Katie Quinn's e-Portfolio

Welcome to Katie Quinn’s e-Portfolio!  I am a pursuing my undergraduate degree in Political Science at Pennsylvania State University with an expected graduation date of 2014. 

            I have always had an interest in politics, but it is not until after taking this course (LA101H) that I have come to a full understanding of what it means to be an engaged citizen involved in civic life.  To live a civic life a person must have the ability to understand and use rhetoric. In ancient Greece, Athenians who were defined as a citizen played a direct role in making important decisions that affected the entire community.  Therefore, each Athenian had to be well versed in rhetoric in order to promote their position on an issue in government.  While each individual citizen does not receive that power today, competing voices on issues make our ability to rhetorically argue our position possibly even more important that it was in ancient Greece.

            In my e-Portfolio I focus on our call to lead a civic life. It involves all people at different levels of engagement, and does not end at the United States’ border. Instead it is a call to understand and learn from the history and lessons from countries all over the world. Each of my pieces in my e-Portfolio focuses on a specific aspect of civic life:  from understanding a phrase as simple as “family” in Obama’s State of the Union address and its larger context in our society’s attitudes towards our government, to drawing a rhetorical argument out of the cold metal of the National Famine Memorial in Ireland.

            Rhetorical analysis of memorials such as the National Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany and the National Famine Memorial in County Mayo, Ireland create arguments that lead to greater understanding of the depth of famine, or the horror of human genocide. It is through greater understanding of these broad concepts that plague society that we can form our own arguments to promote a policy or position that may protect us from future hardships.

            We become truly active in civic life when we argue in favor of our own view of an issue facing society. I have done this in my motivational speech in favor of a severance tax on Marcellus Shale production. I used the rhetorical knowledge I have gained from this class and from practicing an active civic life in order to call other citizens to become engaged and take action in favor of a policy that will help and protect our community and society.

            Being an engaged citizen is constantly striving to understand every aspect of the world you live in. While many concepts and issues are still out of my grasp, rhetoric has been a key tool in uncovering the arguments that shape our world.  In my e-Portfolio I have collected and revised some of my best rhetorical work of the semester. I hope you enjoy viewing it and I hope it helps you to further understand the joy that comes from being an engaged citizen.

Essay Reflection

I chose to include the essay “Speaking in Silence” in my e-Portfolio because it examines a national memorial that makes a rhetorical statement about the important international question, “why does genocide happen?”  Eisenman silently presents a strong answer to this question through the construction of his monument. However, the rhetorical statement that his memorial makes can only be heard and understood through experience. He uncovers his answer only to those who wish to understand and actively partake in the formation of his memorial’s message.  When I visited the memorial, I was about fourteen years old, and though I understood the memorial’s message, I lacked the tools to discuss the rhetorical structure of its argument.  Now after completing this course and researching the monument I am able to understand the structure of Eisenman’s rhetorical statement. In my essay I discuss the way that the sensitivity and controversy surrounding the memorial’s topic inspired his creation of a “silent” design, a design that does not denote the purpose of the memorial to the passerby. In my essay I also assert that memorial is structured to create a emotional rather than a logical response, implying that there is no rationality behind genocide and that it cannot be understood through logic, but instead through living emotion. When I was fourteen the memorial mad me sad, now it makes a strong rhetorical argument about the irrationality of genocide.

            I had substantially revised this essay numerous times before my initial submission working to develop a strong central thesis. This time I focused my editing and revision on the feedback I received from my original paper. In light of this feedback, in my e-Portfolio version of my essay I have worked to strengthen the rhetorical terms used in my argument, and vary my word choice throughout the essay.

