ENG 328 8.M: Mapping Out the Rest of Our Year

Posted on October 11, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

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.

Wild fires

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).

Long infographics.

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.

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ENG 225 8.M: Completing Project 2, Introducing Project 3

Posted on October 10, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Completing Project 2
  • Introducing Project 3
  • Intellectual Meandering
  • Homework

Completing Project 2

As I’ve said a couple of times before: the aim of Project 2 is to teach you how to set up a qualitative research project. The emphasis is on three different facets of methodology:

  • Collecting Objects (ensuring that someone else could replicate your method and get a similar collection of objects)
  • Analyzing Objects (building off previous research, using recongizable categories and techniques)
  • Ensuring Reliability (doing something to defend the integrity of your findings, i.e., making sure two different people review results, conducting “norming” sessions, etc).

Because I’d like to move on to Project 3, we aren’t going to finish this research and write up a formal paper. But I would like everyone to write up a one-page, single-spaced summary of the work you’ve done thus far.

What goes in this Project 2 Summary paper? Let’s look at the 5 parts of a qualitative (or quantitative) research paper:

  • Introduction: introduces problem, glosses previous research quickly, states initial hypothesis and summarizes the key findings (often in compare/contrast to the hypothesis)
  • Previous Research: reviews all relevant previous research on the subject
  • Methodology: covers the three things above–collecting samples/specimens/objects, methods of analysis, methods of ensuring reliability
  • Data/Findings: Charts, graphs, tables, survey results, whatever the methods produced
  • Discussion: Where the hard thinking happens (more on this later)
  • Conclusion: quick summary of the paper (often repeating parts of the introduction), indicating what future research should happen, often a move to explain what should change based on the research

For the final summary paper, I’d like you to take a swing at writing up the methodology section. These are probably harder than they sound: you have to be detailed enough that someone can recreate your research–which is kind of like writing a recipe to teach someone how to bake a cake. It requires more fine detail than you might initially think.

Then, share your data/findings–tell me what your preliminary analysis found (I know each group completed a different amount of research).

Finally, take a swing at discussing those findings. Discussion sections do several different things (often depending on what you found, and whether what you found matched up with what you expected). Here’s a short, modified heuristic that I use in my Writing as a Job class:

  • How does it compare to previous research? Similarly: How does it compare to your hypothesis? Did you find what you expected to find?
  • Any weird, idiosyncratic results? Like one finding that was a complete surprise?
  • If there were any surprises, then speculate as to why?
  • Any trouble executing the research methodology? The planned analysis? As you were doing the analysis, did you notice a pattern of tricky objects to analyze?
  • What are the implications of this research? Does it tell us something we have to do differently? Think about differently? [NOTE: Sometimes this happens in the conclusion, it kind of depends on what kind of paper you are writing and whether your initial research questions where purely theoretical or connected to real-world problems/practices]

While I realize the research projects were collaborative, I’d like everyone to write up their own one page (or so, it is fine if it stretches beyond a page) research report so that I can provide feedback on organization, logical development, and sentence syntax.

Project 3

Now that we are wrapping up Project 2, it is time to move onto our final Project. Let’s revisit the syllabus for a second:

I will ask you to develop your own research question centered around a particular game or gaming community. This paper will incorporate 100-150 pages of research (whether a book or books chapters and articles) on a game as well as your own contribution. We’ll work on a proposal project in which you identify a game you would like to study, scout out some preliminary perspectives on the game, and hypothesize what you think you’ll find (or something like that, I tend to give a lot of latitude to design your own project here).

Gamers–this is your opportunity to write about that game you love (first surveying what other scholarship is out there on that game). Or to write about that game you hate. Or to write about an awesome player community. Or to write about how player communities are toxic. Or to write about how games can impact the way we act in the real world. Or to write about how games make us terrible people. The controller is in your hands.

Surveying recent projects:

  • What the hell is Blaseball? (funky collaborative online story-telling and decision-making)
  • Ethical and Pro-Social Decision-Making in Detroit: Become Human (Taking time to apply Sicart to a longer game)
  • Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Last of Us II
  • Dealing With Toxicity: Looking at the Lack of Prosocial Behavior in EVE Online
  • Humans vs. Zombies: The Benefits of Campus Wide Alternate Reality Games (Grows out of Bogost’s work on procedurality)
  • Testing the Promise of SuperBetter: Can we gamify our daily lives?
  • Exploring the Application of Video Games to the Music Classroom to Increase Good Performance Behaviors in Students

Over the next week we’ll watch some videos about games, read some articles about games, and examine some past student papers about games as you develop both a paper proposal and a reading list (and/or play schedule, depending on the type of project you develop).

