Project 3 - Rhetoric That Embodies Us

The third project of English 1J focuses on how our bodies and embodied realities play critical roles in environmental rhetoric, or for that matter in any type of rhetoric. In this handout more details about the project, deadlines, and point distribution are provided.

This is a working document. I will be adding content to it and/or tweaking the existing content, as my thought evolves on these assignments and as our discussion on rhetoric becomes more clarifying for me. The idea is to make the assignment expectations clearer to you and more relevant to the course.

Table of Contents

Project description

For this project, you’ll learn a concept called embodied rhetoric and you’ll be introduced to examples of how academic research essays can be personalized. You’ll see examples of academic writers speaking of their body, personalizing their argument, using storytelling, and underscoring inseparableness of their mind and body (“bodymind”) to formulate an argument. We know that western academic writing standards prefer to keep subjectivity, affect, and bodily presence out of writing. This project will attempt to challenge such exclusions.

  • As part of this project you will write a research essay on a topic or issue that’s personal to you and you’ll attempt to develop your academic argument by incorporating embodied rhetoric.
  • Through the readings for this project, you will learn the prevalent role our bodies play in our thinking, arguments, and knowledge-making, and how, in your academic writing, you can bring your body to the fore to strengthen your argument and help your audience envision a complementary/alternate mode of academic thinking.
  • Our readings will give you concrete examples of how you can disrupt academic conventions in constructive ways to propel your ideas and argument.
  • Your participation in Chester’s annual march will also deepen your understanding of embodied rhetoric in a hands-on and practical way.
  • Rhetorically, this project will complement the previous two. And overall, through the rhetoric of emotion, interrelationship and body, you’ll develop more nuanced and multi-faceted ways of thinking about writing, arguing, and persuading.
  • You’ll use ArcGIS Story Maps to compose a multimodal, interactive, and immersive academic essay. In fact, you’ll be encouraged to find creative ways to leverage the narrative features of ArcGIS Story Maps to underscore the role of body in your writing and argument. The minimum word count of the essay will be 2,000. The project will develop in stages of topic idea, preliminary research, outline, rough draft, instructor and peer feedback, and final draft.

Total points: 30%.

Salient points of the project

  • The minimum word count of your final draft needs to be 2000. You can go over the word limit.
  • You’re expected to use multimedia and interactive contents in your essay. Please add a caption below the multimedia content and mention the source.
  • You’re required to use at least 10 credible sources. At least 3 of them need to be peer-reviewed scholarly sources. To know more about the difference between popular and scholarly sources, check this page titled “Scholarly and Popular Sources” from UC Berkeley’s library.
  • When incorporating sources in your analysis, you are expected to make use of source integration moves such as paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesis, and/or direct quotations. Ensure that you’re integrating these sources into your writing in an organic and effective manner.
  • You can use MLA or APA citation style in your paper. Make sure that you add both in-text citations AND a properly formatted bibliography. By in-text citation I mean the sources you mention in the body of your essay in parenthesis and bibliography is the “Works Cited” or “References”section at the end of your paper. For MLA citations, use this guide. For APA citations, use this guide.

How to get started with the project?

  • Start with a topic idea that you’re passionate about and that’s personal to you and that can be developed into an academic research project. You’re free to write on any topic for this project but you should consider writing on a topic that can be fresh or novel. Alongside performing a range of rhetorical moves expected in academic writing, you’re also expected to challenge a few of them by including aspects of bodies, embodiment or embodied rhetoric that you learned in “Introduction” chapter of the book Bodies of Knowledge: Embodied Rhetorics in Theory and Practice.
  • Questions to ask about your potential topic idea: why do you want to write about this topic? What’s unique and important about it? Who is the audience for it? What kind of specific and urgent argument can you provide on your topic?
  • Once you’ve an inkling of a topic idea, start conducting research on your topic, the disciplinary expectations of your text, and the multimodal contents you might incorporate. Use the Research Module on Moodle to find sources. Note that the project expects you to incorporate at least three academic sources.
  • Develop an outline for your text and submit it to Moodle.
  • Proceed to compose your rough draft on ArcGIS StoryMaps. To get access to Swarthmore’s instance of ArcGIS StoryMaps, follow the link and sign in with your Swarthmore credentials. StoryMaps offers quite a few storytelling features that might seem overwhelming. Depending on your topic, choose features that seem relevant: image, image gallery, video, audio, slideshow, sidecar, and embedded content. You don’t need to use all of them for your essay, but use one or more of these storytelling elements to make your essay lively, organic, interactive, and complementary.

