Last 4 Prompts of the Semester (and Bonus!)

For those of you who are eager to get the blog done, here are the last 4 prompts of the semester. (There is also a bonus prompt, which can replace your lowest blog post score of the semester.)

Post #11:

Write a response to The Shallows, taking into consideration the things Carr said that you both agreed and disagreed with. What part of his argument did you accept? What part did you find yourself unable to accept? Why? 

Post #12:

After finishing the first volume of Maus, find a moment in the story that you feel exemplifies extraordinary pathos. Describe it (giving the page number of your edition) and why you feel it is particularly pathetic (in Jay Heinrichs’ sense of the word). How does this moment fit in with the story at large? 

Post #13:

After finishing Maus, compare it to the other texts we’ve read this semester. How is it similar to Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows? Think about the book beyond its content, and think about how it makes its argument? How is the rhetoric of Spiegelman’s graphic text similar to the rhetoric of Safran Foer’s or Carr’s?

Post #14:

As you watch your peers’ speeches this week, what issue did you think was the most interesting/compelling/challenging/controversial? Why? What aspects of the controversy had you never considered before? What aspects did you think about differently after the speech? Was there a moment that was particularly rhetorically powerful?

Post #15: Bonus

Tell me about your summer plans in the most rhetorically interesting way possible. If you need an argument, tell me why it’s going to be awesome/terrible/interesting/boring, etc. Pull out all the stops: use ethos, logos, pathos, argumentation, exaggeration etc.