I mentioned earlier that I had been abruptly assigned a new section of our sophomore rhet/comp class at the last minute. This isn't really an issue, since I've essentially been teaching comp or mentoring composition intstructors more or less constanbtly for the last 8 years. One more sections is no skin off my back to be sure.

But I teach thematic comp courses, for a variety of reasons (it's harder to plagiarize, the theme allows for a deeper and more complex grounding for in class discussion, the students get occasionally distracted from the drier nuts and bolts of comp, etc). With the exception of one semester, I've been teaching this food studies course, one that centers on Fast Food Nation and its attendant discourse. It has been more or less successful overall, but sadly less successful at WVU specifically. And so, with four days before the semester began, I decide to switch up themes.

This semester: "Ad-building and Ad-busting: The Branding of America," where we'll take a look at the most common thesis statement in the U.S.--"Buy this now." I put myself through grad school in part by writing ad and marketing copy for a computer reseller, so I've got some practical experience with the genre, but also some serious misgivings about the ethics that are exercised in that field. So it'll be part "lessons we can learn from advertising rhetoric" and part cultural critique.

We'll do some stuff from Klein's No Logo, and I'm going to teach the cereal ad chapter of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Beyond that, though, I'm looking for suggestions (and hoping my students will understand the higher-than-average TBAs on the syllabus). So, dearest Internets, what can you show me?