Course Descriptions

Prerequisites

Only nonnative speakers of English, who did not graduate from a U.S. high school, and have scored less than 600 (or 100 on the Internet based exam) on the TOEFL test within the last two years are eligible to take RHE 306Q. Anyone with questions about his/her eligibility should inquire at the Department of Rhetoric and Writing office in Parlin 3.

Course Description

RHE 306Q is the equivalent of RHE 306, Rhetoric and Writing, and is designed to help students whose native language is not English develop the writing skills they will need to succeed academically at The University of Texas at Austin. RHE 306Q is not an ESL course. This course does not meet the Writing Flag requirement.

The course provides instruction in the gathering and evaluation of information and its presentation in well-organized expository prose. Students ordinarily write and revise four papers. The course includes instruction in invention, arrangement, logic, style, revision, and strategies of research.

Pop culture simultaneously works to entrench, subvert, and transform the meanings of (dis)ability to varying degrees of success. From movies like A Beautiful Mind and Mr. Holland’s Opus to documentaries like Murderball, to the rhetoric of the beauty industry, and classic literature like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, controversies abound. The rhetoric of “the supercrip” is pervasive in a variety of media including shows like Little People, Big World; Switched at Birth; “human interest” news reports; and “Just Do It”™ Nike commercials.

In this course, students will focus on analyzing the relationship between pop culture and rhetoric. Their analyses will examine public disagreements about various issues such as: How do popular (mis)representations of “the supercrip” convince us to make political decisions regarding accessibility, advocacy, education, and/or social policy? How can we evaluate arguments that not only depict (dis)abled people as “heroic” but also those that portray the converse: the “grotesque unfortunate” deserving of “pity” and “help”? How do these arguments address questions of basic human rights, needs, drives and “eugenics rhetoric”? Will children (and adults) make political decisions based on recurrent thematic representations of “disability” in pop culture, and, is that a good or bad influence?

Beginning with a selection of readings that introduce disability theory, students will conduct research to explore a controversy of their choice on (dis)ability in pop culture.  Throughout, students will engage with their controversy, analyzing editorials, print and video advertisements, and other contemporary portrayals of “the supercrip” in pop culture to analyze rhetorical appeals.  The last unit will focus on multimodal arguments; students will create a multimodal composition that takes a position on the representations of bodies and abilities.

Assignments and Grading

- One annotated bibliography (with peer review and additional revision)

- One 4-7 page visual rhetorical analysis (with peer review and additional revision)

- One group argument project using multimedia (with presentation and revision)

- Three 1-page research summaries posted to the class wiki and short reading quizzes

Grades in this course are determined through analysis and evaluation of student work (both the products and the overall process) via the Learning Record, which accompanies a portfolio of work presented at the midterm and at the end of the course. These portfolios present a selection of student work, both formal and informal, completed during the semester, ongoing observations about student learning, and analysis of student work with respect to the student’s development across six dimensions of learning: independence, knowledge, skills, use of prior and emerging experience, reflectiveness, and originality. Students must demonstrate growth across the five course strands: presentation, argumentation, writing process, digital literacy, and research. The criteria for grades are posted at the Learning Record website: http://www.learningrecord.org/.

Required Texts

Critical Situations: A Rhetoric for Writing in Communities (UT Custom Edition) Stancliff and Crowley

Easy Writer: A Pocket Reference Andrea A. Lunsford

Course packet with selections from disability theory/rhetoric such as: “Seeing the Disabled: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography” by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson; “Does Language Disable People?” by Deborah Marks; “Disability, Genetics and Eugenics” by Tom Shakespeare; “Disabled in Images and Language” by Margaret Taylor

Since the invention of the World Wide Web twenty years ago, the internet has spread around the globe and has changed most aspects of our lives. Computers and cell phones enable us to be connected to each other everywhere and all the time.  This class will investigate the rhetoric and controversies that surround living in a networked world: How does technological development change the way we live, work and interact? We will analyze and compose arguments on various topics such as: What benefits do social networking sites such as Facebook offer us, and how much privacy are we willing to give up in return? How do we deal with the economic consequences of a networked world, such as increased outsourcing of jobs or cyber-espionage? Are political blogs and websites like Wikileaks changing the political landscape for better or worse? Over the course of the semester, students will be asked to (1) identify the various positions within a controversy about the networked world, (2) rhetorically analyze a text from this controversy, and (3) employ rhetorical strategies to argue their own position within the controversy. The main text for this class will be Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, which will be supplemented by shorter reading assignments. 