  • To share the rough draft: at the rough draft stage, your draft is not yet ready to share with the world. You want to share it with a select few people to receive feedback. Use the Publish button at the top right and set the sharing level to Organization and select the Set group sharing to “English 1J S26 - Persuasion: Environmental Rhetoric & Action,” which is a group already created for you and you’re already a member of it. In the Set group sharing box, as you start typing “English 1J S26…” you will see the group’s name to select. Go ahead and click Publish. The screen will go through the process of publishing and once you get to the confirmation page saying “You’ve published your story”, you will see a “Copy link” icon. Copy the link and paste it to your Word or Google Doc file and upload the document to Moodle.

  • To share the final draft: when you’re ready to share your final draft with the world, use the Publish button at the top right. Change the Set group sharing to Everyone (Public). Under the Set group sharing box, remove “English 1J S26” as the shared group by clicking the X button. And then click the Publish button at top right again. After receiving the confirmation that your work is published, copy the link using the “Copy link” icon and submit it to Moodle.

Drafting and grade distribution

  • Topic proposal: You’re required to pitch your topic idea to me in the form of a research question. In the Discussion Forum in Moodle, you’ll post your topic proposal and a brief explanation of what draws you to this topic and who the potential audience is. I will work with you to ensure that your research question is focused and has enough scope for rigor. Submit to Moodle by April 8. Grade points: 2%.
  • Preliminary Research: Time to conduct research on your research question and share your research progress. You should submit six credible sources at this stage and two of them need to be peer-reviewed scholarly sources. Submit to Moodle by April 12. Grade points: 3%.
  • Outline: Submit an outline for your essay by April 15. Grade points: 4%. What I am looking for in this outline:
    • What’s special about your topic? Meaning, what’s the exigency around which your essay is built? You’ll need to brainstorm more on this area, as this is the crucial first step to ensuring that you get clarity and purpose in exercising style.
    • Who is the audience? What academic group or subgroup for which this essay is targeted?
    • What will be the structure of your essay? Meaning, the outline will lay out the overall organization of your content.
    • What sort of multimodal content will go into the essay?
  • Rough Draft: The Rough Draft should be at least 1,600 words long. The emphasis will be on the thrust of your idea, performance of style, preliminary research, audience awareness and rhetorical skills (the broader writing goals) than grammatical correctness or citation. However, a Rough Draft submitted with many typos may face a penalty. The grade points for the rough draft will be combined with the Final Draft. You will get feedback from me on your Rough Draft through individual conferences. Compose your work on ArcGIS StoryMaps provided to you, share your draft as per the instructions provided above, and submit the link to your draft to Moodle by April 19.
  • Peer Feedback: Please provide feedback to one of your peer’s rough drafts. Your grade on Peer Feedback will be determined by the quality and the detailed nature of your feedback. Please use the peer review questionnaire provided to you. Submit to Moodle by April 22. Grade points: 4%.
  • Final Draft: Final Draft should be at least 2000 words long. Additionally, the draft should meet the expectations of the project listed above. The final work should be a published piece on the ArcGIS StoryMaps. You’ll submit to Moodle the published link by May 6. Grade points: 17%.

Learning Outcomes

For each project, I have a vision of the skills you’ll develop, which aligns with the learning outcomes for the course outlined in the syllabus. You will reflect on these outcomes after completing the project.

  • Reading Skills: What readings in the class did resonate with you the most and why? What ways were you able to engage with the readings critically? How did the readings help you as a writer, rhetor and stylist? What stylistic and rhetorical strategies did you develop through the course readings?
  • Writing Skills: What new writing skills did you learn or acquire? What new complexities and challenges did you tackle in your writing? What ways did your mental and emotional approach, voice, and style for the project vary? In what ways did you become aware of your writing process and style?
  • Rhetorical Knowledge: How did the concept of style evolve for you in this project? What roles do you think emotion, public, genre, and rhetoric play in shaping your style? Who is the audience for this genre? What sort of audience knowledge is required? What’s the purpose of this genre? How did you apply ethos, logos, and pathos to make your style more persuasive? What roles do you think context, audience, genre, culture, and emotions play in making style situation-specific?
  • Multimodal Literacy: What multimodal contents (audio, visual, etc.) did you read, research, compose, or incorporate for this project? How did the multimodal content choices enrich the style of your essay? How does style and multimodality work with each other in shaping rhetoric?
  • Metacognition: After completing this assignment, what strengths and weaknesses have you realized about yourself as a writer? What stylistic aspects do you plan to hone further in future? What writing skills will transfer to future writing situations in your discipline?
  • Research: How did your research process diverge (if at all) for this project? What new research strategies did you learn? How did you evaluate a source and establish its credibility and usefulness for your topic? How did you find and distinguish between scholarly and popular sources?
  • Open-mindedness and critical thinking: What ways were you able to challenge normative thinking in the academic genre through your essay? How were you able to challenge the genre norms by discussing bodies, affect, embodied realities, and personal narratives?

Student Questions

I expect you to have questions for me in the course for this project. I’ll populate this section with your questions and my responses.