I am also open to you continuing your Project 2 research (or collaborating with another team). If you choose this option, then I will ask you to develop a slightly longer lit review (more reading) and/or to extend your research project (say, double the amount of objects analyzed).

I am open to you returning to Project 1, and using Sicart’s ideas on player complicity and wicked problems to analyze another game.

I am open to you telling me what your favorite game is and then doing the legwork to find out what academics are (and aren’t) saying about it.

Intellectual Meandering

Let it begin with one of my favorite video game scholars, Jane McGonigal”

I am probably going to want to talk about SuperBetter.

Homework

Let the intellectual meandering continue. For Wednesday, I’d like you to select one source from the following page and prepare what I call a talking point. A talking point is a prepared sentence, written out and read aloud, that summarizes what you read, highlights a particularly interesting/relevant/controversial fact or idea in it, and concludes with a question for discussion. You can submit your talking point to Canvas and we will review them in Wednesday’s class.

Here is a link to the research behind McGonigal’s SuperBetter program.

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ENG 225 7.F: Constructing a Likert Scale and Analyzing Your Data

Posted on October 8, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Overview of Today
  • Likert Scale
  • Analyzing Data
  • Homework

Overview of Today

I’m pretty sure your group has already drafted some kind of tool to analyze the objects you’ve collected this week. I want to spend the first 20 minutes of class formalizing that tool, then give you 15 minutes to practice with it. Then we will run a quick norming session (about 15 minutes). I’ll be moving from group to group to check on your likert scales. So:

  • 20 minutes on Likert scales / construction of Google Forms
  • 10 minutes of practice analysis
  • 10 minutes of solo analysis
  • 5 minutes minutes of team debrief
  • 5 minutes to set the homework expectations

Constructing / Finalizing Your Likert Scales (Analysis Methods)

While the term likert scale might be unfamiliar, I can almost guarantee you’ve encountered one before.

  • It is very likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is neither likely or unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is very unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale

Note: social scientists and marketers often omit the middle option above. Doing so forces a respondent to make a decision–and often the hardest decisions are those that require us to put something above or below the median cut line. The middle option provides respondents with an opt out.

Note: If you do a ranking scale, make sure you tell someone whether 1 is their favorite/good or 1 is their least favorite/bad.

I’ve already shared a few scales from previous semester with you. A refresh:

Story Driven Female Protagonist Tool

Is this character highly sexualized?

  • Highly sexualized (4)
  • Somewhat sexualized (3)
  • Somewhat unsexualized (2)
  • Highly unsexualized (1)

Race Research: Representation of Latino Characters

Does the character fit one of the following archetypes?

  • Spicy sexpot [oversexualized characters]
  • The maid / domestic servant
  • The gangbanger / drug dealer
  • Spanish only speaker / hyperbolic accent

(Note: I remember working with some groups on this Monday, but I’m not sure the race team made it to the point of constructing an assessment that moves beyond representation–I’ll talk with y’all first. Maybe given our time restraints, representation is enough? Or can we look at covers to check for tropes?)

Where Will You Input Your Data?

Decision time: will you put data directly into a spreadsheet? Or will you

Team / Solo Analysis

Team Analysis: Okay, take 15 minutes and use your tool as a team to analyze one object at a time. Discuss friction. Try and get on the same page.

Solo Analysis: Take 15 minutes and individually analyze objects. Keep your results secret from your teammates (when there is about 5 minutes left, I’ll ask you to share your results via a Form or to a Sheet).

Homework

Conduct analysis. How much? Let me talk to your groups real quick.

Every object has to get rated by at least two people.

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ENG 328 7.W: Flyer Design Check In

Posted on October 6, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Ripping and Cleaning a Logo
  • Flyer Design Check-In
  • Homework

Ripping and Cleaning a Logo

First up today, all of our flyers require an English department logo. If you created space for this in your first design (the one I commented on), then great. If you didn’t, then you have a revision to make.

Update: no need to rip and clean today, Andreas shared some .png versions of the logo with me.

Flyer Design Check-In

I have provided some feedback in Canvas on your flyer designs. I’d like you to work on revising your designs in class today.

All of you will need to include a clean English department logo in your design.

If you work on the Mayer design team, then I have another last minute challenge for you. I got an email from Michael last night, and Zachery’s PR team sent 3 approved photos to use in promotional materials. The photo credit has to be attributed to Ken Gonzales-Day.

