Thinking about Visual Rhetoric Project
AP Language & Composition
Project Guidelines:
1. Each student will select a visual to present to the class. The image should be from
a credible source. Avoid photo-shopped images that are often passed around the
internet through chain emails.
2. Each student will schedule the week and date (tentative day of week) to give the
presentation sometime between September 7th and December 1st.
3. The student will need to create a power point of information about the visual
(including analysis questions for the class to discuss) and the visual needs to be
included in the power point and/ or a copy needs to be provided for each student.
If student can not provide copies then the original needs to be given to the teacher
to copy at least three days in advance.
4. Visuals must be appropriate for school and sources need to be cited on power
point and all copies/ handouts in MLA format.
5. Student will analyze the visual using the Working with Documents Activity Sheet
which must be turned in at the time of the visual presentation.
6. This is an individual project, thus no partner or group presentations.
7. Student must present on selected day unless there are extreme circumstances.
8. Notes page print out of the power point must accompany questions.
9. Power point must be emailed to teacher so that it can be put on the course website.
10. Flash drives are recommended for ease in preparing for presentation as the student
should have the visual ready for the class’ bell ringer.
Possible visuals (These are options but you are not limited to these.)
*Photographs (Try Library of Congress archives, Google images searches (must have
more than Google as a citation), Time Life books
* Postcards
* Billboards
*Advertisements
*Paintings
*Sculptures
*Political/ Editorial cartoons
*Charts, tables, graphs
*Magazine and Book covers
*Album covers
The visual has to be “still life” meaning no streaming video.
The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture created by Auguste Rodin in 1902 and is held in the Musée
Rodin (museum) in Paris, France. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal
struggle. The statue was originally commissioned as part of a series of statues for a door at the museum and
Rodin intended the thinker to be Dante contemplating his epic poem The Divine Comedy; however, the
statue has surpassed that original purpose and has come to symbolize philosophy. More than 50 casts are
known today.
Source National Gallery of Art
See Rubric: The 100 point grade will be posted on the nine weeks in which the presentation is
given.
Sample MLA citation for Artwork:
ART WORK (PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPH, SCULPTURE, ETC.)
Original work
C
Apparently the assumption is that you will list the author and the title of the
work in the text of the article, so no parenthetical reference is needed.
W
Xaras, Theodore A. Bomberger Bell Tower. Philip and Muriel Berman
Museum of Art, Collegeville, PA.
Photograph of a work - include the above information about the original work, and also
complete publishing information for the source in which the photograph is published,
including the page, figure, or plate number.
C
W
Not necessary. See note above.
Degas. Woman with binoculars. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
Impressionists Side by Side; Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic
Exchanges. By Barbara Ehrlich White. New York: Knopf. 1996.192.