Essay: Rhetorical Analysis Essay-National Holocaust Memorial

“Speaking in Silence”

            My sister and I felt like two of the luckiest kids in the world.  Summer break was ending, and school would be starting in two days, but we were busy touring the streets of Berlin with my parents who had managed to fit in one last family vacation.  Walking along the busy streets near the center of the capital city, we approached a large plaza filled with thousands of concrete blocks.  We stepped off the sidewalk and into this gray field without departing from the bustle of the tourist city.  Locals were sitting on the lower concrete blocks eating lunch or talking, and my sister and I decided this would be the perfect place to play hide-and-seek. We immediately bolted in opposite directions before my parents could reel us back in.  Walking deeper into plaza through the narrow corridors of the grid of concrete blocks, the light-hearted search for my sister was replaced with a sense of fear and disorientation.  The gray columns rose high above my head and blocked out the sights and sounds of the city, and just as I began to feel hopelessly lost and alone, my dad came up behind me and told me that this was Germany’s National Holocaust Memorial. As I looked around, I saw other visitors looking just as helpless and disoriented as I had been.  The memorial triggers an emotional reaction from its audience and engages feeling and memory where rational understanding is impossible.

            The memorial is silent to passersby because it communicates its message through emotion and experience.  Peter Eisenman is the American-Jewish architect who created and opened this memorial on May 12^th, 2005, after 17 years of controversy surrounding its creation (About.com).  His design mediated the controversy between the victims’ ancestors and Germans who felt a responsibility to remember, and Germans who did not want to recognize a source of national shame (“Frontline”).  The message is not derived from the structure itself, but the feelings it evokes in its audience, therefore, without active experience the memorial’s message is not heard.  The memorial provides “no indication of who is to be remembered” allowing it to become integrated with daily life (Wefing, and Zeitung).  Eisenman said, “kids can jump on the stones…[and] I like the fact that people go to lunch there”(Ahr).  The memorial’s design is passive and abstract; its message is only discovered through the feelings engendered when walking through its corridors. Its passive message grows from the controversial context of its creation and, therefore it can exist in the center of Berlin without pointing fingers while offering a chance for remembrance.

            Eisenman’s memorial is constructed of 2,771 concrete blocks imposed on an undulating grid covering an area of almost five acres in the center of Berlin.  The blocks rise just millimeters off of the ground as you enter the plaza from the street, but as you continue down one of the uneven pathways the columns reach heights of 3 and 4 meters (Ahr).  The scale and structure of the memorial generates feelings of frightened disorientation, but the message that arouses these feelings’ meaning remains intangible. The monument consists of high, imposing gray blocks and its tilting, narrow walkways force visitors to experience their emotions alone.  Eisenman’s design prompts feeling rather than rationalization. “To him its scale provokes fright…induce[s] disorientation and claustrophobia”(Ahr). The oppressive stones create a sense of fear and confusion, but remain flat, gray, and blank of a reason for these feelings. Families and visitors share their own interpretations of the meaning of the memorial with each other, and writer Peter Ringy recorded some of the explanations he heard as visitors struggled to find reasons for their intense emotional responses. “’It’s about the experience of being shipped off in cattle cars’, said one visiting American.  His friend wasn’t convinced. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be more about the people?’…One elderly woman was clearly moved: ‘The innocent children. There was nothing they could do about it’”(Ringy).  The abstract design of the memorial removes its audience from logical thought and leaves them reflecting on pure emotion.

            The maze-like construction promotes reflection, but the absence of a clear entrance or exit induces a lack of catharsis.  The monument’s massive plaza can be entered and exited from all sides and its structure, unlike most mazes, does not reveal a greater knowledge or understanding upon its completion.  Eisenman comments on this characteristic of his design saying, “Even in traditional…mazes there is a space-time continuum between experience and knowing”(Eisenman).  In Eisenman’s labyrinth the duration of experience does not lead to any new arrival in understanding of the past. Eisenman says, “we can only know the past through its manifestation in the present”(Eisenman).  The current nature of the memorial implies that the condition of the Holocaust is not yet finished.  Nobel Peace Prize winner, Imre Kertész describes the Holocaust as “a condition that cannot be worked through”(Thierse).  Eisenman’s memorial augments this analogy of the unresolved nature of the Holocaust in human memories.  Eisenman states, “I don’t want people to weep and walk away with a clear conscience” (Ouroussoff).  His memorial enhances diluted emotions of the Holocaust and his audience experiences these emotions without a resolution. The maze-like design constructs a metaphor to the Holocaust because the way out was not clear. The audience experiences a simulation of order without rationality, a maze without an exit.  The memorial lacks a purging experience because it ends without a resolution; the same way the Holocaust lacked a resolution to its end.

