Exploratories

Exploratory Tasks + Critical Blog Posts
At key points throughout the semester, we will undertake short, innovative reading or research tasks (in some cases involving digital tools), usually done collaboratively and accompanied by a critical blog post. Our goal with these assignments will be to build, critique, and explore—in other words, to play. Our goal with the blog posts will be to reflect on that play and how it illumines/complicates/addresses/extends the readings for the previous or coming weeks, taking up key concepts, issues, conflicts, or terms. I will assign tasks well ahead of when they are due, but generally speaking, critical blog posts are somewhat formal and should be a minimum of 2-3 well developed paragraphs in length (a couple of screens), and my great desire is to see you engage expertly with both task and texts, at times speaking through or alongside what we read, and speaking with some sophistication about what we read (citing where necessary and embedding links where relevant). Be sure to define terms and unpack assumptions for us, using your posts as occasions to teach. Because the blog is somewhat performative, I'll ask you to title your posts creatively (or insightfully). And finally, I will expect you to treat others with respect, regardless of the possible level of disagreement.

Exploratory #1: Tracing Aristotle and Quintilian
Exploratory #2: Schematizing P & O-T's Theory of Practical Reasoning
Exploratory #3: Finding Enlightenment Terms in Concordances, Databases & Ontologies 
Exploratory #4: Schematizing "Rhetorical Theory and Practice"