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ressive tone. It feels as if she expects that her students should know the answers to these questions and that they should have no problem responding to questions about countries that have generated such intense media attention. After the students finish and pass their survey responses forward, she tells them the answers to the questions. In general, the students appeared to be surprised, even stunned, by how little they know about such heavily covered, politically significant countries. After disabusing the students of numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about Middle-Eastern peoples, their cultures, and the countries in which they live, she spends some time explicitly critiquing what seems to be an apparent lack of engagement with and attention to the news media by those who have chosen to devote their academic time to media studies. I look around the room and it seems that every student is listening intently to the not-so-subtle critique of her/himself. Participation assignments generally consist of either written surveys administered in class and turned in immediately before a lecture, or take-home exercises that ask students to individually connect with and/or engage in a critique of some form of media. An example of a participation survey is related here; outside participation assignments also included visiting activist websites and responding to the content, critiquing new television programming, and writing a viewer/listener response letter to a media source offering a critique about what they viewed/heard. The sometimes spontaneous—and, almost always provocative-- participation assignments in this class seemed to serve two purposes: first, they compell students to focus attention on a subject that they, previously, may not have thought about in much depth. Second, in conjunction with Dr. Wolf's critical analysis, they move students from vague feelings about an issue or concept to working their way through those feelings toward critically informed thinking and reflection. In general, the participation assignments in this context manifested McKerrow's state of permanent criticism. Dr. Wolf's constant probing for students' thoughts, feelings, and opinions, via the participation assignments, set a critical tone that activated a critical thinking inclination on the part of her students. The students, through the written participation assignments, presented the products of their critical thinking processes; they understood this as their opportunity to critically respond to Dr. Wolf without extended in-class dialogue. The effect, immediately, was to engage the students in the subject matter at hand and, as significantly, enabled them to connect their own experiences and knowledge about the concepts and issues to a critical evaluation of the theoretical constructs discussed in the lecture. In particular, several of the participation assignments reflected McKerrow's notion that critical rhetoric is nominalist in nature. For example, the participation survey recounted above allowed an opportunity for Dr. Wolf to critique, through naming, the mediated representations of different cultures. In this instance, she demonstrates for her students how mediated discourses tend to obscure or neglect aspects of cultures that locate them as significantly different than, even deviant to, USAmerican cultural standards. This demonstration, in conjunction with her students' participation in the survey, served to highlight how these mediated repre