For this workshop, you will turn your term paper’s topic into a visual argument. The purpose of this workshop is to have you envision your argument in a new way, helping you prepare to write your central thesis. If you can pin down the crux of your argument in a singular image, then you can more accurately describe your paper’s thesis or main argument. By using a different medium, we are considering new audiences for your argument and conveying it in a more multidisciplinary fashion. If you aren’t familiar with visual argument concepts, you should begin by reading the Ramage at. al chapter in module 10.
As you prepare for this workshop, first illustrate the theory, common ground, or core disagreement between the disciplines you’re working with for your topic. You might do this with a meme, an equation, an animation, a flow chart, a collage, a comic, a cartoon, etc. You are creating a kind of visual model of the concepts guiding your research. You must create the image yourself, but you may combine or manipulate images from other sources as long as you credit them appropriately. Then, you should explain why this image describes the disagreement or grounds in your research. This exercise should help you imagine a way these might be argued out in the real world. You know your topic better than I do, so this assignment isn’t graded on the grounds or disagreements you identify but on how you depict and explain it. The image itself receives up to 50 points for being relevant and meeting the described criteria. The paragraph can receive up to 50 points depending on how well it discusses the imagery and the argument. Your paragraph will receive partial credit if it only explains the image without relating it to the argument or connecting it to your disciplines.
Example 1: Equation (IDS Game Studies major, research question: Can video games affect the quality of one’s life?)
◯=Psych, △=Phil, •=Design, ◻=Physio, G=Game, ∝=Proportional to, L=Life◯ △ □ •=GG∝L=⬆LMy equation depicts my thesis: If video games are designed proportionally, then they can improve the quality of a person’s life. This happens only if the perfect ideals expressed in each discipline are combined together. The idea for this illustration came from each discipline. In design, there are elements and principles. Everything that is designed contains these elements and principles. Three elements: point, line, and shape are all exemplified in the equation. In physiology, the interactions of human biological systems and how they interact with one another are studied. For example, the muscular system is almost inseparable from the skeletal system in our daily movement, yet it can be studied independently and together as the musculoskeletal system. Upon studying the systems of my four disciplines independently I can create a new system that inseparably integrates them in the form of a game, such as how this equation is dependent on everything within itself. In philosophy, there are two famous men, Plato and Pythagoras, who each espouse the significance of math, namely geometry, in life. Each goes as far as to say that perfect geometric forms as the most real and ideal things we can know and should strive for. If I extract the perfections from each discipline I can leave with an ideal “form” that will allow me to reach integration and improvement. This equation shows perfect forms coming together to make something more perfect. Lastly, psychologist Carl Jung emphasized the Self, visualized mythologically as a circle. The Self is the absolute perfect and complete personality of a person. Through this integrated equation, people can reach their higher true Selves.