UNIT 1: GLADWELL AND ARGUMENTS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISM
Who is Gladwell?
- Mandelbaum, Micheal. "Introduction." From The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football, and Basketball, and What They See When They Do. New York: Public Affairs, 2004, xiii-xviii.
- Mandelbaum, Michael. "Why America Hates Football." Writing for the English magazine Observer Sports Monthly, Mandelbaum tries to explain why Americans don't like Football (Soccer).
- Mandelbaum discusses his book on the Diane Rehm radio show
- Mandelbaum discusses his book with Jim Fleming of Wisconsin Public Radio. Interview is 6 minutes long, and sketches main themes of the book.
- Stewart on sports and socialism - excerpt (see 2.40) and full
About Mandelbaum
- Mandelbaum's' profile page from John Hopkins University, where he is Professor of American Foreign Policy, and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at
the School of Advanced International Studies. -
Mandelbaum's' Wikipedia page
Background Material for Mandelbaum- videos, interviews, people and organizations mentioned
Unit 1 Teaching Materials
Sample Schedules and Class Plans for Unit 1
- Alicia's Tu/Th Schedule. Covers lesson plans from first day of class to turning in Project 1.
- Overview and detailed description of possible class plans/activities
Rhetorical Reading Notes
Mandelbaum: Annotations (micro- and macro-charting):
The first two-thirds of Oreskes's piece (pgs. 65-79) hand-charted by Daniela Oreskes - annotations.pdf
Prereading 1
- Powerpoint on the politics of definition - examples of race, sexuality, medical condition, etc.
- The Daily Shows and rhetorical questions. TDS explores news media use of leading questions, the issue of framing, agency, responsibility, etc.
Prereading 2: Jigsaw Work, Discussion, & Group Work
-
Pre-reading questions about definitions, metaphor etc., survey questions, and class plans. Ideas for teaching and introducing issues raised in Postman, but could perhaps also be used for Oreskes.
-
"How to Mark a Text," by Mortimer Adler
-
Some background material on the significance of metaphor, ways of approaching metaphor, analysis, etc.
- Jigsaw Work (Postman-specific)
- Pre-reading - powerpoint materials
- Pre-reading, Rhetorical Reading, Questions to pose text (see section on this in all purpose teaching materials)
- Discussion & Group Work (see section on this in all purpose teaching materials)
Pre-reading 3: Naming & Framing the issue
Before teaching Oreskes, it may be useful to read the first 2 pages of Friedman's "The Power of Green," which is all about the power of language to name, define and frame climate issues. He says "In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue...Well, I want to rename 'green.'" Here are some other examples of ways of naming/framing the issue. Students could be assigned to report on these frames either individually or as part of group work.
The Assignment: guidelines, scoring, rubrics and sample papers
- Assignment 1: Guidelines and Scoring
- Sample Grading Rubric
- Paper #1 - Oreskes (Fall 2011).doc (Paper Prompt and Rubric - by Daniela)
- Sample Assignment Prompt #1 - Oreskes (Tyler)
- Sample Assignment Prompt, Revised Assignment Prompt (utilizing some of Katie Hughes' language) as well as my rubric (Alicia)
- Sample assignment prompt and rubric (Rose)
- Sample prompt, rubric, introduction and body paragraphs (mix of Chris, Rose and Alicia)
- Collection of sample student papers. These 2 sample papers use Friedman's "The Power of Green," which is also about climate change.
- Sample Powerpoint explaining how to do asignment 1
- Project 1 Tips for students (FAQs) (Rose - to be discussed in class; change the tone to be much friendlier if posted for students)
Working with Oreskes- charting, PACES, Analysis and Strategies
- Alicia provided the following resources:
Articulating the Argument: Worksheet for mapping out PACES - project, argument, evidence, claims and strategies (Alicia) -
See all purpose teaching materials on rhetorical reading and analyzing texts
-
See all purpose teaching materials on ethos pathos logoc, metadiscourse and rhetorical strategies.