My family and I emerged from the bleak, gray world of Eisenman’s maze and were abruptly placed back in the context of the memorial’s location in the center of Berlin, Germany.  The locals were sunbathing on the stones, and the monument was becoming part of their everyday scenery.  Our experience at the memorial put a damper on our game of hide-and-seek, and I was left to wrestle with the mixed emotions I experienced in the memorial while grasping at questions I could not answer.  The concrete stones and the narrow grid detached reason from my emotions as I was exposed to a watered down version of the feeling of the experience of the Jew’s in Nazi Germany.  Logic could not guide my understanding because logic did not exist in the simulated world of the memorial.  My family and I discussed the meanings of our emotions and the memories of the Holocaust began to manifest themselves in our lives.  However, we were unable to reach a rational understanding by relying on our emotions.  We left Eisenman’s memorial that day somberly carrying his silent message:  the feelings experienced in the Holocaust can be understood on a diluted level through simulation, but the rationality behind why it happened can never be deciphered because it is beyond all reason.

Motivational Speech Reflection

When I first presented my speech in favor of a severance tax on Marcellus Shale gas production in class, it was a seven-minute policy speech about the multifaceted need and benefit of a severance tax.  This however, was not the assignment, and did not motivate my audience to take action.  My need and my visualization steps were too broad and too fragmented to motivate my audience to a strong call to action.  In my revision I narrow my focus and speak about what motivated me to speak on the topic; the people in my hometown that natural gas drilling would harm and the harm it would bring to my community.  I focus on the stories of Pennsylvania citizens, and their encounters with the natural gas companies. In my visualization step I conduct a cross-state analysis and relate it back to the small communities of Pennsylvania and its citizens who are the consistent focus of my speech. In the final part of my visualization step, just before my conclusion, I directly connect the problem with my audience of Penn State students stating that the state funding that our University is threatened to lose is about the same amount we could have gained in state revenue if we had a severance tax since 2009.  In this edit of my motivational speech I take the position of a citizen concerned for her family and the future of her community, and my call for action arises out of my love for my community and knowledge of the harm natural gas drilling can bring to citizens. My second version of my speech has a stronger call to action, because I am in a stronger position as a fellow citizen to make that call. Instead of being an objective policymaker, I identify myself as a concerned citizen. This position builds a stronger ethos between my audience and me and effectively creates a stronger appeal to action.

Motivational Speech: "Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale Severance Tax"

Katie Quinn's Motivational Speech: "Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale Severance Tax"

Blog Relfection

The blogs I chose each exhibit a lot of variety while staying consistent with my overall theme of understanding our world through rhetoric.  The blogs vary in their host site, amount of revision needed, and their topic of focus.  The blogs “Ireland: The National Famine Memorial”, and “The American Family” were written for my Rhetoric and civic life blog and they focus on the rhetorical arguments created by their respective topics. “Revolution in Egypt:  Onions, King, and Soccer fans”, and “Our Sputnik Moment” were written for my passion blog called “The Collegecrat” and each of these post contain rhetorical elements, but their focus is on my passion for politics and what I believe makes national and world events so interesting a fun to learn about.

            Each of these blogs also varied in the amount of revision needed. The Ireland blog and the blog about the Revolution in Egypt needed large-scale revisions. Each of these blogs was cut down by at least one hundred words, and many of the paragraphs had to be rewritten. However, the other two blogs, American Family and Sputnik only needed editing and some minor revisions.  I would account the difference in the amount of revision for the amount of planning that when behind each of these blogs. I spent much more time planning and outlining the latter two blogs compared to the blogs about Ireland and Egypt. The planning process shows its true effectiveness during the revision process.

