Visual Rhetoric Paper

We have covered a number of visual rhetoric topics throughout the first half of this semester:

  • the pictorial turn, and new ways of defining "the image" in academic work
  • visual interpretation--how images resonate beyond the image itself, and how we can learn to read images more deeply in terms of their social context
  • digital images and the expansion of rhetoric through "the digital expressive space"
  • visual grammar and visual literacy
  • the photographic image
  • the reproduced image
  • the truth behind images (especially photographs)
  • images in the larger context of iconography and circulation

We have also covered a number of authors who are significant thinkers in the way we use (or abuse) images to convey ideas:

  • Plato/Socrates
  • Walter Benjamin
  • Max Horkheimer
  • Theodor Adorno
  • Roland Barthes
  • John Berger
  • W.J. Thomas Mitchell
  • Susan Sontag
  • Gunther Kress
  • Richard Lanham
  • Lester Faigley
  • Harriman Robert/John Lucaites
  • Cara Finnegan

This paper assignment simply asks you to delve deeper into a particular topic area or author's work that has struck you as particularly intriguing and worthy of more critical analysis. Please write 5 pages (single space/Times Roman 12) investigating your theme of choice. Please include at least five external books or articles beyond what we have read in class. Include APA citations and references (MLA is fine too). Include a separate paragraph describing how you came to this topic.

 

HERE are some interesting exercises on the Library of Congress Website to get you started.