Assignments and Grading

Paper 1 - 5%

Bibliography - 10%

Paper 2.1 - 10%

Paper 2.2 - 15%

Paper 3.1 - 15%

Paper 3.2 - 15%

6 Research summaries - 20%

Homework - 10%

Peer reviews - Mandatory

Participation - Invaluable

Required Texts

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Shirky, Clay. 2009. Penguin.

Everything’s an Argument. Lunsford, Andrea and John Ruszkiewicz. 2009. Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Easy Writer: A Pocket Reference. Lunsford, Andrea. 2009. Bedford/St. Martin’s.

The bicycle—one of the simplest and most elegant of human inventions—is enjoying a quiet resurgence in twenty-first century American life, due in large part to growing concerns about obesity, global warming, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and overpopulation.  While this human-powered, cost-effective, efficient, low-impact machine seems to offer a solution to many of these problems, the integration of bicycles into a deeply entrenched American car culture is anything but simple.  Bicycles and their advocates are on the frontlines of a political and cultural battle that will shape our transportation policies, our infrastructure, and our communities.  This course will interrogate the many roles the bicycle has played historically as well as the numerous controversies it continues to engender: How does such an unassuming and seemingly innocuous machine provoke so much political and cultural debate?  In what ways does the bicycle reshape local, national and global communities, and how do our transportation choices affect how we interact and engage with the world around us?  During the course of the semester, we will investigate the bicycle’s role in pressing social, cultural, and political issues such as the history of women’s rights, socioeconomic inequality, the development of the third world, the fate of the modern and future city, and consumer culture.  We will explore, analyze, and participate in numerous manifestations of bicycle culture, including political movements such as Critical Mass, the social function of group rides in youth (counter)culture, and the visual and cultural rhetoric employed by bike gangs, bike messengers, commuters, fixie fetishists, art bikes, tall bikes, BMX racers, mountain bikers, and competitive cyclists.  Finally, we will examine the intersection of politics, community, and transportation choices by actively engaging with the local and national policies that will shape the future role of bicycles in America.

Assignments:

Research Summaries: 5%

Annotated Bibliography: 10%

Short Writing Assignments: 10%

Paper 1.1: 5%

Paper 1.2: 10%

Paper 2.1: 10%

Paper 2.2: 15%

Paper 3: 25%

Final Presentation: 10%

Required Texts:

• Everything’s an Argument. Lundsford and Ruszkiewicz. Bedford/St. Martin’s
• Easy Writer:  A Pocket Reference. Fourth Edition.  Lunsford. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.
• Course Packet, to include selections from the following: Mark Twain’s “Taming the Bicycle”; H.G. Wells’ The Wheels of Chance; Frances Willard’s How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle; Samuel Beckett’s Molloy; Jeff Mapes’ Pedaling Revolution; David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries; J. Harry Wray’s Pedal Power; Evan Schneider’s A Simple Machine, Like a Lever; David Herlihy’s Bicycle: The History; Amy Walker’s On Bicycles)

This course will examine how the concept of celebrity shapes the way we think about our society at large.  Who are celebrities?  How are celebrities made?  How do people maintain their celebrity?  What contribution does medium, especially the advent of celebrity blogs, Facebook, and twitter, make to our 2011 conceptions of celebrity? What responsibilities do celebrities have to the public?  In this course, students will examine various histories of celebrity and map out a particular history (for instance, television, sports, cinema, or socialite) of celebrity of interest to them.  Using what they’ve learned, students will then perform close rhetorical analyses on the media surrounding celebrities.  Finally, students will examine important social issues surrounding celebrity culture.  For instance, is celebrity advocacy always responsible? What about celebrity endorsement?  Are celebrities treated fairly in the legal system? When is celebrity warranted or unwarranted?  In the final paper, students will produce intelligent social commentary on an aspect of celebrity culture that is meaningful to them.

Assignments and Grading

Paper 1.1 - 5%

Paper 1.2 - 10%

Paper 2.1 - 10%

Paper 2.2 - 15%

Paper 3.1 - 15%

Paper 3.2 - 15%

Research summaries - 20%

Reading Quizzes - 10%

Texts

Everything’s an Argument. Fifth Edition. Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

Easy Writer:  A Pocket Reference. Fourth Edition. Lunsford. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader. Redmond and Holmes. Sage, 2007.