            Finally, I chose this collection of blogs because they exhibit two distinct groups of focus.  The Sputnik blog and the American Family blog focus on President Obama’s State of the Union address and the issues we face on a national front. The blogs about Ireland and Egypt discuss important historic events in each country and the impact they have on the world.  As an engaged citizen, it is important to be aware of history being made on all levels of society, both on the home front and the world. I think that these four blogs give the best representation of my blogging this semester, and what it means to be active in civic life.

Blog: "Ireland: The National Famine Memorial"

Two summer's ago my family and I decided it was time to "visit the Motherland", so we took a two-week trip to Ireland. On one day of our trip, my sister, my dad and I decided to hike up Croagh Patrick Mountain (picture above) located in County Mayo. As we hiked up this legendary mountain made up of loose and jagged stones, my mom decided to explore the countryside from a sea-level perspective. Along the shore of the nearby bay, she discovered a memorial that took her on her own journey through the legends and history of Ireland

The monument she discovered was the National Famine Memorial in County Mayo. The memorial was dedicated to the victims of the “Irish Potato Famine” or the “Great Famine” as it is called in Ireland. The famine occurred between the years of 1845 and 1852 and it was caused by a potato blight that destroyed the potato crop, which was the main food source for the impoverished Irish people. The famine caused the death of over 1 million Irish people and led to the emigration of 1 million more.  There are memorials such as the one pictured above all across Ireland commemorating the historic disaster. Each structure tells an interesting piece of the story of the famine through rhetoric. Focusing on the memorial I saw personally, I would like to discuss how the structure coveys a story from far away, close up, and through its overall composition.

From far away the memorial looks like an old, dark ship, facing towards the bay. It tells a story of travel, and more importantly, its angle away from the land tells a story of emigration. The ship is in poor condition; it is dingy, dark and lacking sails. However, the masts supporting the sails remain, and look like crosses found above a grave. Dark waves appear to be rolling along the sides of the ship indicating a rough journey. The story of the sculpture is enticing, and draws observers in to examine it more closely.

Reaching the sculpture, its message is received like a mordant surprise and the entire story can now be interpreted. The dark waves are really skeletons of famine victims.  Their boney remains are woven together to construct the ship, just as their death’s weave into the history of Ireland’s struggle.  Their bodies are contoured in the shape of waves and they look as though they are trying to jump off of the ship and into the turbulent sea. Their emigration was an escape from certain death to a less certain death.  Many of the emigrants knew that they may not make it to America, but they were willing to risk the dangerous journey to avoid a certain death by staying on the starving island.

Finally, the overall composition features a dark color scheme and a jagged ship created from the starved bones of the famine’s victims. The skeletons add a cryptic hue to the already grim composition. The memorial itself is constructed from a hard, cold metal and stands out like an eerie grave amidst the lush green harbor.

The Great Famine is a major part of the Irish heritage and a source of immense sadness.  Ireland lost close to 25% of its population in the Great Famine and this monument conveys a story of a struggle up to the point of death for the Irish people.  This ship looms over the harbor as a memorial for the million who died on the island from the famine, and the million more Ireland lost through emigration as a means of escape.

Blog: "The American Family"

On Tuesday night President Obama addressed the American public in the State of the Union address for his second time as president.  Facing a divided government has always been a challenge for incumbent presidents, even when the Democratic Party was the majority last year we heard grumbles from the other party (i.e. Joe Wilson "You Lie!"). However, the congress that gathered in the capitol on Tuesday carried a somber air grieving over the tragedy of the shootings of congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and the people of Tucson. Obama observed a broken and divided America, and used his common message of unity and hope to address his course of action for the rest of his presidency. He carefully structured his speech for a dual audience. He conveyed the idea of collective compromise to a divided audience in Congress, and appealed to the pathos of the audience of the American people by addressing them as "family members".

