Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378
Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu
Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda
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Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda |
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Contact
Dr. Andrew Wood: wooda@email.sjsu.edu
or visit his website at http://www.omnitopia.com
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Assignments
(Note: all papers are typed, double-spaced, TNR, 12 pt. font, 1 inch margins)
Theory Overview
Working alone or in a pair, present a summary of one approach to rhetorical criticism (you will be assigned either Cluster, Fantasy-Theme, Feminist, Generic, Ideological, Metaphor, Narrative, or Pentadic). Half of the grade for this assignment evaluates your original written summary distributed to each student and to the instructor (one page if you are working independently; two pages if you are working in a pair). The other half of the grade for this assignment evaluates your oral summary (15 to 20 minutes). Your oral summary, presented extemporaneously, shall include one well-constructed activity to ensure active learning.
Proposal
Submit an original three-page proposal for your research project. The proposal includes the following components in order: (1) introduction, justification, and research question related to a specific artifact that resides in the public domain (speech, film, place, performance, advertising campaign, etc.); (2) preliminary literature review that includes at least four pertinent in-text citations from communication literature; (3) summary of rhetorical framework that you’ll use to analyze your text.
Download the PDF gradesheet and attach it to your essay (attach photocopies).
Literature Review
Submit an original three to five page literature review for your research project (of course, you may borrow from earlier work written by you in this class). The literature review must survey at least ten peer-reviewed sources (academic books and/or book chapters and scholarly journals) related to your research question and to the field of communication studies. This survey should be organized around coherent and insightful themes and written in paragraph form; it will not merely be a list of annotated sources. Attach a reference page in APA format (not included in page length).
Article Presentation
Present an oral summary of a peer reviewed communication article from Foss’s “additional samples” section at the end of a chapter related to one week’s discussion topic, relating that article to relevant course concepts. The oral component of this assignment should run between 15 and 20 minutes. You will also provide an original one page written summary of your presentation, headed by an APA citation of your selected reading. On the meeting period prior to your Article Presentation, provide one copy of the article for each student, as well as one for the instructor.
Collegial Evaluation
Toward the end of the semester, you will receive a project first draft written by two of your colleagues (to be assigned by me). Write an original two-page evaluation of each draft, concentrating on four areas: (1) significance of topic, (2) clarity of argument, (3) professionalism of writing, and (4) completeness of assignment. You will be evaluated on your specificity, utility, and cordiality.
Research Project
Submit an original 18-20 page academic essay addressing a topic of interest to scholars in the field of communication studies (of course, you may borrow from earlier work written by you in this class). This essay will be organized in the following manner: (1) Description/justification of topic and research question, (2) scholarly literature review, (3) theory/method description, (4) analysis – at least nine pages of your paper; certainly more than half of the total – and (5) discussion of implications/limitations/future steps.
This paper should be sufficiently developed to justify presentation before a professional gathering such as the Hayward Rhetorical Conference or the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association. One fourth of your grade for this assignment comes from an oral presentation that will demonstrate your professional communication skills and ability to engage scholarly questions from your colleagues and from me.