Additional readings to be posted on Blackboard.

Most of us are confronted daily by images of want, neediness and homelessness. These encounters prompt various reactions, including fear, guilt, pity, or empathy. Many times these feelings move us to action, though we may be as likely to avoid eye contact as write a check. How do those in need of our charity persuade us to give? What are the individual and cultural beliefs and values we subscribe to that ultimately make these requests successful? In this class, we will read widely to understand the legal, religious, ethical, and economic influences that have shaped Western, but particularly American, charitable giving. We will examine how these discourses create and reinforce the values, attitudes and habits of mind we entertain toward individuals in need. We will not only explore how these discourses inform our willingness to give and the manner in which we choose to do it, but how they shape the persuasive strategies used by individuals in need or their organizational representatives. In the course of the semester, students will trace the history of various charitable concepts, like tax breaks for charitable giving or the idea of the “deserving poor”; analyze the appeals for aid made by organizations and individuals; and ultimately participate in the charitable conversation by using rhetorical strategies to propose policy changes or solicit funds for an organization or cause. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon a wide variety of texts in numerous genres, from nineteenth-century economic theory to grant proposals, signs, advertisements, webpages, graffiti, and the bodies of the well-fed and hungry alike.

Assignments and Grading

Research Summaries - 20%

Show and Tell Assignment - 5%

Textual and Visual Analysis Paper - 5%

Essay 1.1 - 5%

Essay 1.2 - 10%

Essay 2.1 - 10%

Essay 2.2 - 15%

Essay 3.1 - 10%

Essay 3.2 - 15%

Peer Reviews - Mandatory

Participation - 5%

Participation will be evaluated based on careful completion of 5 reading quizzes. However, students will not be able to receive participation credit if they are absent for 5 or more class days (MWF) or 3 or more class days (TTH).

Required Texts

Everything’s An Argument by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz

Easy Writer, fourth edition, by Andrea A. Lunsford

Giving Well, Doing Good: Readings for Thoughtful Philanthropists, edited by Amy A. Kass

Other readings available online or individually on Blackboard

Despite the fact that they have been integral to the film industry since its inception in the late 19th century, documentary features have only recently captured the attention of a wide audience in the United States.  Controversial works like Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, An Inconvenient Truth, and Waiting for “Superman” have achieved mainstream success, and they have also reignited debates about documentaries as a genre.  Some argue that these films are little more than propaganda, presenting a one-sided perspective on a particular issue.  Others, however, see these films as a means of introducing a disputed topic to generate conversation and galvanize action.  In this course we will investigate both the rhetoric that surrounds documentary films and the rhetoric that is produced by them. The class will help students to think critically about both the form and content of documentary films and to develop their own opinions about the value of the genre in contemporary society. 

In the first major unit of study, students will discuss what “documentary” means, and they will produce a paper that provides a definition of documentary and uses one film to delineate the boundaries of the genre.  We will then examine the techniques that filmmakers use to construct their arguments and convince the audience to accept their films as true.  Students will write a second paper that compares the persuasive techniques found in two related documentaries.  Finally, after studying the technologies and methodologies of documentary filmmakers, students will create their own 3-5 minute documentary using iMovie, Prezi, or old-fashioned poster board. Previous knowledge of assigned documentaries or familiarity with the computer programs mentioned is neither expected nor required.

Assignments

Short Writing Assignments - 15%

Essay 1.1 - 5%

Essay 1.2 - 10%

Essay 2.1 - 10%

Essay 2.2 - 15%

Film Proposal - 15%

Final Film Project - 20%

Homework - 10%

(10-12 grades per semester; made up of reading quizzes, short assignments, brief blog entries)           

Peer Reviews - Mandatory

Reading/Film List

• Everything’s an Argument, Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters
• Easy Writer, Lunsford
• Course Packet including excerpts from Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning; Engaging Cinema; Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries; How to Read a Film; F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing; The Art of the Documentary; and other short readings on specific films.
• Possible films (some will be seen in full; others only in part): Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Catfish; Waiting for “Superman”; Page One; Sous les Bombes (Under the Bombs); Loose Change; The Cove; Deliver Us From Evil; Jesus Camp; March of the Penguins; Don’t Look Back; Los Angeles Plays Itself; Tongues Untied; Roger and Me.

