-Ups.
  • Tuesday and Thursday Feb 27 & 29: Writing Conferences
  • Tuesday and Thursday March 5 & 7: Presentations

Parts of Tragedy–catharsis, hubris/hamaritia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, epiphany, aporia (? not expected, but Meakin), “action,” mimesis. Sicart: player complicity.

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7.T: Project Two Race and Rhetoric Outline

Today’s Plan:

  • Blankenship Write-Up #2 (One or Two Volunteers)
  • Journal Posts
  • Project 2 Introduction and Timeline

Project 2 Introduction and Timeline

Last time I taught this class was spring of 2021. I built our second project around Ersula J. Ore’s book Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. The title is pretty indicative of the book’s argument: that white American identity has always been built on the subjugation of and violence against black bodies; contemporary police violence then is simply another manifestation of a very long tradition of state sanctioned or ordered cruelty and murder. It is a powerful argument. This violence operates rhetorically by helping to instantiate and support white identity whic , as Coates mentioned in the interview we watched, is first and foremost a political mark of power and superiority. It is a claim to be able to claim. This is beyond the economic necessity of cheap if not slave labor to drive corporate profits. That justification exists as well.

When I was planning that unit, I deliberated between assigning Ore’s book and Kendi’s best-seller How to Be Anti-Racist. Ore’s book is more scholarly, while Kendi’s is written for a wider audience. It is more accessible–both in terms of the sophistication of its terminology and prose *and* in terms of the palpability of its argument. Kendi’s argument is both eloquent and simple, and I think I mentioned it in our last class: rather than thinking about racism as something someone is (as ethos, or identity in Miller’s terms), we need to think about it as what someone does (more in terms of logos, or policy in Miller’s terms). Being antiracist isn’t an attitude or a value–it is a path of action. You have to do stuff to be anti-racist. You have to look at your world, where you live, and figure out what you can do to dismantle inequality.

Let me put Kendi in conversation with Miller’s stases for policy debate. Being anti-racist requires that:

  • Ill: We recognize a problem. Que up *a lot* of statistics on the unequal educational, financial, penal outcomes between blacks and whites
  • Narrative of Causality: Debate why those inequalities exist (essentialism vs. contextualism).
  • Inherency: Argue whether the problem needs intervention, will it go away. Imagine and challenge the arguments for why racism doesn’t require intervention

Miller’s stases for productive policy, for invigorating rather than suppressing democracy require that we focus on *doing* something to fix an ill. Those stases were:

  • Solvency (what do you propose?)
  • Feasability (how is it possible?)
  • Unintended Consequences (imagine and address to the best of one’s ability)

Kendi’s approach to anti-racism resonates with Miller because he argues that being anti-racist means supporting policies with measurable outcomes that actively work to redress racial inequalities.

So, if Kendi’s work resonates so nicely with Miller, why didn’t I pick it? Because I did not think it would challenge in the way that Ore’s book would. The premises and examples from Ore’s book aren’t meant to persuade us to a movement. Kendi wants to change how we act, and is quite rhetorical in how he operates. Yes, his argument is supported with examples, both personal and historical, that are meant to outrage. But he gives us a path down which we can challenge that outrage. He allows us to skip over dwelling with our own responsibility, our obligation, by focusing attention on what we might do.

Those last two sentences above are meant to be read with a bit of skepticism. Because, as a rhetorician, I don’t want people to become comfortable too quickly. I believe that if we are to motivate ourselves and others to do that work, to follow through, then we have to understand racial injustice as part of our ethical identity. I thought Ore’s work had potential for such work because it is is historical, rather than analytical. By this, I mean that, chapter by chapter, she documents the construction, formalization, authorization of state sanctioned violence. Her argument is that violence isn’t something just outside of the system (like say, a hate group such as the KKK). And violence isn’t necessarily just physical force. I cannot know what you have been taught about America and race. I can make some assumptions, but I know enough to tread carefully lest what I make you and mean. I feel kind of safe assuming that you *probably* have not read a book like this one.

As I mentioned previously, during this class we read Coates’ “A Case for Reparations.” Like Ore, Coates makes rhetorical arguments by documenting, with fine grain, historical facts. He forces us to see something that you probably didn’t learn in high school history classes. It was through Coates’ essay that I first learned about Black Wall Street and the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. I am curious how many of you have heard of that one.

