Into the Blog-o-Sphere

We'll be holding Thursday’s "Levels of Conflict" workshop on the blog: 3 responses, 2 comments, and 1 rebuttal. (Of course, you may comment and rebut more, if you'd like.)

Question One: Policy Conflicts
Briefly recount a specific disagreement or misunderstanding you have had with someone and analyze it on one of Kaufer’s “5 levels” (pp. 58-59). You’ll want to explain the conflict and then determine whether the source of the conflict was level 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Please don’t just make something up—the point of this assignment is to reach into your own experience and try to account for it on Kaufer’s terms as accurately as you can. For this to make sense to your classmates, you will need to be clear and detailed with your explanation of what happened during the disagreement or conversation. Unpack any terms that carry assumptions, no matter how small they seem or no matter how much you are sure we would share them.

Question Two: Analogies and Allusions
Mario Savio begins his speech with an analogy that “Sproul Hall is to student rights as Mississippi is to civil rights” circa 1964. Explain the relationship between this analogy and one of the following allusions: Brave New World (par. 1), Kafka (par. 2), the university as being “in the world but not of the world” (par. 11), or the “chrome-plated consumers’ paradise” (par. 14). How do the analogy and the allusion work together to support Savio's overall claim, and how would you have responded if you were the University Administrator he was trying to persuade?

Question Three: Ethos Construction and Stasis of Cause
The immediate context of Barack Obama’s address seems to be responding to questions about his character based on his relationship with Jeremiah Wright, and he uses history (cause) to formulate this response—a strategy we see already employed by Ida B. Wells-Barnett and by Mario Savio. How can arguing on the stasis of cause (rather than on fact/conjecture, value, or procedure) help Obama respond to possible accusations on his character, and how could the same strategy help Wells-Barnett and Savio construct an appropriate ethos for their respective audiences?

Instructions
• Create 1 new post with your responses to the three questions above. Your responses needn't be long; be as concise and focused as possible so that we can follow your argument.

• Respond to any 2 of your classmates' posts by "commenting.”

• Pick any 1 comment for a thorough rebuttal. These comments and rebuttals are opportunities for you to have extended conversations with one another, to teach one another, to forward each other’s ideas, to help one another read more accurately, to “come to terms with” each other's claims, to disagree with each other, and to point out limitations and possibilities in each other's thinking. There are few spaces in our everyday contexts that are designed to make us feel like we can safely learn how to discourse—please take advantage of this one.

• Have fun with it! All responses, comments, and rebuttals need to be submitted by the end of Thursday's class. Before you post, please review the “Blogging Guidelines” (buried in the September archive).

-Dr. Graban