Obama opened by addressing his audiences as a part of "the American family" this phrase appealed the ethos and pathos of his audiences.  The definition of "family" is common and understood by all Americans and taps into both their hearts and their minds. He used the definition of family as an extended metaphor to the current state of our nation. A family has divisions, but grows from continuing toward the betterment of the whole family, they grieve together, and work together. The established theme of familial compromise and growth continues throughout the rest of his speech.

After his opening pathetic appeal, Obama switched to strict business, but the overlying pattern of his speech conveyed his message of compromise even when listeners became lost in the policy talk and numbers.  An opinion column in the New York Times featured a conversation between columnists David Brooks and Gail Collins as they provided a review of Obama's State of the Union address.  Brooks provided illuminating insight to the rhetorical structure of Obama's speech when he stated, "the three things that the president emphasized were all worthy, important policies that have significant bipartisan support...the really big tasks were mentioned but not emphasized". The speech that Brook’s described as “modest” exhibited Obama’s keen sense of his network of interpretation. The president understood that he was facing a divided congress and a divided America, and therefore emphasized the topics that few people could dispute.

The effectiveness of Obama’s delivery was apparent to me as I sat in a room filled with bipartisan college students.  The Penn State College Democrats, the College Republicans, and a few Tea Party members meet in one room in Willard to watch the speech together. As the president discussed research, education reform, and infrastructure spending, there were few scoffs or signs of disagreement from any party. The lesser-emphasized points of tax reform, immigration reform, and entitlement reform are topics that receive much more debate and were purposefully mentioned and moved away from. The rhetorical pattern of Obama's speech address a divided congress with a communal tone, and his message of hope and compromise was for a grieving and broken American public who needed comfort from their "American Family".

Blog: "Revolution in Egypt: Onions, King, and Soccer Fans"

I would like to devote my blog this week to the Revolution in Egypt and their extremely well organized, militant, and creative efforts with which the Egyptians have successfully ousted their leader, Hosni Mubarak, and sparked a pro-democracy revolution in bordering countries with oppressive regimes.  Their movement fascinates me for the three reasons: onions, King, and soccer fans.

We've all created Facebook events for our graduation parties or used it as a tool of procrastination. The Egyptians utilized this medium in a different way; they invited people to join a revolution. A government overthrow was organized from a Facebook group. As Wael Ghonim said in the New York Times, "I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before". Over 100,000 citizens signed up for the event. The timing and placement of this revolution was a collaborative plan between college age students in Egypt and Tunisia that had been being developed for over two years.

A group of college students who were well off and intelligent formed the core of the protest movement in Egypt.  Many of their parents were supporters of Mubarak, and the tech-savvy students knew death was the price of failure. They carefully organized and collaborated with their victorious counterparts in Tunisia, rebels that had succeeded in revolting against their government. The Tunisians provided tips on how to survive protests. They told the Egyptians to bring "lemons, onions and vinegar to sniff for relief from tear gas, and soda or milk to pour into their eyes" (New York Times). The tips were transferred between protesters through a Facebook group. The rapid ability to share causal information about the use of onions to neutralize tear gas proved invaluable to the Egyptians’ success.

Police violence and riot control tried to stamp out the protesters. The rebels’ cycled protesters into the streets to allow the injured to recover but as the violence increased, they needed help. Two unlikely groups came to their aid, the Muslim Brotherhood, …and the soccer fans.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a secret, illegal organization that operates with a very disciplined hierarchy. They were able to organize the protesters into disciplined groups to fend off the riot police and Mubarak supporters.  The soccer fans of the two Egyptian teams, normally bitter rivals, united and joined the effort to protect the protesters. They were used to confronting the police at the stadiums and their offensive skills practiced at soccer games became useful when fighting for their peoples’ freedom.

The protesters in Egypt and Tunisia are a great example of the force and power behind unified non-violence. They modeled their protest on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and attained world respect because of their approach. The New York Times cited a group of men who "stood silent as rocks rained down on them. An older man told a younger one to put down his stick". The college student that organized this large scale-nonviolent protest can be seen as examples of the Gandhi’s and King’s of our generation.