Between now and spring break, I am going to ask you to do some reading and some thinking. Instead of Ore, I’ll ask you to read two essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates, both of which are available in Canvas. Based on those readings, I will ask you to read another 75-100 pages or so by any author Coates mentions, or on a subject that comes up in the Coates reading.

In addition to your reading, I’ll ask you to write 3 reflection journal entries on your reading. Each entry should be about the length of a write-up: one page single-spaced. Your journal entries should be structured around Blankenship’s four questions for empathy:

  1. Yielding to others by sharing and listening to personal stories [thinking about when stories sting us, and when we feel resistance, hesitancy to accept, cognitive friction? What does this person believe that I do not?]
  2. Considering motives behind speech acts and actions [what is the writer trying to do? What is the argument/purpose/goal of this text? What is it doing besides communicating facts? Who is their audience? How does the context/kairos of the text show up? Why write this now?]
  3. Engaging in reflection and self-critique? [Why don’t I believe the things that this person believes?]
  4. Addressing difference, power, and embodiment [How and where you see, engage with them? What we might do?]

As I mentioned in previous classes, I will not see these journal entries. These are meant to be a space in which you can think through the readings. Let me share something I wrote about this project in 2021.
If needed, I can share an extended discussion of postpedagogy.

Journaling Discussion

I got two questions about the journaling assignment and wanted to share my response here. Here’s one of the questions:

Would writing down my notes and thoughts count as a reflection? Or do you want a more formal sense of writing about our comments ad ideas, more like our write-ups? Please let me know.

A fair and reasonable question. My first crack at an answer:

The reflections are your space. They aren’t something I will see, unless you really want me to read it. My idea was more of a free-write, because I think ideas emerge when you just pose a question and start writing.

My own process involves taking notes as I write—first in the margins of texts and then in a Google Doc. Then I start writing a summary of a piece, attempting to lay out its major argument and points of evidence. Then I start *really* writing about it: about how it compliments or challenges my understanding of an idea, policy, practice, etc.

I sort of realize that I didn’t directly answer the question. Because I don’t want to answer that question. My theory is that people need space to think through things, and people think in different ways. One of my reflection questions essentially asks if you thought providing you a space to read and think without my oversight was valuable or a waste of time. I know (from research and experience) that students tend to view discussion boards as busy work. There’s skepticism toward journaling and reflective writing. So, think of this as a hypothesis, does that work become more meaningful to you if you are “free” to choose to do it? And free to determine how to do it?

That said, I know not everyone here has experience in humanities research classes, so I don’t know (and please don’t take this critically) if you feel confident that you know how to do the hard work of thinking. I mean this sincerely. Thought isn’t a magical thing that happens, it is often the product of productive engagement, will, labor. And you might have questions about how to do that labor. (Does this stuff get taught here at UNC?)

Proposed Timeline

  • Tuesday, Feb 20: Project Introduction. Home: Finish Coates’ “A Case” reading.
  • Thursday, Feb 22: In class: watch Kendi TED Talk, “The Difference Between Being Not Racist and Antiracist” (2020). Homework: Journal #1. Start reading: Coates’ “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”
  • Tuesday, Feb 27: Watch Ore, “Lynching in American Public Memory”. Homework: continue reading Coates. Prepare one thought on Coates’ reading thus far that you want to share. The thought should be 200 words or less. It can reflect on the reading, identify what you might read next, or identify something that you might do based on your reading thus far.
  • Thursday, Feb 29: One Thought. List of Other Readings [50-100 pages]. Homework: Finish Coates’ reading. HW: Do Your Reading
  • Tuesday, Mar 5: Discussion of Coates, other readings. Exercise: What is a question that I might ask you? Longer group exercise: What is an MA exam question I might ask you?
  • Thursday, Mar 7: Computer Lab day to do Race and Rhetoric Project Reflection
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ENG 231 5.T: Aristotle’s Poetics

Today’s Plan:

  • Thinking of Tragedy?
  • Aristotle’s Poetics
  • What Game Are You Playing?
  • Homework

Writing Exercise

I’ve put up a quick assignment in Canvas.