I included these three images in the Canvas email for today’s class. Revise your design accordingly (hopefully you design image frames in InDesign instead of directly placing the image so you can easy make this swap using Content Aware fitting).

Homework

IFS Flyer Design team: I need you to revise and resubmit your IFS designs ASAP. Hopefully by the end of class. I have created a Google Drive folder in which you can submit your designs. Everyone should submit at least three files:

  • lastname-ifs-color.pdf
  • lastname-ifs-bw.pdf
  • lastname-ifs.indd

We need a quick turn around here so Dr. Brownlee has time to print and distribute these before the event.

Mayer and Open Mic teams: you can take until Friday’s class to upload your designs into your respective folders. Please follow the file naming conventions above.

Remember that Friday’s expectation is to complete the InDesign CRIAB 7/8 on Working with Typography. The assignment is open in Canvas.

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ENG 225 7.W: Project 2 Check In, Characters and Actions

Posted on October 6, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Project 2 Check-In
  • Characters and Actions
  • Homework

Project 2 Check-In

On Monday I met with groups to refine methodologies and focus on collecting objects for analysis. We’ll meet in the Ross 1240 computer lab on Friday to nail down how to analyze those objects, and produce any slides/sheets/forms we need to facilitate that process.

Any questions? Snags? Victories? Things taking much longer than you expected?

Characters and Actions

Earlier this semester I introduced Williams and Bizup’s approach to revising sentences for clarity by conceptualizing syntax in terms of characters and actions. That is, Williams and Bizup ask us to craft sentences that have characters as subjects and actions as verbs. As the name implies, characters are personae that we can visualize, who have both body and agency. Take the following sentence:

  • The mandate is in place to make sure that every student will be vaccinated

The subject of this sentence is “mandate.” But a mandate is not a character–it is an idea, not a body. This sentence is bad because a reader cannot translate it into a clear action on a stage. It is also bad because it hides responsibility for the mandate: there is no “who” connected to the main action of the sentence. So let’s revise it:

  • The University passed a mandate to make sure that every student will be vaccinated

Thoughts? Did I trick you? The University might appear to have agency, but the University is not a character. It is a place. To maintain my theatrical metaphor for conceptualizing syntax: it is a scene, one in which characters and actions happen. While this sentence seems to ascribe agency, it hides the actual agents responsible for the action. It might be easier for a reader to visualize than the first, but it is still sketchy (though you might have visualized the action of a vote “passing,” since the verb is more active here).

Let’s revise it again:

  • University administrators passed a mandate to make sure that every student will be vaccinated
  • University administrators and the Student Senate agreed on a mandate to make sure that every student will be vaccinated
  • The University’s Board of Regents conceded to pressure by Governor Polis and mandated student vaccinations

Hopefully you can see how making sure that sentences have characters as subjects gives you more control over an idea, and more precision in illustrating difficult distinctions.

Okay, let’s try revising a few sentences from Williams and Bizup.

The base of this project was uncovering what skills are prioritized in ads for writing jobs, and how best a person can acquire those skills to compete for said jobs.

One of the main elements that helped to make a game ethical was the wicked problem which, according to Sicart in his book Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay, occurred when a choice had no clear answer and several solutions were presented (p. 97).

Meeting halfway is another factor in Sicart’s evaluation of ethical gameplay, in terms of interpretation. He (2013a) writes, “I seek games that are open for interpretation and that regard me as a moral player…” (p.70).

Tricky one:
Rule manipulation is used to create a game that requires the active player to stray from instrumental play and tap into the ludic experience that comes with ethical gameplay.

Let’s talk about If… (and his good friend), Then…
It is necessary for the player to have some type of ethical awareness, face their moral flaws and the consequences of those flaws without risking their moral integrity when an ethical game is being played.

Homework

In Friday’s class I will meet with each group to check in on project progress, and submit a score to Canvas. I will also be working with groups to develop/refine/test your method(s) of analysis/analyses.

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ENG 328 6.W: Flyer Design Mini Project

Posted on September 29, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Mini-Project #4: Flyer Design
  • Homework

Mini-Project #4: Flyer Design

For our next mini-project, we head back to where we started: flyers. We’ll add in a few more concepts and readings and then design a flyer for an upcoming English Department event. Some vital info:

  • The department has a limited budget to print flyers. As I’m writing this, I’m not sure if we can swing colored printing. So I will ask you for both a color and greyscale version of your design [Note: you can design in color, next week I will show you how to convert a color document to grayscale in InDesign]
  • Mini-Project 4 is due Tuesday, October 5th at midnight
  • Mini-Project 4 should have an “interesting” (i.e. not the works-every-time) layout. It should have a clear focal point.
  • Your flyer needs to include an image
  • Submit as .indd file and as a .pdf

Let’s look at the 3 project options.