Drafting & Peer Review
- Outline of the introduction (Alicia)
- An overhead/handout for Peer Review (Alicia)
- See all purpose teaching materials on drafting and peer review
- Peer review form for assignment 1 (for the traditional paired peer review)
Miscellaneous Extras
Advocacy Groups Arguing For/Against Human Induced Climate Change
- http://cfact.org/
- See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Committee_for_a_Constructive_Tomorrow for more info - appears to be funded largely by 2 Scaife family foundations, the Carthage Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation (both part of the Scaife family foundation, funded by "reclusive billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife," whose wealth was inherited from the Mellon industrial, oil, uranium, aluminum and banking fortune. Seehttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carthage_Foundation. Other big contributors are oil and auto companies - namely Chevron, ExxonMobil, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company Fund. I tried looking up a few of the people on the advisory board.
WHO ARE THE AUTHORITIES (advisory board, plus people cited on site most often)
So far many seem ghosts - EXAMPLE, "Kleinfeld, Gerald R., Ph.D." He is listed as "Consortium for Atlantic Studies, Arizona State University." But in fact, he's this guy: http://www.kleinfeld.biz/CV.htm. He's a professor of German studies, and a concultant ("German Federal Ministry for Defense: Consultant-Contractor on German and American Strategic Policy (ten years consultancy, contractor with Consortium for Atlantic Studies - CAS)"
He's a "contractor" with the "Consortium for Atlantic Studies"? This consortium does not seem to exist.
Some are "contrarians" mentioned by Oreskes in her article, e.g. Frederick Seitz (Oreskes, p 75)
Ouch. http://cfact.org/a/1674/CFACT-drops-the-banner-on-Greenpeace-ships "Greenpeace claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing “dangerous global climate change.” Hundreds of climate scientists and thousands of other scientists disagree with that assertion, as frequently noted by Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a CFACT advisor. “The continuing scandal over falsified and destroyed temperature data, manipulated climate models, and a perverted scientific and peer review process further demonstrates that there is no valid basis for this anti-energy, wealth-redistribution, global governance Copenhagen treaty,” said Rucker. [Could examine this rhetoric - esp. the idea that government regulation is somehow "redistributionist" (aka communist), and part of an international conspiracy for world control - for continuities between other foundations set up in the 50s, 60s and 70s against tobacco regulation, clean air regulation, STAR wars technology, acid rain, etc.)
Double ouch: http://cfact.org/a/1769/Obamas-deliberate-Katrina Obama administration's reaction to the Katrina disaster "is proactively incompetent and obstructionist, as though it is determined not to let this crisis go to waste – but to prolong and intensify the environmental and economic calamity, to advance its political objectives: shutting down offshore leasing and drilling, bringing the US oil industry into the automotive-banking-housing-healthcare sphere of federal control, forcing a massive shift to costly renewable energy, and ramming cap-tax-and-trade through Congress."
EXTENDING Oreskes-type research + rhetorical analysis: 1) how many of these authorities listed on the sites are scientists with expertize in the relevant areas? How many are in fact retired, older scientists in different fields (as Oreskes suggests in Merchants of Doubt.) 2) INFLUENCE relative to credibility a) what do Nexis-Lexis searches show - how influential and how often are these groups/figures cited? b) what do google searches show in terms of ranking etc.? 3) WHAT patterns of organization and funding can be found - are the same authorities, and the same organizations funding different advocacy groups? 4) To what extent are groups grass roots, and to what extent are they astroturf? 5) what are the most common strategies used to debunk climate change? How are authorities used, evidence selected, etc. - http://demanddebate.com/ It claims to want to foster debate on campus about climate change. It features some clever rhetoric and snazzy t-shirts. Don't know who funds it, but headed by Steven Milloy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy. Perhaps something for students to discuss and research. They could perhaps do a group project that is a bit like Oreskes - that is, take a representative sample of organizations that advocate on climate change issues, and then analyze where their funding comes from, and thus which percentage are authentic grass roots, and which are "astroturf."