Aristotle’s Poetics

Let’s read some Aristotle.

Homework

Read the Curran. There’s a short assignment in Canvas

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ENG 231 4.R: Games as Tragedy

Today’s Plan:

  • Games as Tragedy Project
  • Meakin et al

Games as Tragedy Project

Overview: For the next 5 weeks we will think about how video games reflect, amplify, or defy the traditional Western genre of tragedy. We will read and discuss theory on tragedy, especially its most slippery term, catharsis. We will read and discuss theory on how, as players, we relate to the games/characters we play (as): particularly Miguel Sicart’s concept of “player complicity.” We will also read a few works that analyze games in terms of tragedy as ideas for how to approach your paper. In class, we will play and discuss Naughty Dogs’ iconic The Last of Us, which I think epitomizes the aesthetic potential for the genre (tragedy) and the medium (video game).

Outside of class, you will be responsible for playing a game (any game other than The Last of Us, which we will be playing in class. As you play, you will keep notes in a gaming journal, thinking about how some of our key tragic terms (listed below) show up in your game and your experience of that game (meaning, in part, that your paper can think about the space between what a game is trying to do, how it is trying to make you feel, and whether/why that is/n’t working).

That was the short version, now for the longer one.

Hypothetical Timeline

Here is what I am thinking:

  • Thursday, Feb 1st: Santos lecture. Discussion of Meakin et al. Building a vocabulary for analyzing tragedy. Homework: Identify a game you will play outside of class. Play it for two hours.
  • Tuesday, Feb 6th: Introduction to Aristotle’s Poetics (and the best/worst definition of tragedy). Close reading activity. Homework: Read Curran.
  • Thursday, Feb 8th: Start Developing our Handbook of Tragic Terms. The Last of Us, “Hometown / Prologue.” Homework: Play your game for 2 hours and finish Gaming Reflection #1.
  • Tuesday, Feb 13th: Last of Us, “The Outskirts: Capitol Building.” Play your game for 1 hour.
  • Thursday. Feb 15th: Santos lecture: Player complicity. “Reading” Sicart together. Last of Us, “Suburbs”. Homework: Read Potzsch and Waszkiewicz. Play your game for 2 hours and finish Gaming Reflection #2.
  • Tuesday. Feb 17th: Discuss Potzsch and Waskiewicz. HW: Play your game for one hour.
  • Thursday. Feb 19th: Last of Us, “Hospital” (time for “Epilogue”?). HW: Play your game for 2 hours.
  • Tuesday. Feb 20th: Writing the Paper Workshop. HW: Start drafting your paper.
  • Thursday. Feb 22nd: Writing Time. Presentation expectations.
  • Tuesday and Thursday Feb 27 & 29: Writing Conferences
  • Tuesday and Thursday March 5 & 7: Presentations

Parts of Tragedy–catharsis, hubris/hamaritia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, epiphany, aporia (? not expected, but Meakin), “action,” mimesis. Sicart: player complicity.

Play your game. The list:

  • Last of Us 2. 24-30 hours.
  • God of War. 20-30 hours.
  • Shadow of the Colossus. 7-9 hours.
  • The Walking Dead. 12-13 hours. (Many sequels).
  • Bioshock Infinite. 12-16 hours. (Not sure).
  • Spiritfarer: Easing into the Steps of Grief. 25-30 hours.
  • Heavy Rain. (Haven’t Played). 10-12 hours.
  • Beyond: Two Souls. 10-12 hours.
  • What Remains of Edith Finch. 2.5 hours.
  • Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
  • Firewatch (?). 4 hours
  • A Plague Tale: Requiem. 15 hours
  • Life is Strange: True Colors 10 hours.
  • Life is Strange. 14 hours
  • Doki Doki Literature Club. 4-8 hours (but really 8 hours)

The syllabus maps out 10 hours for playing games. If you play a short game, then I expect you to play it twice or for you to compare it to a second short game (minimum of 6 hours of play for this project).

Not all of these games are tragedies by a strict definition. But all of these games should help us think about how video games, and their interactive nature, utilize/transform catharsis. Papers can argue that games function as tragedies or argue that games fail to meet their cathartic potential.

