WRD 104: Composition & Rhetoric II Rotating Header Image

Potential portfolio topics

From our class notes today — possible topics for your course portfolio:

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself” 
– Arthur Miller, 1961

 Contextual analysis: the ability to contextualize: review checklist; being your own research filter for knowledge and for information — discuss the wide, carefully selected sources in your project, how you assessed their credibility, and thoughtfully integrated a judicious selection from books, scholarly sources,  trade publications, and internet sites. Show how your range of sources fairly represents the stakeholders in your contextual-analysis map. Think about the contextual-analysis method as a meaning-making activity — what does this mean? How does it mean that? — and how your analysis brings something new to the table.

 Writing process: topics, drafts (3), revising, editing, proofreading, peer reviews

  • Rhetorical précis
  • OED
  • No BS: believing in what you write; caring what you write about; taking risks and allowing for perplexity; no BS-ing the teacher
  • Conventions: academic, professional, creative, community
  • Ideology: see esp, sense #4: “A systematic scheme of ideas …”
  • * Editorial peer reviews: your thoughtful uses of St. Martin’s 4b: Reviewing peer writers
  • Op-Eds: both reading & writing
  • Letters to the Editor: both reading & writing
  • “Page One”: the NYT documentary
  • One-on-one conferences
  • Editing: visual and logistical coherence
  • Digication: print & digital literacies
  • Mid-term reflection
  • Purpose of college: what is college for?
  • Daily reading of the NYT; making personal and professional connections
  • Professional development
  • Obama’s Barnard Commencement speech
  • Bill O’Connell’s visit
  • Three sides to every story
  • Critical thinking & Epictetus: “neither desire nor aversion”
  • Class discussions — making meaning together
  • Vitamin water
  • Memes
  • Problem-solving