The revolution in Egypt is classic revolution with a new twist. Just as in the “classic” revolution, young forward thinking people started it. The common people rose up to rebel for their country, and it was a unified effort against the current government. However, in Egypt’s revolution, young rebels shared information between countries instantaneously through Facebook groups. The “common people” were angry soccer fans well versed in resistance, and an illegal brotherhood. Finally, the resistance was nonviolent and inspired by Gandhi and King. Egypt’s protest was a 21^st century revolt and it sparked the sense of freedom in other oppressed countries in the region such as Bahrain to enter a new age of revolt.

Blog: "Our Sputnik Moment"

On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into the Earth's Orbit.  This act ignited the Space Race. America, lacking the science and the head start, beat the Soviets to the moon twelve years later in 1969. Amidst a dismal and internationally competitive job market, rising international powers such as China, India, and Brazil, and a current energy problem looming as a crisis on the horizon, President Obama has labeled now as America's "Sputnik Moment". In Obama's pep talk to Congress he stated the need to, "out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world".  He said, "The future is ours to win. But to get there we can't just stand still".  Obama's speech was inspiring, but to Congress and the American people he was the coach speaking to an over-confident highly-ranked basketball team at half time as the lower-ranked team surpassed them.  The score shows that America has fallen behind internationally, and if we want to "win the future" we need to work our way back into the game.

Innovation is what sent us to the moon, and Obama is proposing that we use the same innovation to lead us to a greener future.  Energy independence will save us billions of dollars every year and is worth the investment. The president wants 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Is it worth the cost of research to create this innovation?  Let's do the math. From statistics posted on whitehouse.gov, the average electric car save around $630 a year over a gas powered car.  This would be a national savings of $6.3 billion a year after reaching the President’s goal by 2015. The science may not be there yet, and neither is the market, but NASA didn't exist when Sputnik was launched and we won that race. Commitment to innovation drives America into the future, but this innovation would not be possible without top-notch education.

Education is something Americans have always taken seriously, and 15 of the 20 best colleges in the world are located in the United States (whitehouse.gov). People come from all over the world to attend college in America, and similarly the job market has grown increasingly international and increasingly competitive.  While our colleges are some of the best in the world, America is ranked 9th in the world for the percentage of people receiving college degrees.  More than one-fourth of high school students do not receive a diploma, and the quality of our math and science education falls behind many other nations (whitehouse.gov).  America cannot out-innovate or out-build without increasing our education standards.  Obama's speech offered hope for our education dilemma.  Unlike the from the top-down, unfunded education reform mandate "No Child Left Behind", instituted under President George W. Bush, governors from across the United States have worked together to develop rigorous standards that would promote student development and reward good teachers. In accordance with the theme of the president's speech, the plan is called "Race to the Top". The reforms name itself has a positive connotation, a "race" to see the best we can perform, without slowing the most talented students down waiting for everyone to catch up.

Finally, President Obama addressed our infrastructure. He cited the U.S. as the country who built the transcontinental railroad and the Interstate Highway system, but now, "our own engineers graded our nation's infrastructure, [and] they gave us a D". China and counties in Europe invest more in their infrastructure and as a result, "China is building faster trains, and newer airports" than the United States.  95.9% of South Koreans have access to high-speed Internet, whereas only 63.5% of Americans have the same access (whitehouse.gov). These are the Sputniks of today, and we can only win the future if we rejoin the race.

Obama challenged America with a quote from Bobby Kennedy, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement". Obama's rhetoric conveyed a hopeful tone for America's future, but underneath his tone lays the hard facts of our comparative advantage in the world.  As we are reminded this week that being a superpower is not a birthright, but a title to work for, I am confident we can do it.  The winning team always comes out stronger after half-time, and its in the American spirit to love a challenge. The race is on, this generation’s Sputniks have been launched into orbit, and now is America's chance to "win the future".