Artifact 2

“at its base, forged in concrete, a narrative”

--Natasha Trethewey, from “Meditation at Decatur Square”

“A monument is made at a particular point in time and is conceived and constructed by a group of people with specific intentions and ideas.”

--Adam Hjorthén

What have we learned?

We have learned that every human creation may be read as a rhetorical performance, one meant to ‘persuade’ someone of an idea, history, or story using various means of persuasion or ‘appeals.’ We can ‘read’ any human ‘text’ through a careful analysis of manifest content presented to us, the critical rhetorician. 

We have also learned that there are multiple means to communicate ideas, concepts, and arguments beyond the Written work of essays or papers. 

Goals and Learning Outcomes

Rhetoric: Create purposeful, audience-directed artifacts that present well-organized, well-supported, well-designed arguments using appropriate conventions of written, oral, visual, and/or nonverbal communication

Analysis: Draw connections among ideas, support assertions with evidence and arguments; identify patterns via close and careful attention.

Critical Thinking: Systematically analyze and question information in a manner that identifies and evaluates problems, processes, values, assumptions, and arguments 

WOVEN

Visual communication: You must present an infographic that analyzes the rhetoric and message of a local monument. This requires a careful use of the aspects of visual communication including proximity, color, organization, alignment, etc.

Written communication: There are aspects of the infographic that require the written word, but this is an exercise in simplicity, conciseness, and clarity, in which the visual performs much of the work of analysis via juxtaposition, design, organization, contrast, or proximity.

Prompt

You will compose an infographic that, through analyzing the manifest features and the context of a monument, will make a case or an argument about its message.

Argument or Purpose

This is an argumentative, interpretive work. That is, you are interpreting message the monument gives us regarding its subject matter via an analysis of its manifest content (location, design, images and symbols, and inscriptions) and the context of its creation (builder, event, subject, sponsor, commemorative events, date of construction and ongoing or contemporary historical movements). Your role is not to evaluate, critique, or give a call-to-action, but to interpret and inform. As such, retain a sense of objectivity. 

Audience

Your audience is a knowledgeable panel of historians who consider the general public in their assessment of your work. As such, it must be intellectually robust, historically accurate, and analytically precise while keeping the messages and ideas simple, clear, and direct for a general public who may not know the full context, event, or people depicted in the monument. 

For example, you can't just say, "This is a work of Lost Cause sentimentality" without defining at some point in the infographic what exactly the Lost Cause is or entails. The historians may know what it is, but the general public may not. The historians may know who Robert Smalls is, but it will be useful for a general public audience to give a small blurb on how Robert Smalls was an enslaved man known for stealing a Confederate ship and freeing several enslaved people in the process. 

Defining Features

You will need to analyze at least five features of monumental architecture. These features are location, symbols, imagery, design, and inscription. Additionally, you will need to incorporate social and historical context in your overall analysis. This could include but is not limited to: who built it, who is being depicted, when it was built, the commemoration ceremonies surrounding the monument's debut, etc. 

I discuss the features of monuments in more detail below. Follow this link.

I discuss context in more detail below. Follow this link.

WOVEN asks that you consider a few specific defining features of visual rhetoric. This list is not exhaustive, but useful in critically considering where and how you place certain images, symbols, or how you analyze and juxtapose them to achieve your argumentative and interpetive ends. 

I discuss features of visual rhetoric in more detail below. Follow this link.

Process and Due Dates

Selecting a Monument

You'll select a monument local to you. You'll provide me with those monument choices for approval via "Artifact 2 Monument Approval" assignment by the beginning of class Thursday, September 28. You should not select buildings, plazas, palaces, castles, etc. even if they are "memorial plazas." The selection should be a traditional monument or memorial space. 

Monument Reflections

In class and out of class, you'll need to reflect on the monument's manifest content and features via "Artifact 2 Monument Reflections" assignment by the beginning of class on Tuesday, September October 3

Library Visit

To get you exposed to the production materials available to complete this project, we will be visiting Alison Valk at the main library on October 3 during our regular class time. Attendance is required. More information on location may be found on the Schedule.

Peer Review

You'll submit your Infographic for peer review by the beginning of class on Thursday, October 12.

Final Work

The final version of this project is due by Tuesday, October 17. This must be submitted as a pdf, jpeg, or png file. No links to outside sites like Google Drives or Canva sites will be accepted. 

