Overview:

For the remainder of this semester you will research, analyze, and contribute to a "site" of advocacy, a process that will culminate in two distinct, but inter-related pieces of writing: an 8 to 10 page academic paper analyzing rhetorical dimensions of some advocacy-based texts or practices and a 3 to 5 page non-academic advocacy-based argument of your own, one that contributes to the advancement of some cause.

The project is comprised of several stages: a determination of an issue and relevant texts to explore; thorough research into the issue and relevant texts;  a drafting process for both papers; a presentation of your work; an editing process; final submission of your texts. Throughout all of these stages the goal will be to apply the critical and productive resources of rhetoric to better understand how argument proceeds in public discourse.


Timetable:

While the final submissions of both an analytical paper and an engaged argument will be due in mid-December, there are various stages of exploration, research, and analysis that will mark points of progress along the way, the first of which is selecting an issue to investigate.

Selecting an issue:
Due Wednesday, October 25: Select an issue and prepare a 'brief' precis--a one to two page proposal--on that issue demonstrating your interest and aptitude for the issue. That precis should formulate reasonably well some question or observation that can yield fruit upon further exploration. It should identify particular "sites" of advocacy clustered around that issue.

To be more particular, I want you to identify at this early date a particular cause or concern as a topical site of advocacy and, related to that cause or concern, several localized sites of advocacy in the form of organizations or persons, websites or other media of publicity and intervention. Alternatively, your efforts might be directed toward understanding particular activities or media themselves as sites of advocacy, e.g., analyze in what (same or different) ways various environmental organizations use their website as part of a media campaign.
 

Getting Started:

Before you can begin to map the broad outlines or fine details of argumentation--as relevant to some issue and as practiced by some proponents--you first need to identify some issue and related sites of activity and/or some advocacy practices that shape persuasive activities. Here are some resources and questions and to get you started in that effort:

http://www.indiana.edu/~c228/c228institutes.html
Institutes, Think Tanks, Advocacy Organizations

http://www.indiana.edu/~c228/c228watchdog.html
Media Watchdog and Analysis Sites

http://www.aldaily.com/
Arts and Letters Daily (a great site on matters scholarly and intellectual)

http://www.indiana.edu/~c228/c228marriage.html
An example of a cluster of advocacy organizations

http://www.patriotproject.com/2006/10/a_particularly.php
The Patriot Project (piece by David Johnson 10/19/06)


These sites, in various ways, ask you to consider both the how and the what of advocacy-based rhetoric in our media-saturated age. Your immediate goal, then, is to zero in on some issue or set of practices--forms of argument--that attract your interest and to develop tentative insights about the "available means of persuasion," to quote Aristotle, attending that issue at one or more localized sites.  


Questions to Consider as you proceed:

What does it mean to advocate for a cause?
Who/What advocates for a particular cause?
To Whom is that advocacy directed?
How does that advocacy proceed?
In what contested public spaces does this advocacy take place? 
What makes them interesting as rhetorical activity?