For this project, papers will be academic conference length (meaning 8-10 pages double-spaced, about 2000-2500 words). Some papers will be much longer than that, and that’s okay. It is virtually impossible to do all the things this paper has to do in less than 8 pages. Papers will have a title and a works cited or reference list (MLA or APA, your choice).

Let’s Discuss Meakin et al

Here’s a link to the article.

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ENG 319 4.R: The Paper

Today’s Plan:

  • Thoughts on the Paper
  • Questions about the Paper

Thoughts on the Paper

A few things that are true enough:

  • I have not given you much guidance on how to write this paper
  • I do not *want* to give you much guidance on how to write this paper
  • I do not want to give you guidance because I want you to invent your own assignment
  • You, I imagine, would much prefer I tell you what to do
  • You, I imagine, also probably believe that I have a very specific idea of what I want this paper to do and will penalize you if you do not do the thing that I want you to do but won’t tell you how to do

Let’s quickly watch a thing that I like.

Let me write a thing here. I have published numerous articles on “postpedagogy.” Postpedagogy kind of literally translates to “after teaching.” It is the idea that students will learn more, grow more, if we do not try to “teach” them how to do things. Particularly things like writing, which, as I have already ranted about, really cannot be taught. And I get that you are totally used to being taught all kinds of things and then measured to make sure you did them right. I hate that system, my complicity in it, and your expectation for it. But I certainly don’t hate you. I like you. I like you enough that I am going to hurt you a bit by not telling you what to do so we can break out of that cycle.

I had a graduate student a few years ago write, in a collaborative article, that my teaching style walks the line between “hopelessly lost” and “productively confused” and that is one of the nicest things a student has every said about me. It was a gift. Because it identifies precisely where I want students to be. My sense, from a few conversations, is that too many of you are in the “hopelessly lost” place, so let’s try to clear that up. In a second I’ll ask you to ask me questions. Anonymously, if you prefer.

First, a few things:

  • I have asked you to write a close analysis of a candidate’s campaign materials. That candidate should be someone that you like, or are at least likely to vote for. That analysis should use the Miller, Burke, and/or Mercieca as a lens. I do not expect the analysis to be complimentary or critical in the traditional senses. Rather, the analysis should be trying to make some kind of argument about democracy/policy or demagoguery/identity and the candidate’s use of rhetoric in the terms that M, B, and M offer us. Do you have questions about those terms? Are you clear on what you are looking for?
  • Do we want to look at a thing and see if, just based on the instructions above, we can say something smart?
  • Note, too, that your paper doesn’t have to be on a politician. It can use those terms to try and do something else.
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ENG 328 4.R: Color, Promotional Flyer

Today’s Plan:

  • White Space is Not Your Enemy, Color
  • Some Color Tools
  • Mini-Project #3: Developing a Flyer for the English Department’s 4+1 program
  • Homework: White Space is Not Your Enemy, read the Typography

Working with Color

Tools / Resources:

Mini-Project 3: ENG 4+1 Program

For our third project, I would like to design a flyer or tri-fold brochure for the English Department’s 4+1 Accelerated MA program. If you are still learning photoshop, then go ahead and design a standard 8.5 x 11 flyer. If you have a handle on Photoshop, then you can take a swing at using InDesign to create a tri-fold brochure. We’ll start playing with InDesign next week (and there are plenty of tri-fold templates).

This project is meant to retest your abilities with the basics–alignment, focal point, contrast, spacing–while also giving you an opportunity to practice with color and typography. Not too much practice, since UNCO has a Branding Style guide with which I would like you to work. Branding and/or Style guides can be found at just about any major corporation or institution. They often cover writing, addressing issues of grammar and style. But they also cover visual design elements, including colors, font choices, and logos.

Homework

Read the White Space chapter on type. Complete activity #3 Try This, paying attention to type and color (use at least two colors).