Homework

Read WSINYE, “Layout,” and look up the discussion of focal point in the Mini-Art School chapter. Those should be useful.

I’d also recommend looking through some collections of innovative layouts (beyond the small beyond the works every time layout section). Something like:

Remember, too, that InDesign Lesson #5 on Flowing Text is due by Monday (you are welcome to work on it in Friday’s class).

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ENG 301 6.T: Proficiency Projects

Posted on September 28, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Proficiency Project Overview
  • Group Formation
  • Team Meetings
  • Homework

Proficiency Project Overview

To the Google Doc.

Group Formation

If you’ve got a laptop, just go sign up. In addition to your name, please provide a preferred email address for team communication.

Team Meetings

I’ll spend the rest of time today meeting briefly with the social media and grant writing teams, and then spend the bulk of my time with the design team.

Homework

Check your team schedule in the Google doc.

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ENG 328 6.M: Working with Text

Posted on September 27, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Working with Text
  • Homework

Working with Text

We’ll review the menu designs on Wednesday. We’ll also start our next mini-project, which will involve developing promotional posters.

Today I need your help. I have to finish populating a design template crafted by Molly Riggs for the 2021 Go West Film Festival. I’ve uploaded a copy of the working indesign draft to Canvas and, as the name indicates, it is currently a mess.

Edit: Issue with replacing fonts (since we do not have administrator access to these computers, we can’t add the new fonts we would need to recreate the original document.

When you open the document, you will be alerted that it is missing fonts.

  • Durango > Bernard MT Condensed
  • Replace all other fonts with Goudy Old Style

Click on all of the text boxes on your screen, but especially the movie description box. Resize the box so that you can see all overflow text.

Homework

The next Adobe InDesign Classroom in a Book activity will be Lesson #5 (Flowing Text).

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ENG 225 6.M: Sicart Papers, Qualitative Research Methodologies

Posted on September 27, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Sicart Papers
  • Project 2: Talking Methodology
  • Homework

Sicart Papers

I thought I had gotten all the Sicart drafts back–apparently I missed 2. I’ll do those this afternoon. The final draft is due on Thursday at midnight.

Hi all,

I’ll be updating Monday’s class notes for today; I’ve got an activity planned for today that should give you a sense of how to develop a Project 2 methodology.

Also, remember that you have the Writing a Second Research Annotation due before Friday’s class. We will meet in the Ross 1240 computer lab on Friday.

A reminder that the Sicart project closes Thursday at midnight. You still have a chance to pass in any previous assignments. This includes:

1. Gaming Journal
2. Sicart Summary Paper
3. Walking Dead Episode 1 Responses
4. Sicart “Moral Dilemmas” post
5. Sicart _Beyond Choices_ post

You pretty much can’t write the paper without doing these things, so use them as pre-writing activities and throw something into Canvas so I can give you some credit.

Note: this is a “hard out” on Project 1. You are free to submit any missing Sicart assignments up until Thursday at midnight. On Friday morning I will “zero” any missing assignments.

A few resources:

One last piece of advice for improving style and proofreading: before you turn in the final paper, take the time to read the paper out loud. Physically voicing sentences makes a tremendous difference, since your tongue will catch mistakes that your eyes simply do not see. If you are struggling to read a sentence, see if you can break it up into two smaller sentences. See if you can rewrite it with character/action syntax. See if you can reorganize it as a If… then… or a X, because Y (more logically balanced constructions).

Project 2: Talking Methodology

Let’s take a look at the Burgess et al article and ask the key research methodology questions:

  • How did they collect?
  • How did they analyze?
  • How did they ensure reliability?

Sample Methodology

A few warm up videos.

A link to the Google Slides.

A link to the form.

Homework

Complete the Writing A Second Research Annotation assignment in Canvas.

For Friday’s class, read and annotate one of the following articles (they are all located in the files section of Canvas):

  • Shaw. 2016. Where Is the Queerness in Games? Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games
  • Bayeck et al. 2018. Representations of Africans in Popular Video Games
  • Utsch. 2017. Queer Identities in Video Games: Data Visualization for a Quantitative Analysis of Representation
  • Burgess et al. 2007. Sex, Lies, and Video Games: The Portrayal of Male and Female Characters on Video Game Covers
  • Gestos et al. Representation in Video Games: A Systemic Review of Literature in Consideration of Adult Female Well-Being [note–meta analysis, keyword method–focus on findings]
  • Bjørkelo. 2020. “Elves are Jews with Pointy Ears and Gay Magic”: White Nationalist Readings of The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimYou can find these articles in the files section of Canvas. The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize you with different ways of developing research studies–how do you select objects to analyze? How do you analyze them? How do you build your “research machine”?