Since the 1970s, gentrification has divided many cities. A kind of urban renewal, gentrification can occur when real estate developers invest in deteriorating urban neighborhoods to transform them into upscale residential and commercial spaces.  Yet urban redevelopment sometimes displaces residents unable to afford increasingly expensive neighborhood services.   For this reason, gentrification has been the target of organized community protest.  Gentrification’s merits are hotly contested among neighborhood residents, city planners, and real estate investors because of its complicated relationship to race, class, and control over city space.   Over the course of the semester we will examine how a variety of groups debate the terms of gentrification.  We will first chart gentrification’s historical development, paying attention to the complex roles community identity and class, ethnic, and racial politics play in how different interest groups have understood gentrification.  For example, students might research the emergence of “urban pioneers,” urban sustainability proponents, neighborhood preservationists, or community activists.  We will also analyze a range of media to discern specific arguments concerning gentrification and their rhetorical strategies.  Finally, we will enter the local and national conversation about gentrification’s social, economic, and political implications by formulating our own policies concerning urban land-use. In this class, students will be expected to study the history of gentrification, describe and analyze the different arguments that surround it, and articulate their own positions within these arguments.  Over the course of the semester, students will assess the political implications and physical outcomes of urban land-use debates.

 Assignments and Grading

Short Assignments: 0%

Essay 1.1 (Historiographical Essay): 10%

Essay 1.2 (Revision): 10%

Oral Presentation: 10%

Essay 2.1 (Rhetorical Analysis): 10%

Essay 2.2 (Revision): 15%

Essay 3.1 (Persuasive Essay): 10%

Essay 3.2 (Revision): 15%

Peer Reviews: Mandatory

Course Readings

• Various websites, films, audio clips viewed in class and for homework, including The Landlord, "East Austin Stories" video documentaries, and city planning websites
• Critical Situations: A Rhetoric for Writing in Communities. Crowley and Stancliff
• Easy Writer: A Pocket Reference. Andrea Lunsford
• Course Packet consisting of shot or abridged academic articles and primary sources to put gentrification and its stakeholders in historical context. Students will use the course packet not only to ground gentrification debates historically, but also as a resource when compiling research for their historiographical essay, rhetorical analysis paper, and policy proposal. 

What is irony? It’s a rhetorical device that has been called “infinite absolute negativity” and “the key to the tightest bonds of friendship.” Jane Austen uses it to poke fun at Victorian social norms, Stephen Colbert to mock American politics, television shows like South Park to critique—well, just about everything. Irony’s complex history is part of the reason its definition is so hard to pin down. Working towards an understanding and definition of the term will thus be one of the aims of this course.

Irony’s presence in individual rhetorical exchanges can be equally hard to identify, however. Consider the times you've been reading something online—say a friend's Facebook status—and found yourself asking, "Can this person possibly be serious?" This course, then, will also examine how irony functions practically in political and popular discourse.  The effective use of irony requires both the speaker and listener to share a mutual understanding not only of the position being ironically stated, but the other party’s unstated beliefs and the actual critical message under the surface. Traditional rhetorical variables—speaker, audience, purpose—are all present, but layered in a manner that requires especially acute rhetorical awareness. This course will thus necessitate that students assume and practice a rigorous rhetorical consciousness as they engage with irony as both a concept and a complex rhetorical device, constructing and critiquing ironic arguments as they consider the historical, political, and ethical implications of irony’s deployment from Socrates to Swift to sitcoms.

Grading Criteria

Students will be assessed using The Learning Record. Components of The Learning Record will include an initial reflection, daily observations, and both midterm and end-of-semester self-evaluations. Students will argue for their deserved grade in the self-evaluations, with their proposed grade approved or not approved by the instructor based on the quality of the evidence present in the self-evaluations.

Course Assignments

Three Major Papers (5-7 pages each, all must be substantially revised at least once.)

Paper 1: Irony in Context; Paper 2: Rhetorical Analysis; Paper 3: Ethical Analysis

Six one-page compositions modeled on classical preliminary exercises

Dipity Timeline

Reading Quizzes

Learning Record Components

Reflection A, Evaluation B, Evaluation C, Observations

Required Texts 

The fourth edition of Crowley and Hawhee's Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students.

