Blogging Assignments and Instructions Robin Kramer CAS 138T (spring semester)

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1 Blogging Assignments and Instructions Robin Kramer CAS 138T (spring semester) For the spring semester of Rhetoric and Civic Life, you will create two distinct blogs: a Passion Blog and a Civic Issues (CI) blog. Blogging will run for the duration of the semester, according to the course syllabus. Like last semester, your assigned blogs must be posted before each Thursday class, as we will spend some time during most Thursday classes reading and responding to one another's posts. The Passion Blog You will have the option to continue the Passion Blog you started last semester or to launch an entirely new passion blog based on a different or emerging passion. When you are choosing the focus, think carefully about how you might sustain it over the semester for ten posts. How will you introduce new topics? How will engage your readers in your passion? How will you invite readers to comment? Above all, don t settle when selecting your approach. The Passion Blog should be on a topic or theme about which you re legitimately excited to write. Enjoy this opportunity and flexibility. The Civic Issues (CI) Blog Instead of a RCL blog this semester, you will keep a Civic Issues blog. As indicated on the syllabus, you will be required to post on your Civic Issues blog every other week for a total of five posts. On my own course blog I will post links to several successful CI blogs written by former students as an additional resource for your review. Each blog will focus on a specific civic issue that falls within one of four main categories below. The questions in each category above are meant to be generative that is, you are welcome to articulate a civic issue within one of these categories that you do not see reflected in the questions. It s also the case that some of the questions below might overlap, so you shouldn t feel too constrained by that. 1) Politics. Political blogs can explore a wide range of issues, such as specific policy questions, political rhetoric and discourse, or structural issues that affect the functioning and deliberative nature of government. You have a lot to talk about, sure, but be careful you don t use this blog merely as a platform to express your political viewpoints or frustrations. Below are a few ideas: Civic Discourse: Is civic discourse ailing in the U.S.? How might it be improved? How has the internet in general and social media in particular affected the possibility and the tenor of civic discourse? What do recent organized protest movements on both sides of the political spectrum the various Tea Party groups and the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements suggest about the state of civic discourse at present? What role do non-political forces (such as the media) have in promoting or disturbing civic discourse? In what ways does/can education enable civic discourse in and about politics? Under what conditions, if any, is uncivil discourse justified? What examples have you encountered that suggest that civic discourse is alive and healthy? Party politics: What has happened to bipartisanship in the U.S. government? What are the ideologies underlying bipartisanship as a thing to be valued above other elements of political action and discourse? How do the structures of government in the U.S. (e.g., the filibuster, anonymous holds,

2 veto powers) affect the possibilities of bipartisanship? Do party lines and lobbyists exert too much control over elected officials? What role should third parties play in U.S. politics? Has gerrymandering disrupted bipartisanship? How has the Citizens United ruling and SuperPACs affected elections? For that matter, what role should parties play in representative democracy? To what extent to political parties represent U.S. citizens? Do other nations have models that would prove useful in the U.S.? Is bi-partisanship possible in the contemporary media climate with 24/7 cable news shows and blogs? U.S. foreign policy: How is the U.S. doing with diplomacy in different parts of the world? What does war have to do with it all? If the 20th century was famously known as The American Century, what will the U.S. s role be on a global stage in the 21st century? What responsibilities, if any, does the U.S. have to provide foreign aid? What is the status of deliberation about the U.S. s policy drone warfare, and how might that deliberation or policy be improved? What are some of the commonplaces that American citizens hold about foreign policy? Do you see these commonplaces shifting? 2) Identities and Rights. This category can examine the intersections of lived identities (such as race, class, gender, sexuality, religion) and fairness or rights. You might examine this topic domestically, globally, or both. You have a lot of fertile ground here, but below are more specific ideas to get you started. Diversity in the Workplace: Are there a certain set of values located in the idea of the workplace, or does the workplace acquire values based on who works in it? How are different workplaces different in terms of the values they prize? What is required for the workplace to become a haven for equality? Or, alternatively, why shouldn t equality be a primary concern in a particular workplace? Has there been any shift towards or away from thinking of domestic spaces as workplaces in their own right? What obstacles are there for women or minorities success in the workplace (think especially of careers in your major)? What about men? What struggles do they face with regard to shifting workplaces and values? Affirmative Action and Diversity on Campus: What are the ideological values that cause people to defend or reject affirmative action policies? What beliefs or values are located in the rhetoric of the phrase affirmative action? Are there certain geographical places (i.e., where there is a more homogeneous population) or certain professions where affirmative action policies are particularly necessary or unnecessary? Are affirmative action policies useful in promoting long-term and sustainable structural equality? Perhaps consequently, are there hidden costs to its benefits? While every college admissions pamphlet in the country touts its campus s commitment to diversity, what does a commitment to diversity entail? What versions of diversity do Americans often take issue with, and why? Considering Rights Domestically and Internationally: Do Americans think any differently about questions of human and civil rights where other countries are concerned? How do American opinions on human and civil rights stack up against international opinions on those same questions? Can we learn anything, positive or negative, from other countries approaches to these questions? In what ways is the formation of one group identity an asset or a liability? What s the role of the media and popular culture in forming our understanding (or stereotypes) of these identity groups? Multiculturalism: A rhetorical commonplace in the U.S. is to utilize the metaphor of a melting pot to describe its confluence of cultures. Is this still a useful metaphor? What does it imply about