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ENG 319 4.T: Categorical Identity

Today’s Plan:
  • A Quick Question
  • Let’s Do a Thing! (Word Responses)
  • Categorical Identity
  • Let’s start reading Blankenship
  • Reading / Write-Up HW

Categorical Identity

Today I want to develop a bit of a mini-lecture that transitions us from our first project-thinking about problems with demagoguery and contemporary politics-to our second project-which will focus on developing a framework for how we might address those problems. Quickly: I think Miller does an excellent job of outlining a problem and proposing a functional system for remedying that problem (those contemporary stases of ill and policy). But I tend to question the appeal of her system; I doubt whether folks would be willing or capable to enact it. Let me quote Miller:
…the best way to [counter] demagoguery isn’t by aspiring to some emotion-free hyper-rationalism; it’s by practicing compassion for those demagoguery says we should treat as Other. Its by imagining things from their perspective.
Well and good. Agreed even! But *how* do we motivate people to give a damn about other people’s perspectives, especially people who have overdosed on more and more of “the same”? I believe enacting Miller’s stases of ill and policy would require a seismic shift in how we conceive of and conduct education. At almost all levels. And not just to teach people how to analyze policy. I mean, that too, but that’s not the seismic shift. Rather than thinking about the transmission of knowledge, we have to think about the cultivation of an attitude. Specifically an attitude toward others. A friend shared a meme the other day which I will share here.

A utopian desire? A practical impossibility? Is the utopian desire naive, or is it the dismissal of such desire as naive itself a kind of fatalism?

Are their decisions in which we cannot condone, accept, allow an other to be other for the sake of others (third parties, neighbors)? What do we do when we are dealing with lives instead of light bulbs?

Break.

I do not want to underestimate how difficult it will be to enact such a shift in contemporary K-12 schools, since public education at all levels have become knowledge factories. My wife teaches 5th grade and her students take an assessment test every 4-5 days to make sure they are on track. They are not on track. They are all behind. The curriculum is so ridiculously paced and packed that they cannot possibly be anything but behind. Teachers will be evaluated (and, in some cases, fired) because they cannot deliver an impossible curriculum. A curriculum designed by private corporations (teachers working for private corporations, sure, sure). A curriculum sure to fill every second of every day with productive learning. Utter madness, utter impossibility, leaving no room for failure, struggle, reteaching, exploration, experimentation. Just a demand to endure surrounded by monstrous positive toxicity. Humans are not computers. Learning is not an easy frictionless transfer of information. Capitalism has ruined education. Lots of enthymemes in that paragraph that I do not have time to unpack and illustrate. And, in laying out the critique of education, I think I have lost the thread. So…

Let me summarize what I think we’ve come to accept: Miller’s argument centers around the problems of identity. What happens when political decision-making, which should largely be a matter of logos, of weighing propositions, estimating costs, imagining side effects, and choosing the most expedient and efficient proposal out of a limited and realistic set of options, what happens when that all gets erased? repressed? ignored? in favor of a system built around identity, about voting for the “good” folks rather than the “bad” folks? I am old enough to remember when presidential debates centered around specific problems and pieces of legislation. When candidates had to lay out policy proposals while campaigning and discuss specific details. I don’t feel like this is the world in which we live, when legislation might have a name (“Build Back Better”) but little cognitive energy is invested in discussing the specifics. Even this year, I listen to Biden talking about preserving reproductive rights, but, um, exactly how does he plan on doing that?. Okay, I’m losing the thread here. The thread is that identity has become a problem.

Obviously, I believe Jim Corder and Lisa Blankenship supply us with productive ways to think about how to curtail the potentially toxic issues caused by an over-addiction to identity. But before I do that, I want to explore the idea of identity a bit more, to show that it isn’t suddenly a problem, but rather has been under scrutiny for the past 50 or so years. In short: postmodern theorists from a wide variety of disciplines have been skeptical of identity for quite some time. Their skepticism towards identity and Truth (understood as transcendental, certain, and/or universal) stem from some of the more horrific events of the 19th and 20th century. Particularly genocide: the genocide of Africans (particularly in the southern quarter of the continent), of native Americans, and, of course, of Jews during the Holocaust. It is the latter that fundamentally rattles Western philosophy. Let me move quickly here: for many postmoderns what authorizes the horrors of the Holocaust is the certainty that one category of humans is vastly superior to another category of supposed non-humans. Categorization, coupled with lingering vestiges of the 18th century’s “Great Chain of Being” (the Christian idea that God had hierarchically ordered all beings in exist from least to greatest), produces a position from which one can authorize the enslavement, deportation, relocation, or even genocide of others. Mere meager others. Because they are not the same category of us (remember that Aristotle’s language for ontology, for categorization, is genus and species). This isn’t merely a problem of “us” and “them.” It is when they come to be some-thing other than us. A different, inferior species. Humans invent categories that authorize them to be evil.

