Random Epiphanies

Cultural Artifact

Here are a few examples of what previous students have done for this assignment. However, don't let that limit what you want to do. Remember what is important is you analyze your audience and carefully pick a text that will best communicate to them while using your talents and interests to craft the text!

This student made an argument about what a classroom should be like. The one of the left is the traditional rows pointing to the teacher as the authority. You may not be able to see, but on the desks are papers with Fs and Ds, thus arguing this is not the right approach. On the right is a more collaborative-based classroom with the desks in circles to indicate everyone has a role in the classroom. As you can see it is also more warm and colorful. On these desks are As and Bs.

Here is another diorama showing the impact Wal Mart has on small towns.






This is a very neat idea for this project. This student made a YouTube video arguing that we need to question immunizing our children because of the chemicals used to make the shots. The choice of music and how it adds to the images and the sequence is chilling, haunting and, I think, very effective. Especially in this era of new media where we get a lot of our information from places like YouTube.


This is a poster arguing against PEDs in sports!



















This picture can't show how cool this project was. This young lady made an argument against Genetically Modified Foods. What she did here was use a grocery bag and put messages on it urging people not to buy GMF because of what they can do to our bodies. She said she imagined handing these outside of grocery stores like you would a pamphlet, and I thought using the bag was a very clever, nice touch and surely to get the attention of the audience.

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But again these are examples. One of the coolest projects I've seen people do are Mix CDs where all the songs are sequenced in a certain way to make an argument. One of these was am argument about "true" hip hop versus the corporatized, shallow version that dominates the music industry. After each crappy song was a "real" song that had more depth in terms of messaging and music quality. It was brilliant. So be creative and have fun with this. Remember, argument isn't only something that we do in essays; it is everywhere and ingrained in everything we do and create in society. Thus, be agents and create texts that inspire change.