3 assimilation, acculturation, and what happens to the cultural identities of people of other nationalities when they emigrate to the U.S.? What other metaphors might pertain? To what extent are immigrants expected to assimilate (culturally, linguistically, socially)? To what extent should they be expected to? How have questions of immigration and American identity played out in the past? Is there anything such as an authentic American culture? If so, what makes a culture authentic? How does membership get constituted in a subculture? What does it mean when subcultures move into the mainstream, and how should we evaluate these shifts? Post-racial America?: Another more recent rhetorical commonplace in the U.S., coinciding with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, is that the country has become post-race. What does it mean to be post-race, either as an individual, a community, a culture, or a country? How does this notion of being post-race relate to the similar notion of colorblindness? What effects does this have at the level of identity, in the workforce, or legislatively? Even if becoming post-race is an impossibility, does it represent an ethical framework we should promote? Or are there hidden consequences to thinking post-racially we should be wary of? How does the Black Lives Matter movement seek to refute this notion of a post-racial America? 3) Sustainability. This blog can consider questions of energy resources, climate change, farming practices, population issues, consumer issues, environmental conservation, management, and degradation, or intersections of any of these (and more) related topics. Check out some ideas below. Energy: Should people be worried about fracking? How have alternative energies been taken up in our culture in the last year, five years, ten years, or fifty years? How is rhetoric used to persuade people to change energy sources? Why do people resist alternative sources of energy? Should government and/or local communities play a bigger role in promoting alternative energies? How does the phrase big oil function in our culture and is that representation fair? Water: What are the water demands of the next five or ten years? Is water an equal concern for people in different parts of the U.S.? The world? Should it be? Climate Change: What has the increased visibility of climate change and of environmental issues more broadly in the last decade produced, in culture or in policy? Has the green movement been a success? How effective have forms of consumer-oriented environmental action Priuses, compact fluorescent light bulbs, reusable grocery bags been? What is the relationship between the goals of awareness and action when it comes to climate change? To what extent has the climate debate been resolved in the public eye? What role has the U.S. played thus far, and what role might it play in the near future? Given the centrality of scientific expertise to any discussion of climate change, how have universities played a role in public discourse on climate change? 4) Education. Education has been a hot topic for public policy over the past 15 years. While you have an array of choices within the education category, here are just a few you might consider: Role of public education: What is causing the increasingly high cost of public higher education in the U.S., and are there any solutions that all stakeholders might find viable? What would be the consequences of offering any type of debt cancellation? What are the goals of public education, and does public education lead to a different notion of citizenship than parochial or private schooling? What is there to make of the fact that nominally public universities are receiving less and less funding from the state? Should arguments about public education continue to focus on jobs and America s