I’m doing an independent study on Queer Theory this semester and we started by reading Annamarie Jagose’s 1997 book Queer Theory / An Introduction. Jagose traces a history of gay and lesbian political movements dating back to the early 20th century. Those initial movements, called the homophile movements, sought if not political, at least cultural, recognition based on categorizing same-sex desire as a “disease.” Their arguments were that if the newfound science of psychology could identify sexual deviancy, then homosexuals (the brand new scientific term of the day) deserved not vitriol but sympathy and understanding. We can look back and judge that movement now, but they were attempting to take rhetorical advantage of an emerging power (medical discourse) to carve out a space in which they could exist. This movement carries on in various forms for about 50 years. In the 60’s gay and lesbian movements inherit the more radical notions of change and rebellion from the black power and women’s liberation movements. Young activists in the field reject the homophile approach, refuse to see themselves as diseased, and begin to demand equality.

However, as Jagose noted, such movements were highly modern in their structure. In order to provide their people with a sense of community and belonging, working from an established political–philosophical template–they centralized a particular universal sense of the “proper” gay and lesbian identity. The familiar template here is the “ethnic” template; to think of being gay or being lesbian as stemming from a universal, identifiable, stable, set of values, experiences, and desires. They could articulate what it meant to be gay. What it meant to be a lesbian. Once defined, you are capable of organization. Once organized, you can speak with a greater, louder voice. Jagose writes of these new liberation movements:

