Working from the BU Housing Dataset, create an original infographic that tells an interesting story about some particular group of Boston University students: where they come from, where they live on campus, what schools they attend. You may choose to contrast two groups, or focus on characterizing the variety of students within a single group.

In characterizing a group, you may choose to combine two categories of data: defining “West Campus” as consisting of X, Y, Z dorms, or “the Midwest” as consisting of A, B, C states.

To isolate a group for data analysis, you will need to delete rows from the data set, leaving just the people from a particular BU College or a particular dorm or set of dorms. To do so, alphabetize the data by column, select rows and delete them.

To create a graph or map, you will likely need to count the total # of students who are in each college, or from each state. I showed you how to do this in Lecture using the “COUNTIF” function. If you missed lecture, get notes from a friend.

Useful sites for creating graphics:

• Graphs/Charts: piktochart
• Maps: OpenHeatMap | TargetMap

Your finished graphic should tell a story about students at BU—not in words so much as by bringing the data to life. But do use words, sparingly, to ensure we know what we’re looking at: title, labels, etc. And don’t forget to consider the role of color in shaping the viewer’s response.

Finally, and in addition, write 1 page account critiquing and explaining the choices you made in creating this infographic. Give a short ¶ to each of the following topics:

1. what group(s) you chose to focus on and why;
2. the principal challenge you faced in transforming raw data into your graphic and how you overcame it;
3. what choices you made in crafting the finished product.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a central text in the Western humanist tradition.

Among its remarkable virtues is a presentation of characters that excel at the art of discovering the available means of persuasion—that is to say, characters that are effective rhetors. The most persuasive and eloquent of these characters display remarkable talent with many rhetorical skills: they are excellent judges of situation and audience; they are capable stylists, employing different registers of diction and figures suited to their intent; they advance arguments shaped by all of the Aristotelian proofs, both inartistic (such as appeals to authority, laws, or promises) and artistic (logos [enthymemes & examples], pathos, ethos [demonstrations of good will, wisdom, & moral virtue]). Too, there are many characters that are less excellent rhetors, and to consider their failures allows one to learn quite a bit about how rhetorical efforts can go wrong. Additionally, these characters not infrequently turn their rhetorical talents on themselves, using rhetorical strategies in soliloquies that judge, praise, or deliberate regarding the given character’s own actions.

Among the assumptions shaping how these characters persuade each other and themselves are a number that derive from texts that inform Shakespeare’s presentation of the world of the royal court, perhaps most especially Machiavelli’s The Prince and Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. Note that, while the works of these two Italians are somewhat similar in intent, they are very different in their tone and spirit. Machiavelli’s work is designed to instruct a ruler on the terms of a very pragmatic politics, and suggests that moral virtue is finally irrelevant—or even a hindrance—to political success. Castiglione, on the other hand, offers a text shaped by a sort of Platonic idealism, one that assumes the courtier will be most useful to his prince when he can lead that ruler down the path of the good. In other words, he articulates a vision of political success as inseparable from moral virtue.

Your paper should analyze an argument advanced by any one character in Hamlet. This will require you to focus on one longer speech by that character or (if the argument is presented across several lines of dialogue because it is part of an exchange) on part of one scene. We encourage you to make the passage you select as short as possible: tighter focus lets you go deeper. Your paper’s central claim should address one of the following prompts: Continue reading →

Sources Photographs and readings for this essay can be found on the CourseDocs section of the website, linked above. Note that this essay is a closed system: you are not allowed to use any source other than those directly linked from the CourseDocs site. In choosing articles and in supplying some links, I’ve tried to anticipate your needs; if you find you need something more, see me in office hours. Note also: the picture at right will be discussed extensively in class, and so is not a viable as the main focus of your essay—though you may reference it in an essay on another photograph.

Essay Assignment

Write a five-page (1300-1600 word) analysis of one of the photographs on the front page of the CourseDocs site. Your essay should deepen the reader’s understanding of what makes this photograph so rhetorically powerful—or, alternatively, should use the photo as an opportunity to challenge the reader’s preconceptions, for example as to why photographs matter or what makes them eloquent. Your essay can draw on a second photo for purposes of comparison, and should make reference to at least one of the secondary sources we read during the course of this unit, as well as information directly linked from the CourseDocs site.

A successful essay will Continue reading →

In the upcoming essay, you may want to draw on a keyterm from one of the advertising experts presented in Frontline’s The Persuaders documentary. As I mentioned in class a week ago, you’ll need to cite the expert, not the movie, as the origin for the term, while at the same time citing the movie as the origin of your quotation.

Here are the mechanics for doing so:

1. Name the expert (including his/her qualifications) in the main text of your essay.
2. Add a parenthetical source citation at the end of the sentence.
3. List the documentary’s vital details in a Works Cited page appended to your essay.

Thus,

The commercial’s repeated presentation of Slim Jim Dare Sticks as a treatment for emasculation can be considered an instance of “emotional branding,” a recent trend in advertising discussed in the 2003 Frontline documentary The Persuaders. In one interview segment, Kevin Roberts, CEO of Satchi and Satchi, suggests that the brands that command “loyalty beyond reason” are those which have made themselves into “Lovemarks” (II, 9:50). Applied to Slim Jim’s “Intensive Care” segment, Roberts’ insight suggests that the brand is trying to forge a tough but brotherly kinship with its (male) customer base. Women may prove fickle and undeserving of your devotion, but bros and Slim Jims will stand by you when times are tough.

….

 

Works Cited

The Persuaders. Dir. Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin. Other details for you to work out. Your citation should reference both the movie (2003) and the website (went live Nov 9, 2004). Note also my use of “Hanging Indent” ¶ format.

Stuff I’d like you to note about the example above:

• The sentence right before the reference to Roberts and The Persuaders, setting up a connection to Roberts’ keyterm.
• The two sentences after the reference to Roberts’ keyterm, making clear how it applies to the advertisement I’m analyzing.
• The words used to identify who Roberts is, suggesting why his opinion matters. Note that I got that info from The Persuaders, which makes a similar effort to ID Roberts.
• My example uses 1½ sentences to introduce Roberts and his keyterm idea. If I needed 3 or more sentences, I’d want to consider presenting his idea as a digression ¶ (something we practiced last unit).
• I’m using MLA source citation, and you should too. But to force you all to practice, I’ve left out most of the citation I created. You can create your own citation using the Handbook you purchased at the start of the year, or you can use EasyBib. Either way, you’ll need bibliographic info on the documentary, information that’s available on The Persuaders’ website: look for the Credits page.

The core aim of rhetoric is persuasion, and we can learn a lot about rhetoric by studying one of its purest forms, modern-day advertising. An industry widely recognized for its sophisticated grasp of the psychology of persuasion, advertisers teach us that persuasion depends not just on what you say but how you say it. Inheritors of a rhetorical tradition traceable to Aristotle, ads routinely reframe logical arguments as emotional appeals.

In addition to Rhetorical tradition, modern advertising draws on findings from the past century of sociological research. Harnessing fundamental psychological needs for identity and belonging, ads sell products as a mode of self-expression. Thus, this unit will provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary study, drawing on material you’re learning in social science to achieve a deeper understanding of the topic.

The starting point for our discussion of the methods and cultural impact of the advertising industry will be The Persuaders, a documentary on advertising created in 2004 by Douglas Rushkoff for PBS’s Frontline. While its title reminds us that the roots of advertising lie in the rhetorical tradition, the movie focuses on recent changes in the industry as advertisers adopt new methods and pioneer new media, from product placement to guerrilla marketing to narrowcast ads to statistical research.

Your essay should focus on Continue reading →