4 competition with other nations? Aside from jobs, what other rationales are there for public education either now or historically and are these viable? As for K-12 public education, what should be its focus and outcomes? Is the approach to standardized curricula and testing working? What are the benefits and drawbacks? Should schools experiment with alternative education programs? What about recent trends toward cutting liberal and expressive arts and emphasizing STEM fields? College sports on campus: Almost no other country integrates athletics into higher education as the U.S. does. What are the potential benefits or consequences to higher education when most people casually associate a university with its athletics program? What would happen if universities did not offer intercollegiate sports, or if no scholarships were awarded for college sports? What does the rhetoric of student-athlete attempt to accomplish? Should student-athletes receive a financial stipend in addition to scholarships? How has the culture around college athletics influenced high school even middle or elementary school athletics? To what extent do college sports reflect a broader cultural attitude toward sports in the U.S.? Diversity: Do questions of diversity play out any differently on college campuses from how we might think of them in other contexts? Are the student populations of college campuses sufficiently diverse? Are there problems produced by diversity or by the lack thereof on college campuses? Do different kinds of conflicts emerge at schools with relatively diverse populations than at schools with less diverse populations? Does/Should affirmative action play a different role in higher education than in the workplace? To what extent is the value educational institutions place on diversity linked to affirmative action? Colleges and college towns: How should institutions of higher education relate to the towns in which they are situated towns that often predate those institutions? How should students relate to nonstudent residents of college towns? How do students relate to non-student residents? Are there tensions between these populations? If so, what might we think about doing to resolve those tensions?

5 Assessment Standards Blogs are worth 20% percent (200 points) of the final grade for this course, broken down as follows: 1. Completion/Participation: The initial 5% (50 points) of your blogging grade will be a completion/participation grade based on the following questions: Did you post all blog entries on time before class? Did you submit entries of the proper length? Did you regularly and thoughtfully comment on other blogs? 2. Quality: The remaining 15% (150 points) of your blogging grade will be reserved for the quality of your blogs based on the criteria of successful blog entries provided above. To ensure fairness and consistency, please note that the quality grade of your blog cannot exceed your completion grade by more than 5%. Take these two scenarios as examples: If have a solid completion rate of posting 14 out of 15 blogs on time, your completion grade would be 93%. Your quality grade could not exceed 98%. If you have a weaker completion rate of 10 out of 15 blogs, your completion grade would be 67%. Your quality grade could not exceed 72%. The quality expectations for each blog and for commenting are delineated below. A successful Passion Blog entry: Is submitted in a timely fashion (before each blogging session) and averages around 500 words. Is coherent in terms of its content or focus (per individual post and the collective body of posts). Addresses a particular topic, niche audience, or human interest angle. Incorporates a fitting and engaging title and strong hook. Is creative, new, and fresh does not merely rehash common knowledge or familiar territory. Draws upon the multi-modal affordances of the blog platform and is formatted attractively, using relevant images and/or links when fitting. Is sensibly organized. Is written in a compelling voice (engaged tone, vivid word choices, effective sentence structure). Is attentive to grammar and correctness, even if written in a conversational style. A successful Civic Issues (CI) Blog entry: Is submitted in a timely fashion (before each blogging session) and averages around 700 words. Demonstrates understanding of the course materials, principles, and themes. Provides incisive, informed, and researched analysis and commentary about the selected issue. Uses links to incorporate relevant, credible, and timely outside sources (minimally aim for 2-3 per post). Represents in its entirety a focused investigation and analysis of a topic. Finds ways to engage and provoke its audience into commenting and taking distinctive stances. Is sensibly organized. Is written in a compelling voice (engaged tone, vivid word choices, effective sentence structure). Is attentive to grammar and correctness, even if written in a conversational style.

6 Successful Commenting: Furthers the discussion prompted by the post in thoughtful and meaningful ways; does more than simply agree with the writer or describe their ideas as interesting. Is completed in a timely manner (by the end of the day the blogs were due, even if you aren t present in class that day.) Remains respectful of one another and adheres to Penn State Principles.