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Essay 3: Organizing for Persuasion / Grammatical Mechanics (MLA)

We have talked a lot this semester about rhetoric including visual rhetoric. This assignment will have you explore an important issue in the world through a reading of a photograph based on your reading of what others (see ANGEL), or you, argue is one of the most important photographs of the recent past (generally the last year or so). The photograph will serve as an entry point for you to explore an issue of national or international significance. You will then construct an argument relevant to your peers here at Penn State Harrisburg.

The aim of this paper, then, is to connect something of national and/or international importance to the needs, cares, and situation of your fellow college students here in Middletown, PA. This is, in short, connecting a small, local community with a larger, potentially foreign, community and showing how or why those who may have, or feel, no real connection with the issue, should care about it. Your assignment is to make that connection more real in some way by changing the thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, or even actions of your audience. In short, you’re finding an issue and showing how something that college students may not know or care about, something that is someone else’s problem, is actually our problem.

Make sure you include the following in your essay:

• A copy of the image you’re basing your essay off of.
• One paragraph of analysis of the photograph itself—how it is more than recording events, but presenting a persuasive reading of those events? What is its message and how does it communicate that? What is it trying to persuade its audience of?
• A definition and description of the issue the photograph highlights
• A well-researched argument into the issue and how it is or should be relevant to college students.
  • This may proceed along the lines of a compare and contrast with some more local and relatable, looking into cause and effect to show how these distant things do (or can or will) affect the everyday lives of college students, or look at the process that has or is causing the issue, or the process that needs to happen to fix the issue.

For research, you should use at least 3 scholarly sources (i.e. journal articles from the library databases or books), and 3 non-academic but appropriate sources (news sources, government sites, etc.). I require a minimum of 6 sources in MLA format.

Length: 1500 words (5-6 pages double spaced)