The process of stabilization–even solidification–enabled lesbians and gays to be represented as a coherent community, untied by a collective lesbian and gay identity. […] Those alienated from the ethnic model consolidated by lesbian and gay identity did not simply demand to be included but also critiqued the fundamental principles which had centralized that specific (although supposedly universal) identity in the first place. (62). […] These debates about the validity of sexual variations–so vehement at times that they have come to be known as the “sex wars”–impacted most significantly on lesbian feminist circles, where lesbian sexuality had been theorized predominantly as a counter to masculine sexuality, which feminist analysis represented as overwhelmingly oppressive and objectifying. […] Lesbian feminism [in its ethnic-identity form] has generally argued that exceptions to the “standard” forms of lesbian sexuality [short version, Platonic intimacy over desire]–such as bisexuality, sado-masochism or butch/fem relations–are ideologically suspect assimilations of patriarchal values. Bisexual women are thus lesbians who maintain their heterosexual privilege instead of identifying fully with a devalued [and thus good and pure] social identity. […] Lesbians who identify as butch or fem belong to a pre-feminist era of lesbianism and consequently are thought to be either heroic or tragic, having internalized the heterosexual necessity for gender differentiation within a sexual relationship
Let me stop here. What’s happening? Let’s look at Jagose on 77-78 & 82. [Queer = Deconstructive] I want to use this introduction to queer theory as an introduction into “sophistry” or, more commonly, “postmodern philosophy.” Let’s look at some passages from three different theorist. Kenneth Burke, who isn’t necessarily postmodern. He’s going to claim we cannot escape identity as us vs them. Victor Vitanza, who wants to argue that, perhaps, we can escape the binary–or maybe that we have to be hyper vigilant, not just sort of vigilant, about its impositions. Kenneth Burke, <em (1969), Identification isn’t as Idealist as Persuasion. We need not be Heroic Heroes?
“We need never deny the presence of strife, enmity, factions, as a characteristic motive of rhetorical expression. We need not close our eyes to their almost tyranneous ubiquity in human relations; we can be on the alert always to see how such temptations to strife are implicit in the institutions that condition human relationships; yet we can at the same time always look beyond this order, to the principle of identification in general, a terministic choice justified by the facts that the identifications in the order of love are also characteristic of rhetorical expression.” (20) — “Insofar as the individual is involved in conflict with other individuals or groups, the study of this same individual would fall under the head of Rhetoric. . . . The Rhetoric must lead us through the Scramble, the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the wavering line of pressure and counterpressure, the Logomachy, the onus of ownership, the War of Nerves, the War.” (23)
Burke-identity *by* division. Burke would argue, contra the Utilitarian and Queer hope, that identities are inevitable. They stem from a deep human need to belong and from a political requirement to process, debate, and decide. Were it only one source, we might be able to over come them. But, pressed together, nature and culture make their gravity inescapable. For Burke, what matters is that we police our own commitments and monitor the humanity of our gates. For more radical theorists, like Jacques Derrida, Victor Vitanza, or Diane Davis (one old guard pomo and two fairly contemporary postmodern rhetorical scholars), the Burkian resignment to identity needs more radical challenge. Burke refers to categorical identity, categorical ontology, as What Vitanza would as negative dialectic (something *is* by way of what it *is* not). Heterosexual only enters the lexicon after the clinical establishment of homosexual, which itself represses a wide range of sexual questions and phenomena, reducing it simply to “object choice). Vitanza (indebted to Burke but also skeptical):
“While the negative enables, it disenables. As I’ve said, it’s mostly a disenabler because it excludes. Something is by virtue of Nothing, or what is not. The negative–or negative dialectic–is a kind of pharmakon, and in overdoes, it is extremely dangerous (e.g., a little girl is a little man without a penis! Or an Aryan is not a Jew! And hence, they do not or should not–because in error–exist.) The warning on the label–beware of overdoses–is not enough; for we, as KB says, are rotten with perfection. We would No [kNOw]. That is, say No to females, Jews, gypsies, queers, hermaphrodites, all others. By saying No, we would purchase our identity. Know ourselves. By purifying the world, we would exclude that which, in our different opinions, threatens our identity. (We have, Burke says, “the motives of combat in [our] very essence” (1969, 305). Hence, we build gulags and ovens so as to have a great, good place. It [the standard, Aristotelian, school-book History of Rhetoric] is a momument built by ways of exclusion. I am against monuments, edifying pretensions.
Let me just point to a few other quotes here, quotes that let me end by showing a range of thinkers tackling a similar set of problems: how to shift the first, foundational, obligation of philosophy from Truth to Alterity. How to grapple with the gravity of identity, to wonder if we can escape its terminal orbit. How to become more comfortable asking questions that make us uncomfortable. How to avoid final solutions. I have more to write here today. But I want to end hanging on the question of identity, its power in the way we think about ourselves, a question of whether it can be transcended. If we are to radically change education, to save democracy, or–at the very least–to temper the growing addiction to demagoguery, if we are to engender in others a care for others, then I think rethinking identity has to be among our first baby steps. If, as Miller argues, self-skepticism is key to healthier dialogue, then we need a better language, more sophist-icated lenses, for thinking about our (many, constructed, conflicted, inherited, created, messy) selves. Note: Baudrillard and the desire for perfection (the perfect idea-abstract map of the realm/human/being. The desert of the real. The critique that has run out of steam. Borges’ short fable. Baudrillard, opening of Simulation and Simulacra.

Homework

Remember that the Corder / Blankenship write-up is due on Thursday. Here is the standard list of reading questions I give with the Corder reading:
  1. What challenge does Corder issue that problematizes all rhetoric, but especially positivistic rhetoric? What does Corder mean by the idea that we make narratives? Why do said narratives complicate traditional notions of argument and rhetoric?
  2. Why is Corder opposed to framing Rogers as a model for *all* argument? (His critique of Maxine Hairston, which involves one of the greatest “shade” sentences in the history of academia)
  3. What dimension does Corder add to argument (rhetoric) that is often ignored? In answering this question, think about the meaning(s) of the long anecdote Corder uses later in section 8 of the essay? Why include it? What claim/idea does it support?
  4. Why does Corder use the word “love”? In what way is Corder’s approach to rhetoric like “love”? [That’s a really interesting terministic choice. I have a few ideas that I’ll share with you in class, but I am interested in how you interpret his decision. Note that I think this is *by far* the hardest question]
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ENG 328 4.T: Office Door Peer Review

