I’ve been looking over your journals in class this week and shared some ideas about organization with each of you. I will ask for them periodically, but if you ever make progress and want to share, just show me before class. Remember that your current grade can always jump up if you show progress, but your journal is graded holistically; if you only have vocab from the last half of the novel, your best grade will be 3/5. Watch your progress in the grade book and adjust your habits accordingly.

The reading schedule is straightforward—a chapter a night:

Read this (by this date)
Front cover–chapter 2 (Monday 14th)
Chapter 3 (Tuesday 15th)
Chapter 4 (Wednesday 16th)
Chapter 5 (Thursday 17th)
Chapter 6 (Friday 18th)
Chapter 8 (Monday 21)
etc.

Monday you should bring 1) a printed copy of your Carmichael analysis and 2) a copy of an original argument.

For those having trouble tracking down an argument, it may be that you’re looking for “quality,” something I don’t ask of you. Did you pump gas this week? QT is always trying to sell the latest coma-inducing pumpkin spice doughnut frozen coffee drink. That sign is an argument. Snap a picture, bring it in. The goal is open your eyes to the appeals you are inundated with constantly.

If you don’t want to have a conversation about a gas station drink advertisement (understandable), but don’t feel like you come into contact with interesting arguments regularly, here’s a solution:

• Arts & Letters Daily—Brilliant site bringing together articles from all over the Interwebs. Mostly scholarly, but all well-written.
• In These Times—Began as an “Independent Socialist Newspaper,” but is primarily progressive (left of center) in its leanings today. Kurt Vonnegut was a frequent contributor until 2005.
• Slate.com—Online-only news magazine. Gotta love the Explainer (not argumentative, but interesting nonetheless).
• NPR.org—Public Radio’s other online presence.
• The New Republic—Often insightful, this magazine focuses on politics and the arts.
• Time Magazine
• AdBusters—Popular amongst my students for the past few years. Worth checking out.
• National Review—Very well-written conservative magazine.
• The New Yorker
• Popmatters—Articles on popular culture; music, video games, the Interwebs, and movies are all topics. Great place to find an article and a new favorite band.
• The Huffington Post
• CNN.com

Advertisements:

• Vintage Ad Browser
• Adeevee—Please note: not always “school appropriate”; browse carefully.

Video sources:

• Kickstarter.com—The videos are a bit like commercials, but often do not have the credibility ((Brand recognition)) of established companies—this changes their arguments a bit.
• TED.com—The educated person’s YouTube.
• PopTech—Like TED, but mostly devoted to STEM.

How to read online:

Feedly is a free RSS reader that brings news, blog posts, comics, etc. to you in an easily read format. There are a number of programs out there that make reading the longer pieces online (and on your phone) a bit more comfortable; I use Pocket, but many others use Instapaper or Readability.

Great discussion in class today! We’ll wrap up the reading tomorrow. ((Really.))

In the interest of time (and your energy) you should choose a major point covered in a page or three and analyze the logic within. Pull in the other appeals as necessary—does he rely on his credibility or the audience’s emotions to support a point? Make that clear. Of course, we’ll discuss more tomorrow.

You will outline your analysis and begin writing in class on Thursday, type it that evening, and we will spend Friday in peer review. The final draft is due Monday.

We have spent the last few days on a new set of readings: sections of Paradise Lost, a number of Romantic poems, and excerpts from Burke’s Sublime and the Beautiful and Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Man.”

All of this is leading up to our first novel, Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley’s Frankenstein. I can’t wait! You will receive these tomorrow, so make sure your annotations of the shorter works are solid, because all will be required to contribute to your midterm essay. More on that later.