Note to instructors: This exercise is meant to complement a unit on feminist theory within the context of a rhetoric and composition course. At the end of this assignment, you will find a list of suggested readings to aid you in compiling such a unit and to help enhance your students' understanding of what it means to "read" visual rhetoric through a feminist lens.
The questions following each image are drawn from Chapter 14 of Everything's An Argument, titled "Visual Arguments."
1. What is this text's argument?
2. What cultural ideals does it suggest? Does it reinforce these ideals? Why or why not?
3. What emotions does this text evoke?
4. What does this text assume about its readers?
5. In what context might this text be inappropriate or constitute poor argument?
1. What is this image's argument?
2. How does the text, "Sweeter than candy, Better than cake," reinforce the argument?
3. What aspect of the image draws the reader's attention first? Why? What role does color play in the argument?
4. What effect does representing a very young girl in a way that situates her as a sexualized Other have on the message of the text?
5. What overall impression does this image leave on the reader? What factors may or may not influence such an impression?
1. What argument does this article make? What is its intention?
2. Does the article achieve its desired effect? Why or why not?
3. How do the embedded film clips serve to enhance (or undermine) the article's intent? Explain.
4. What does the text assume about its readers/viewers?
5. What emotions does the text evoke? Which ones do you think it intends to evoke?
1. What is this text's argument? How can you tell?
2. What role does music play as a persuasive element? How are light and color used? What effects are these elements intended yo have on you?
3. What message does this text communicate about technology and the female body? Explain.
4. How are you directed to move within the argument? Does this advertisement effectively persuade the viewer to purchase Heineken beer? Why or why not?
5. Who is the implied audience for this ad? How might the advertising agency responsible for this ad have underestimated their intended audience?
Suggested reading (with thanks to the UT English Department's Feminist Solidarity Group):
Bordo, Susan. "The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies." Chronicle of Higher Education 19 December 2003. .
Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J." Berkeley: U California P, 1998.
Bosley, Deborah. "Gender and visual communication: toward a feminist theory of design." Communication, Vol. 35, No. 4, December 1992.
Carson, Fiona, and Claire Pajaczkowska, eds. Feminist Visual Culture. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Caws, Mary Ann. "Ladies Shot and Painted: Female Embodiment in Surrealist Art." in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, (ed. Susan Suleiman), Harvard UP, 1987.
Hill, Diane. "The 'Real Realm': Value and Values in Recent Feminist Art." Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Vision. Ed. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell. New York: Routledge, 1998. 143-161.
Lourde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." in This Bridge Called My Back, ed. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (Watertown, Mass., 1981), 98-101.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."
Selzer, Jack, and Sharon Crowley, eds. Rhetorical Bodies. Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1999.
Smith, Shawn Michelle. American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture. Princeton UP.
Thornham, Sue. "Passionate detachments: an introduction to feminist film theory."