Today’s Plan:

  • Office Door Peer Review
  • Homework

Office Door Peer Review

Today you will work in groups to provide feedback on the office door project. I see the purpose of this activity as three-fold:

  1. First, by discussing the projects with your teammates, you should strengthen your familiarity with some core design concepts
  2. Second, by writing brief evaluation responses, you will gain practice providing feedback (which, if you are aiming to be editors, you will need to develop)
  3. Third, you will be providing each other with feedback to guide revision (which I will ask you to do for homework)

Overall I am quite impressed by the quality of the designs. I’m not doing a revision here because I do not have a worthy poster. Rather, I think I have several worthy candidates. I’m doing a revision here because I only realized Monday that I did not include a rubric for the project before you completed it. Whoops. So I want to give you an opportunity to revise your projects before a “final” assessment.

While I didn’t give a rubric, I did give some hopes and expectations. Let’s revisit those.

  • A poster design in Photoshop. I am going to print the Posters via Staples. The size will by 18 x 24. You have freedom to do a portrait or landscape orientation. The resolution must be 300 pixels. This will be a full color design. This means the design has to have a bleed. I have created an (almost blank) template file: link here.
  • I want something cool. This can be bright and graphic. It can be really English-ee, if that’s what you want (photos of books? A collage?). I do not want to spend money on something boring.
  • The primary goal here is to help students find faculty. Faculty names should be bold and noticeable. AND, faculty offices are clustered. It would be really cool if this design could include a map. But even if it doesn’t, names should be organized in a way that resembles the layout of offices. Here is a powerpoint the department uses to keep track of faculty offices.
  • Graphic photos are cool. If you have a recent iPhone or Android phone, then you can increase the camera resolution. I have an old crappy iPhone, so I am not sure when they started to include this functionality.

Let’s combine this with the design priorities for our first project:

  • Typography: Font use, font pairings, readability
  • Layout and Alignment: beyond layout, padding and/or margin issues, use of space, attention to white space and proximity
  • Content: In this case, does this feel like it works as a map? How functional does it feel?
  • Focal Point: Is there a clear spot to which your eye is drawn? Does this grab your attention?
  • Contrast / Use of Color: Does the use of color amplify other design elements? Contribute to the focal point or to the cool factor? Does it help create hierarchy?
  • Cool Factor: Did you have a “wow” reaction? How did you feel when you first saw it? What kind of adjectives might you relate to the design?

As a group I’ll ask you to write a response to the designer. You should first identity what the design does well. Be specific. Use the elements above as a heuristic to help you think your way through the design. I do not expect you will address every point for every design.

Next you will want to identify 2-3 things that you think the designer could address or improve. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a glaring problem; you might point to an area of the design that isn’t quite working for you. You might see an opportunity to experiment with something bold. Whatever you suggest, try to offer a few ways the designer might address each point. The goal here is to be constructive rather than merely critical.

Here is a link to the feedback document where you can leave authors your responses.

Design teams and assignments are below. I strongly suggest opening all of your designs first to get a general impression of the range you will be reviewing before you start commenting in depth on any individual project. All of the projects are visible here.

Each group has been assigned 5 projects to review. I would like to discuss all the projects in the final 15-20 minutes of class–so I will alert you every 10 minutes to try and help you budget your time.

Review Teams and Assignments
Team #1
Designs: #1, #6, #7, #11, #15

  • Jaiden
  • Sean
  • Wyatt

Team #2
Designs: #2, #5, #6, #7, #8

  • Carly
  • Brianna
  • Matthew

Team #3
Designs: #4, #9, #11, #13, #15

  • Malia
  • Molly
  • Ashley

Team #4
Designs: #1, #3, #4, #12, #14

  • Jaydin
  • Olivia
  • Adrien

Team #5
Designs: #2, #3, #8, #10, #12

  • Rianna
  • Regan
  • Anna

Team #6
Designs: #5, #9, #10, #13, #14

  • Macy
  • Sterling
  • Rue

Homework

  • Obviously, revise your image and re-upload files to Canvas
  • Write me a quick note in Canvas that summarizes your feedback and revision decisions [what did you change and why?]
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