The fourth edition of Andrea Lunsford's Easy Writer.

Supplementary course-packet readings, including selections from Plato's Gorgias, Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony, Raymond Williams' Keywords, and Claire Colebrook's Irony, as well as the full text of such essays as Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram."

Do you remember your first day of kindergarten?  Your first kiss?  The first loss of someone close to you?  Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?  When Hurricane Katrina struck?  When Barack Obama was elected president?

Our memories of events—personal, public, and even those that took place long before we were born—help to shape who we are, what we believe, and what we value.  In this course, we will explore the rhetoric of memory, looking at intersections between personal memories and the public memories of cultures and communities.  What do we do with these different (and sometimes conflicting) accounts? Are some voices in public memories considered more valuable than others?  Can a memory be repressed?  Can a memory be wrong?

To navigate these questions and the relationship between public and private memories, students will select one public event of significance to them and analyze that event in different ways over the course of the semester.  Students will begin by writing their personal memory of the event.  Then, students will research different accounts of the event, exploring how determining “what happened” can vary according to who is speaking, when, and in what medium (memoir, news report, video footage, etc.).  In the next unit, students will conduct rhetorical analysis, examining how authors represent their memories through language and how different techniques can influence an audience’s conception of an event.  In our final unit, students will rewrite their personal account of their event, making it as rich and “accurate” as possible by incorporating the research and rhetorical knowledge they’ve developed throughout the semester. 

Course Reading List:

Everything’s an Argument. Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010.

The Little Seagull Handbook. Bullock and Weinberg. New York: Norton, 2011.

Course Packet: Short selections from foundational texts on memory (Bergson, Freud, Proust), contemporary conceptions of memory and its power (Susan Sontag, James Pennebaker), and a variety of responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks (Rudy Giuliani, Ian McEwan, Judith Greenberg) to be used for in-class discussions.

Assignments & Grading

Research Summaries (5) - 15%

Homework Assignments & Oral Presentation - 10%           

Essay 1: Memory Account - Credit/No Credit

Essay 2: Researching Accounts - 15%

Essay 2: Revision  - 15%

Essay 3: Rhetorical Analysis - 15%

Essay 3: Revision - 15%            

Essay 4: Memory Account—Revised - 15%

Peer Reviews - Mandatory

It’s the ultimate spring break destination, where bars never close and clothing is optional. It’s a scene of devastation, where floodwaters rushed in as a nation watched. It’s the birthplace of jazz, vampires, and voodoo queens. It’s a reminder of government incompetence. It’s the murder capital of the United States and the home of Mardi Gras. In this course, we will explore the rhetoric surrounding the city of New Orleans: how its multiple identities have been represented in fiction, art, and the news media, by both residents and visitors. Through this exploration, we will investigate the role of rhetoric in creating and maintaining identity.

At the beginning of the semester, students will choose a controversial topic pertaining to some aspect of New Orleans identity – such as race relations, Mardi Gras, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans architecture and zoning laws, the LGBT community – and research its history. As the course progresses, students will perform rhetorical analyses of the texts they encounter, and ultimately employ rhetorical strategies to create a text that advocates their position in their controversy  to a specific audience. This final project may take the form of a persuasive essay, an advertisement, a piece of artwork, a blueprint for a restaurant or shop, a short story, a tourist brochure, etc.

Assignments and Grading

Short Writing Assignments (research summaries and project proposals) - 20%

Annotated Bibliography - 10%

Object/Place Analysis - 10%

Rhetorical Analysis  - 10%

Revision of Rhetorical Analysis - 15%

Final Project - 20%

Homework (including Blackboard posts) - 10%

Participation  - 5%

Note: All grades will be plus/minus. Although students are not required to revise all projects, revision is strongly encouraged; therefore, students may choose to revise any major assignment (worth 10% or more). The grade for any optional revisions will be calculated by averaging the original grade with the revision grade.

