First, if you haven’t accepted the invite to create an account on the site, please do so before class (if you think you never received it, let me know by email). Also, if you haven’t provided your top three preferences for weeks to facilitate class readings, you can do that here. (NOTE: most of the available dates have already been reserved; only the remaining available dates still appear.)
For class, I’d like you to read the essay by Kenneth Burke, “Literature as Equipment for Living” and the magazine article by James Gleick, “What Defines a Meme?” (You’re finding them in the comments in the course schedule).
As you read each, consider how the concepts of “rhetoric” and “persuasion” we discussed last week are being reconsidered to some extent in each reading: how do Burke’s idea of “equipment for living” and Gleick’s discussion of “memes” relate to the classical idea of “rhetoric” as the way symbols are used to influence others?