I think I have a name/theme for the composition course: “American Dialogues.” In browsing through various political blogs to list for my students this fall, I discovered that Katherine Allen will be contributing to Blog for America, “posting commentary on the politics of language.” This might prove interesting, but no details of Allen’s background are easily accessible, aside from the explanation that she works for the Rockridge Institute. Anyone know?
In her first post, Allen references two potentially useful sources: both Deborah Tannen’s article “Let Them Eat Words” and the book Moral Politics by George Lakoff. (Update: Excerpt from Lakoff’s book.)
The following is a preliminary list of blogs in no particular order (I’m sure it will grow). Thanks to everyone who has made suggestions. Keep ’em coming, if you have more.
- Rachel Lucas
- Daily Kos
- Fafblog
- Political Animal
- The Gadflyer
- This Modern World
- Outside the Beltway
- Official Kerry-Edward Blog
- Bush-Cheney Official Blog
- Little Green Footballs
- Crooked Timber
- Blog for America
- Instapundit
- Andrew Sullivan
- Talking Points Memo
- Wonkette
- Brad DeLong
- Noam Chomsky
- Aaron Schwartz
- The Volokh Conspiracy
- Lawrence Lessig
- Media Matters
- Atrios
More on media critique sites and sources in a later post. I’ll certainly point students to Andy Cline.
New Bush Campaign Advertisement
Like George, I’ll be teaching an election theme in my freshman composition course this fall, and his recent collection of some prominent political weblogs should be very helpful for me as I set up my course blog (note: I’ve been…
You might want to take a look at Creating America as a text.
Thanks. It looks interesting, Scott.
In terms of speeches, you might focus on Edward’s “Two Americas” speech delivered right before the Iowa caucus. Clearly the theme has carried over into the election and the speech is quite well done.
George, you might also want to consider Eric Alterman’s blog. Much of what he writes focuses on perceptions of and problems in the media.
Jason, I’m hoping to find MP3s of speeches, including that one. You can download the Democratic national convention for free from iTunes, for example.
Chuck, thanks for the suggestion; consider him added.