Reflection

We'll do reflections on your artifact on Tuesday, October 17. These reflections will be used for the Portfolio.

Grading

This unit accounts for 25% of your final grade in this class. Of that grade:

10% is tied to Journal Assignments

20% is tied to Class Participation

• 10% is for Peer Review

• 10% is for active involvement in in-class activities

10% is tied to Selecting a Monument

60% is tied to the Final Infographic

Appendix

Features of Monumental Architecture

Subject

What is being explicitly depicted, celebrated, or memorialized by the monument. Often, this may include an individual, a handful of individuals, groups, or it may also be a more indirect reflection on the values of the community itself. 

Who or what is being explicitly depicted in this monument or memorial? What specific parts of their personality, contributions, experiences, or roles are being discussed? 

For example, the subject of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in DC is pretty obviously Vietnam Veterans, specifically from the United States. The remaining features are meant to tell us more about how to interpret this subject. Or, the subject may be indirect. For example, the statue of Athena in Athens, Georgia is not specifically to commemorate Athena the goddess, but instead to reflect the values of the community of Athens, Georgia. 

Location

The placement of a monument. Where a monument is placed not only helps emphasize the location of an important event or person but also reflects back on the values of the community.

Where is the monument? Is there significance in it being placed where it is placed and why?

For example, a monument placed at an important intersection in the middle of town or at the town square or city hall indicates that this person’s story, this event, or this specific group of people is meant to be seen as influential to the culture or history of the community itself. It also indirectly indicates whose stories and histories are privileged. 

Design

This term emphasizes the big-picture design of the monument or memorial. Usually, we look at larger shapes, orientations, positions, or architectural designs to determine something of a broader cultural reference, the importance of the figure or event memorialized, or ways onlookers should 'experience' the space. 

How is it constructed or organized? How big is it? What’s the overall shape of the structure?  

Here, we can look at the use (or lack thereof) of things like plinths, water features, allowed seating areas or steps. For example, a statue of a person on a plinth literally and figuratively elevates the subject above the viewer, indicating importance. They are a person you should strive to be like. Or, it could be like the Vietnam War Memorial in DC, whose design elements (no ostentatious elements, built downwards into a hill, reflective stone) evokes a sense not of victory but of somberness, wounding, and reflection, respectively.

Inscriptions 

What is literally written on the monument or nearby. Inscriptions are used to emphasize the main take-aways of the monument, who it is for, and who built it. Sometimes it tells us why it has been built and how we as onlookers should perceive the subject depicted. 

How does written phrasing influence our perception of the subjects depicted in the monument or encourage certain understandings of its subject?

Monuments usually don’t have much in terms of written language. However, language is used to polish or sharpen the intended meaning of other elements. The Confederate monument in Athens, GA, has an inscription that reads, in part, “These Heroes … In the fatal issues of battle, reached the consummation of Earthly Glory by their Death [the] Last and Holiest Office of Human Fidelity possible to Brave Men.” The use of the phrase, “reached the consummation of Earthly Glory” in their “fatal” experiences in “battle,” indicates that we should understand their death not merely as soldiers but as martyrs. In this case, they are martyrs of the cause of “the Rights of States” as indicated on another part of the same inscription. I discuss context below, but you should probably indicate to your reader that this is a postbellum historical revision by neo-Confederates trying to whitewash the Confederacy’s true aims and goals. In the words of its Vice President, Alexander Stephens, in a speech in 1861, claimed, “Our new government ... its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Nowhere does he mention states’ rights as a motivating factor in secession.

Symbols

Symbols are "a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract."

What are the symbolic elements? How are flowers, flags, guns, swords, crosses, stars, or any item meant to inform our connection to the subject matter?

Consider how you might relate specific elements between different monuments depicting similar subjects. In a lot of military monuments, there are swords that help emphasize the focus on the subject’s martial relationships, but not necessarily any other factors about them. Or, on gravestones, there might be certain flowers. Find out what symbolic history exists with those flowers to draw out the intended references. Perhaps the use of Cherokee Rose is meant to suggest the dead person’s ties to Georgia?

Imagery

The collection or relationship between visual images or symbols that, taken together cohere into a single or several messages or depictions of events. 

Look at things like friezes, the layout and depiction of the subject. How are these used (especially in design) to point towards a central ‘narrative’?

