Graduate Addendum to the Syllabus, Fall 2018
Requirements for WRIT 5260 largely parallel those of WRIT 4260 as described on the regular syllabus. This page documents the additional obligations of the graduate section of Visual Rhetoric and Culture.
1. Project Commentaries
LENGTH
While the expectations for the projects themselves are essentially the same as for 4260, I will ask that the commentaries written for 5260 be twice as long (unless otherwise specified on the assignment pages). An undergraduate's 250-word minimum (1 double-spaced page), for instance, will be a 500-word minimum for MA students.
SUBSTANCE
In addition to fulfilling the stated requirements of the commentary more substantively, the extra length should be used for more close reading of the project, and more contextualizing and theorizing of the project using ideas from the course and the readings.
2. Essay
LENGTH
The essay written for WRIT 5260 should be longer than those in the undergraduate section. Rather than 5-to-7 pages, your paper should run 50% longer: 8-10 pages.
SUBSTANCE
As appropriate for work in a graduate program, I will expect more intellectual development, a greater number of secondary sources, clearer and more mature writing, and a substantial use of at least one scholarly source to provide your discussion with more historical context, a theoretical framework, or alternative insights into the nature and function of visual texts.
3. Annotated Reading List and 3 Questions
MEETING 1
I'm asking you to meet with me in the middle of the semester to talk about compiling a reading list based some aspect of the topic of this course.
THE LIST
Compiling this list is intended to serve as practice for developing reading lists with members of your MA Exam Committee. Indeed, you might even choose to use this list for one of the six hours on your actual exam if that's appropriate to your emphasis.
The list should
- include 10-12 works, depending on their length, and include our textbooks
- constitute not a generic bibliography of "visual rhetoric and cultyure," but a collection of works that expresses and realizes a particular "take" on the course subject matter, that highlights a certain big question or problem raised by visual culture and/or design which you find interesting or relevant, or that indicates connections between the course topic and areas of interest in your MA studies.
- a brief, one- or two-sentence annotation under each work on this list, explaining the substance of that work and what its relevance is to the organizing logic of your list overall.
The list might
- include secondary critical sources about one or more of our textbooks
- generally contain scholarly/academic books or articles, though occasionally a piece or review from the popular press.
- include some (though not a majority) of sources not directly related to visual culture and/or design, but that are relevant to the larger viewpoint, question, problem, or connection that you are considering in this list.
OBTAIN AND KNOW THE TEXTS ON YOUR LIST
Obtain copies of the works on the list: books from the library (including Interlibrary Loan), PDFs of articles, etc. I don't expect you to have read every item on your list completely, but you should have read in them and know, even from secondary sources, what they're about and why they're useful and relevant to you.
MEETING 2
Having completed the list, submit a copy to me on paper and arrange another meeting to discuss potential themes, threads, debates, etc. among the texts.
THREE EXAM QUESTIONS
Finally, you will write and submit to me 3 sample MA Exam questions (that could be answered in one hour, without access to the texts themselves) based on the reading list and our discussion of it. These questions are kinds that could be used as practice for the MA Exam process. You are not required to answer them for this course, however.