Journal Prompt #6: This Penn State Life

For your sixth journal prompt (to be posted on your personal blog), you will need to listen to the entirety of this podcast about Penn State's party school status on NPR's This American Life. It's an hour and a half long, so be sure to allot yourself the time necessary. I promise, it's gripping.

I am looking first of all for a general, immediate response from you. How did this make you feel? As a Penn State student? As a college student in general? Do you think this is an apt portrayal?

Think about the appeals as you listen. Where is ethos particularly strong/weak? For the arguers? For the people interviewed? What about pathos? Where were you most moved/confused/angered/proud and why? Finally, how well does the piece make use of logos--statistics, reason, facts--to make its case?

What issues of definition are at stake in the piece? Small ones (hint: a jacket you wear to a frat party is called a___?) and large ones. How does this piece define PSU? Our students? Faculty?

Please address the above in at least 500 but no more than 1000 words.

Due Thursday, October 27th by noon.

Journal Prompts 4 & 5

Good news!

I'm counting your memoir's first scene and the comparison you did between the two suicide-themed poems as journals # 4 & 5.

Stay tuned for prompt #6...

Poet Anne Stevenson to Read, October 20th

Anne Stevenson is widely recognized as an eminent Anglo-American poet. Her many books of poetry and criticism include a collectedPoems 1955–2005, which won her the Neglected Master’s Award from The Poetry Society of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation. She is the author of two critical studies of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry and an important biography of Sylvia Plath. Her fourteenth collection of poems, Stone Milk,appeared in 2007.


October 20th
7:30pm
Foster Auditorium

Poet Heather Jordan to Read Wednesday, October 5th at 12:10 pm

Wednesday, October 5, 12:10 p.m.

The Palmer Museum of Art 

Heather Jordan, lecturer, Department of English

Heather Jordan published a collection of poetry titled Cheap Grace with Finishing Line Press in 2011 and will soon release a second book of poetry, Lottery Ticket, with the University of Wisconsin Press.