Required Texts

Everything’s an Argument, Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz

Easy Writer, Andrea Lunsford

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Have you ever participated in a campus walk-out?  Signed a petition?  Have you been a part of a Human Microphone, an Occupy encampment, or a march?  Within the past few years, protest has reemerged as a way of American public discourse to an extent unrivaled since the antiwar and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s.  These contemporary protest movements have had very real consequences; some groups have been classified as “hate groups” banned from entering other countries (Westboro Baptist Church), and other movements have led to the recall of local politicians (2011 Wisconsin Protests).  On college campuses, protests have led to students and faculty members being hit by police batons, pepper sprayed, and arrested.  This course will investigate the rhetoric surrounding the current protest movements in the United States, from the Occupy Movement to the Tea Party, to think about what type of rhetoric appears to lead to successful protests while other movements fail to make it off the ground.

In the first unit of the course, students will research and map twenty-first century protest movements in order to develop an understanding of how and why these movements emerged during particular historical moments, and study the commentary and reactions to various forms of protest.  In the second unit, we will focus on analyzing the particular types of rhetoric surrounding the act of protest, from the verbal and non-verbal rhetoric produced by particular movements—including, but not limited to, manifestos, protest songs, signs, the Occupy human microphone and hand signals—as well as the reaction to and against these movements.  We will also take into account the various venues in which protests appear, from the streets to social media and news media.  By the end of the semester, students will have developed their own sense of how the rhetoric of protest has been enacted to varying degrees of success, and will advocate a particular position within the movement they have been studying.  Final projects may take the form of a policy paper, newsletter, blog, original protest song, or video advertisement. 

 Assignments

Short writing assignments -

(research summaries, short analysis papers, timeline)  20%

Essay 1.1  5%

Essay 1.2  10%

Essay 2.1 10%

Essay 2.2  15%

Essay 3.1  15%

Essay 3.2 15%

Homework  10%

Required Texts

Everything’s an Argument, Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz (Bedford/St. Martin’s 2009)

Easy Writer, Lunsford

Protest Nation: Words that Inspired a Century of American Radicalism, McCarthy and McMillian (The New Press, 2010)

Technology completely surrounds us. It is nearly impossible to go through any portion of any day anywhere in America without encountering people on their phones, computers, tablets, sending texts, emails, images, browsing new sites, shopping online, scrolling through blogs. And when we speak or write about technology this is often what we mean—modern gadgets, communication devices, complex machines whose workings we can’t quite fathom. Our colloquial notion of technology is incredibly narrow. We have forgotten that at one point chairs had to be invented. Clothes, forks, paper, pencils, hammers, shoes, postcards, candles, even rhetoric are all discrete bits of technology that while now seen as natural were at one point strange additions to human life.

Throughout this course we will be taking up questions of and around technology in an effort to unpack the various rhetorics (both contemporary and historical) surrounding technology. How have different groups reacted to new inventions? How do technophiles and technophobes structure their arguments and themselves? What do we make of arguments and advertisements that work to naturalize technology? Alongside these questions we will work toward teasing out the drastic impact various technologies have on our relationship with rhetoric. What does literacy mean for rhetoric? the pencil? the telegraph? the megaphone? the Internet? But when we ask these questions we have to remember that rhetoric, too, can be taken up as technology, as a machine that mediates our encounters with the world; as such, our exploration of technology will always come to bear on our understanding of rhetoric. Throughout this course students will develop an appreciation of how the cannons of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery—never act in isolation; they always move alongside and through a plethora of technological bodies.

Assignments

Course Blog and Learning Record Observations

Three 800 word papers with multiple revisions

2400 word paper with optional revision

2400 word paper with optional revision

 Grades

Grades will be determined through the Learning Record. I will be using a modified version of the standard LR grade criteria. Students will track their progress along the course strands (Writing, Presentation, Rhetoric, Research, and Digital Literacy) and the dimensions of learning (Confidence and Independence, Skills and Strategies, Knowledge and Understanding, Use of prior and emerging experience, and Reflection).

 Texts

Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, Crowley and Hawhee

Easy Writer, Lunsford

A Thousand Machines, Gerald Raunig

2001: A Space Odyssey

Assorted texts by Derrida, Haraway, Plato, Kennedy, Virilio, Latour

Short pieces from popular magazines and blogs. 

