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What is a Précis?

Your précis should be no more than a page long, and should be broken down into four sections:

1. A statement about the text's focus. What is the main issue the text addresses? Write a few concise sentences that represent the focus. In the case of Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen," your first section might read:

   "The explicit aim of this text is to defend the reputation of Helen, but it also provides a commentary on the nature of language and a performative, self-referential demonstration of the Sophists' use of language to persuade an audience."

   Don't editorialize here; try for an objective representation of the principal function(s) of the text.

2. A statement of the text's logic and goal.

   Typical verbs for indicating a text's logic are compare, contrast, link causally, causes, follows from.

   Example:

   "By staging a defense of Helen which turns on Helen's powerlessness in the face of the forces compelling her to accompany Paris to Troy, Gorgias establishes a causal link between the persuasive power of speech (rhetoric) and human psychology and behavior."

3. This statement introduces a chart with headings encompassing the text's data in two parallel columns of notes (usually with page references to the reading). Organize the text's information under the headings to show how the text correlates different classes of data. Try for three or four examples.

   Typical categories of information are

   • characteristics of a model, role, event, object
   • stages in an event or process
   • sources, conditions, or restrictions on contexts
   • participants or interest groups
   • effects, impact, consequences
   • goals, purposes

   Example:

   characteristics of the soul not fully self-determined; subject to Fate, the gods, necessity, stronger forces (§ 6) can be affected by representations as well as by actual phenomena (§ 9)   has neither complete memory nor prescience (§ 11)

   characteristics of speech "a powerful lord" (§ 8); like witchcraft (§ 10); comparable to the power of drugs (§ 14) "the agency of words" can represent phenomena, such as the suffering of others (§ 9) capable of dissimulation (§ 11)

4. A brief paragraph indicating the implications of the information pattern you have discerned in the text. Analyze the covert statement(s) made by the text through its information pattern. In setting up the text in this way, what has the author asserted, hidden, brushed aside? Ask yourself what the text good for. What are the applications of its argument(s) for your own intellectual activities (teaching, literary analysis, writing, visual art, etc.)?

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In-Class Presentation

If you are more comfortable reading your written text, write it so that your listeners will be able to follow your points easily. It's also fine to "talk through" your presentation, using your text as a guide. Presenters take on the responsibility of leading class discussion on the text they have presented and should be prepared to field (and encourage) questions and comments from the class.

Options

1. Choose one of the texts for which you want to prepare a précis and expand your précis slightly to include the following information:
   • brief background on the author
   • brief background on the historical context
   • brief account of the rhetorical situation to which the text responds (why did the author write this particular text?)
2. Following the format of option 1, give a presentation on a rhetorical, literary, or cultural theory that we have not covered in class. You might be particularly interested in how post-structuralist literary theory intersects with rhetoric and might want to give a presentation on Derrida's Signature Event Context. You might also want to present on a rhetorical tradition or set of contemporary communication practices from a non-Euro-American cultural context.
3. Perform a rhetorical analysis of something that interests you. You might select a current political debate in the community, a political campaign, an advertising campaign, a publication of the university or another institution, a film, a work of literature, or any other cultural product. You can build from this presentation for your formal rhetorical analysis paper. See the description of the rhetorical analysis for the format of this option.

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Rhetorical Analysis

Choose a cultural product that has some communicative and/or persuasive function and analyze its rhetorical strategies in five (5) pages (minimum). You might select a current political debate in the community, a political campaign, an advertising campaign, a public information document, a publication of the university or another institution, a film, a work of literature, or any other form of communication.
• Account for how the material identifies, addresses, and (often) constructs its audience. To whom is the message directed? Is the audience diverse or very limited?
• Account for how the material appeals to its audience. How is the information arranged? What kind of language does it employ? Does it offer options for different kinds of users?
• Describe the logical structure of the message. What kind of reasoning does the material employ?
• Determine what kinds of appeals the material is engaging. Does it appeal to the emotions? To the reputation of the organization or individual it represents? To reason?
• Assess the effectiveness of the material in terms of its stated and unstated aims.
Make sure that your analysis starts with an identifiable and arguable claim:

e.g. Although the AIDS-awareness brochure published by the National Institutes of Health aims at educating the American public about the hazards of unprotected sex, its central argument assumes a largely white, middle-class audience and ignores the specific concerns about both health and sexuality of many cultural groups in the United States. Furthermore, the brochure describes sexual activity in clinical terms that may confuse and alienate a wide range of readers.

You will need to support your own analysis with sufficient quotations from the text. Use MLA style to cite your source(s).

Term Paper

All class participants will complete a term paper of ten (10) pages (or equivalent--electronic documents must amount to at least ten pages of standard printed text). You are free to choose your topic, but all of you should consult with me early in the planning stages. You may focus on any aspect of the materials we are treating in the seminar. You must, however, give evidence of careful research, i.e., citations in the text and a bibliography of current work in the appropriate field(s). I will expect at least five (5) sources beyond those we cover in class (that is, your textbook and course packet). Use MLA style to cite your sources.

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