    Writing Annotations

    Writing annotations is a part of any research project: they are essentially a quasi-formal approach to writing reading notes. I teach annotating as a three-paragraph process:

    • Paragraph One: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article. What did the authors set out to prove? What are their major findings? And/Or what concrete recommendations do they make based on those findings? [You should find this material in the intro, discussion, and conclusion sections]
    • Paragraph Two: the second paragraph details the methods, including how many subjects were in the study, how subjects were found, the location of the study (if relevant), the length of the study, how data was analyzed/synthesized, and any other significant details regarding their research process. [The Methods section]
    • Paragraph Three: What you write in the third paragraph of an annotation is unique to the project at hand. Here’s where you free write, developing ideas about how this source might contribute to your project. In this case, I am asking you to design a study of video games, examining representations of race, gender, or sexuality. So–what in this study is particularly valuable to that project? What ideas do you have? How can we use this? Here’s where you just get to think and fire off ideas.
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ENG 301 5.T/R: Project 2, Jim Corder

Posted on September 21, 2021 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Grade Norming a Few Reports
  • Looking Ahead to Project 2
  • Jim Corder’s “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love”

Grade Norming a Few Reports

We will do this.

Looking Ahead to Project 2

I have a workspace up. It is a mess. I’m going to wait until Thursday to share it.

Homework

For Thursday, read Corder’s “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love.” There is a Canvas discussion post due on Thursday at 10:30am. I will be looking at your responses before Thursday’s class.

Either write a lot about one of these questions or less about two. No, I won’t quantify what a lot means. One or two sentences is not a lot.

  • What challenge does Corder issue that problematizes all rhetoric, but especially positivistic rhetoric? // 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)
  • What dimensions does Corder add to argument that are often ignored?
  • What is the meaning(s) of the anecdote Corder uses later in the essay? Why include it? What claim/idea does it support?
  • 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]

eng
On Thursday, I’ll ask you to join a Proficiency project team (either Social Media Management, Print and Web Design, or Grant Writing). Every team has homework for next Tuesday’s class. See below.

Social Media Team
Homework: Read Campbell, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit in 90 Days (2020). I have pre-read this book for you. So here’s the sections on which I’d like you to focus:

  • “Social Media Will Get Us More Visibility (pp. 15-17; see also 25-26 on value exchange)
  • “Think Like a Journalist” (pp. 27-29)
  • “Setting Clear Goals” (48-49)
  • “Picking Platforms / Instagram” (85-86)
  • “Matching Up Tasks” (93-96; content ideas)
  • 6 Pillars of Content (pp. 121-158; divide up for memo–make sure someone reads all 6 pillars)

Design Team
Read White Space is Not Your Enemy on Design/Layout Sins. Locate a picture of an unfortunate/sad/ugly/bad design around campus, one that obviously breaks several of Golumbiski and Hagen’s rules.

Then read WSINYE’s chapter on the “Works Every Time Layout.”

Finally, redesign your flyer in either Canva or InDesign (see below). Upload a .pdf or .jpg of your both your found-layout0sin and your redesign to Canvas as Deliverable #1.

Note #1: if you are in ENG 328 you should use InDesign for your revision. If you are not, then I recommend using Canva (a free online design software).

Note #2: if you are not in ENG 328, then you should probably use the Works Every Time Layout for your redesign. If you are in ENG 328, then I would encourage you to do something a bit more ambitious.

Grant Writing Team
The grant writing project has a bit more reading connected to it, since there’s quite a bit to learn about the process of both identifying a grant and the planning, drafting, and revising a grant.

Typically, I break the grant writing team into two groups and each group writes a memo/summary/heuristic to the other group. A divide and conquer strategy.
Group one reads Part I, pages 15-118 (in the 4th edition, sections Lessons 2-5 and Funders Roundtable #1). Group 2 reads Part II (119-189) and Funders Roundtable #2 (243-257).

As you read, I want you to put reading notes into a collaborative Google Doc. We want to assemble a document that highlights best practices–what to do. You are likely going to read a lot of practical advice on grant making (and even if two people are reading the same sections, they are likely to see/prioritize different things), so these collaborative reading notes are a way of sharing/developing our labor.

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