Think about friezes especially as a kind of comic. As in comics, which are a series of images indicating a progression of story or plot, so too do friezes act as comics, just without gutters (maybe). Try to describe the events being depicted and how that depiction leads us to certain conclusions about the event. For example, this image from the relief within the Arch of Titus in Rome, depicts Titus as a triumphant victor after his sacking of Jerusalem. Titus is depicted atop a magnificently decorated chariot with four war-horses, and an angel behind him, seeming to bless him. Who that angel is, I’m not sure, but I would imagine this indicates something divine, given that she has wings. Her positive relation to Titus, holding her hand above his head, suggests that the gods are impressed or are giving approval to this conquest.

Context

WOVENText discusses the importance of rhetorical context to a given work. So, how does the context of the monument’s creation influence ways in which we interpret the monument itself? What was the historical moment in which the monument was constructed? Who commissioned it? Who paid for it? That can give us clearer insight into its message. 

For example, think about the Athens Confederate Monument. It was built in 1872, after the failure of Reconstruction and in the midst of a (still ongoing) cultural movement called the Lost Cause. This political-cultural movement attempted to reframe the Civil War in various modes: a war of Northern aggression and Northern jealousy, a war of states’ rights, a war of self-defense, a war between brothers, etc. All of these impressions are either oversimplifications or outright fabrications that serve to occlude the material reality of slavery that informed the Confederate insurrection. In this way, they could present the Old South and the Confederacy (and those still living who were influential in this insurgent and racist attempt to secede) as ‘not the baddies’ and even in some cases as the unfairly misunderstood good guys. 

Consider Context with the discussion on Inscriptions above. How does the Lost Cause sentiment emerge in the poem on the Athens Confederate Monument? How does calling them, in short, martyrs, fit in with this historical movement? How do they minimize or omit slavery and how is that influential to our understanding of this text? 

Elements of Visual Rhetoric

Emphasis: "In speech or writing, emphasis means stressing a word or a group of words to give it more importance. In visual texts, it means the same thing; emphasis gives certain elements greater importance, significance, or stress than other elements in the text, which can guide your reading of the text as a whole. When analyzing an image for emphasis, we pay attention to what we notice first and then ask ourselves why" (66).

Contrast: "Contrast is the difference between elements, where the combination of those elements makes one element stand out from another. Contrast can be determined by comparing elements in a text. Color, size, placement, shape, and content can all be used to create contrast in a text. Contrast plays a large role in emphasis, in that the most contrasted element often appears to be the most emphasized" (66). 

Color: "Color can be extremely helpful when determining emphasis in a visual text. Visual emphasis can be accorded to how bold or large, or how much black compared to the white or gray background, is used. Although color theory indicates that different cultures interpret colors differently around the world, warm colors are usually read as more emotionally intense—think fire, sun, and summer—and are used to elicit emotional reactions in audiences. Cool colors are usually read as calming and are used to create less emphasis than warm colors in a visual composition" (68). 

Organization: "Organization is the way in which elements are arranged to form a coherent unit or functioning whole" (69).

Alignment: "Alignment literally means how things line up. A composition that uses alignment to best effect controls how our eyes move across a text. Even if we’re working with a text that is all words, every piece of it should be deliberately placed. A centered alignment—an easy and popular choice—causes our eyes to move around the space with less determination, as we move from the end of one line and search for the beginning of the next one. A justified alignment stretches the content so that it is evenly distributed across a row; thus the left and right margins remain consistent. This is a popular choice for newspapers because it can make a large amount of text appear neat and orderly. A strong left alignment gives us something to follow visually—even elements that contrast in size can demonstrate coherence through a single alignment. A strong right alignment creates a hard edge that connects disparate elements. Grouping things in a clear and interesting way can be useful" (69).

Proximity: "Proximity means closeness in space. In a visual text, it refers to how close elements (or groupings of elements) are placed in proximity to each other and what relationships are built as a result of that spacing. The relationships created by the spacing between elements help readers understand the text, in part because readers might already be familiar with similar designs of other texts. Proximity can apply to any kind of element in a visual text, including words and images.... Analyzing proximity in a text means thinking about how elements are grouped together, where they are placed on the page or screen in relation to one another, and how placement suggests purpose. One way to figure out how elements are grouped together into like categories or relationships is to squint your eyes and count how many major groups you see" (70).