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Creating America:
Reading and Writing Arguments
Second Edition
by Joyce Moser and Ann Watters
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Creating America is a reader-rhetoric focusing on argument and persuasion in American cultures. Spanning centuries, traditions, and genres, the selections demonstrate the core debates and discussions that have always interested and engaged Americans. The chapter selections - eighteenth-century woodcuts, nineteenth-century essays and political cartoons, and twentieth-century speeches, as well as narratives, photographs, advertisements, and legal cases - all help students learn to analyze and criticize the arguments they encounter in academic discourse and in contemporary culture.
We developed the second edition of Creating America to continue to provide a book that focuses on arguments in the context of American history and tradition: a book that brings together materials revolving around issues that have always concerned Americans. This edition maintains the first edition's focus on argumentation in context, and it broadens one chapter theme and integrates new material in several chapters. The chapter on "Work and Success" has evolved into "Work and Play" in order to integrate that key element of American cultures, sports, and to link it to the marketing of sports. Compelling visual and textual arguments have been added in all chapters. A key change in this edition is that all rhetorical material formerly distributed throughout the book has been consolidated in Part I, "Contexts for Reading and Writing Arguments," for ease of use and coherence in discussing rhetorical issues. Those wishing to use the rhetorical material on analyzing and writing arguments will find it all in Chapters 1 and 2. In addition, a sample student analytical essay is now included in Chapter 2 to demonstrate how one might approach writing a paper analyzing a visual argument, a task unfamiliar to some teachers and students. Additional student analytical essays, Chris Countryman's analysis of a Langston Hughes poem (Chapter 4) and Peter Douglas's essay analyzing a propaganda poster included in the book (both in Chapter 8) provide additional models.
Teachers integrating the rhetorical material with readings, as well as teachers wishing to use the readings alone and teach with a different model of argument, such as the Toulmin model, will find a rich range of materials in Part II, "Argument in the American Tradition." Part II offers textual and visual arguments for analysis and discussion. Chapter 3, "Identities," includes a range of materials from early discussions of what is uniquely American to contemporary struggles of building community yet maintaining cultural identity. Chapter 4, "American Dreams," includes selections on both political and material dreams and success. Chapter 5, "Images of Gender and Family," offers different perspectives on what makes a family and what constitutes the particular roles and rights of men, women, and children; Chapter 6, "Work and Play," looks at the business of America-business; and at the business of play, or contemporary American sports. Chapter 7, "Justice and Civil Liberties," brings together core readings and images of American freedoms and the struggles that precede and accompany them. Chapter 8, "War and the Enemy," offers visual and textual arguments about how we lionize our friends and demonize our enemies. Chapter 9, "Frontiers," analyzes both the idea and the reality of the frontier and the West.
Each chapter includes an introduction to the core theme or issue. Selections follow, with headnotes for context and background information; journal prompts to guide reflective writing; and questions for discussion and writing, with a focus on analysis and argumentation. In each chapter we include a recommended film that should be available as a video rental in most colleges or communities. Most chapters also include at least one student essay, generally written in response to a chapter writing suggestion; inclusion of these essays is based on the premise that student writing is an appropriate focus for analysis and discussion.
Creating America, second edition, is designed for use in a first-year course in composition, particularly one emphasizing argumentative writing. The underlying pedagogy is based on an Aristotelian model, but it is informed by the theories of Kenneth Burke, Carl Rogers, and feminist critics. Our premise is that people use, to quote Aristotle, "all of the available means of persuasion" to argue a point; therefore, we do not treat argument and persuasion separately. Rather, we focus on the appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, introducing induction and deduction under logos as the basic principles by which to evaluate and through which to develop arguments. The selections represent a range of arguments, from rather combative debate to more dialogic, narrative explorations of difficult questions and complex issues.
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