For thousands of years, prognosticators have been predicting (or promising) the end of the world. More recently, from Y2K to 2012, invocations of the apocalypse have circulated in public discourse for a wide variety of political and social reasons. Topics like global warming, epidemics, and political and economic meltdown are consistently covered in the local and national press, and images of the end of the world have popped up in fields as diverse as anti-nuclear activism, religious literature, and the video game industry. In this course, we will analyze the complexity of apocalyptic rhetoric by considering the following questions: What fears, anxieties, and desires are images of “the end” used to express? How do arguments about the end of the world affect specific audiences in specific times and places? How do politicians, religious figures, the film industry, businesses, and others use apocalyptic rhetoric to promote a cause, defend a position, create a distraction, sell a product, or make a call to action?

Students will research a topic from within one of four distinct “streams” of apocalyptic rhetoric: ecological, economic, bio-technological, and supernatural. Students will use critical reading skills and rhetorical analysis strategies to ethically evaluate a number of apocalyptic genres, including zombie and epidemic films like Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later, science fiction TV shows that serialize the end of the world, such as Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; blockbuster disaster films like Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012; apocalyptic literature, including the Left Behind series and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; Cold War-era political speeches and anti-nuclear campaigns; parody films like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland; and popular video games such as Left 4 Dead and Fallout.

Assignments and Grading

Preliminary Bibliography - 5%

Unit I Research Summaries  (2) - 10%

Annotated Bibliography and Synthesis Essay - 10%

Unit II Research Summaries (w/Analysis)  (2) - 10%           

Essay 1: Rhetorical Analysis - 10%

Revision of Essay 1 - 10%

Essay 2 Proposal - 5%

Essay 2: Ethics of Apocalyptic Rhetoric - 15%

Revision of Essay 2 - 15%           

Presentation - 5%

In-class writing assignments - 5%

Peer Reviews (2) - Mandatory

Required Texts Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, Everything’s an Argument Horowitz and Lunsford, Easy Writer: A Pocket Reference Course Packet with readings from Richard Horney’s A Is for Armageddon: A Catalogue of Disasters That May Culminate in the End of the World as We Know It, Slavoj Žižek’s Living in The End Times, Nicholas Guyatt’s Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect, and Daniel Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies.

In 2005, Stephen Colbert reinvented a word. “Truthiness” is defined, in the Oxford English Dictionary, as an obscure adjective meaning “truthfulness, faithfulness.” But during the opening minutes of his new show, Colbert redefined truthiness as a way of knowing “from the gut” instead of the brain, without regard to evidence or fact. In later interviews he has explained that he sees truthiness as describing a dangerous trend in the way the general public consumes news. Of course, Colbert’s neologism didn’t happen in a vacuum. The last ten years have seen radical changes in the ways that information is collected, transmitted, consumed, and processed. Bloggers are scooping reporters and gaining street cred while news pros start to blog, blurring the distinction between reporting and opinion, a distinction nearly invisible on most television news channels. Networking sites have played roles in social movements all over the world, most dramatically in the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011. Video cameras are proliferating in public spaces and in consumers’ hands. Wikileaks and Anonymous have demonstrated that no information is truly secret, while the 24-hour news cycle gives every crisis an apocalyptic weight through speed and repetition. In this media-rich environment, is a retreat into truthiness the unavoidable result of extreme anxiety and overstimulation?

 This course is about exploring the gap between the explosion of information and the growing tendency to disregard it, to go with one’s gut. We will learn to use rhetorical analysis to recognize and deal with claims, evidence, and the tactics of persuasion. Over the semester, we will use these skills, along with basic readings in political science and media studies, to explore the most current and controversial topics of today and produce meaningful analyses of key popular texts.

 The major written assignments will build upon each other. The Primary Source Map will introduce students to major media voices on a topic of their choice, the Secondary Source Integration will ask them to use historical and theoretical background material to supplement their understanding of the public conversation, and the Analytical Research Paper will ask them to perform an extended analysis of a single text using their accumulated expertise to formulate a complex and relevant analytical thesis.

Assignments and Grading

Primary Source Map - 10%

Secondary Source Integration outline/conference - 10%

Secondary Source Integration - 15%

Analytical Research Paper - 15%

Analytical Research Paper .2 - 15%

Reading Quizzes  - 15%

Blog - 20%

Required Texts

Everything’s an Argument 5th ed.

Easy Writer:  A Pocket Reference, 4th ed. 

Other readings will be distributed by blackboard and will include work by Noam Chomsky, Peter Scott, Robert McChesney, Michel de Certeau, Marshall Macluhan, and other historians and theorists of media.

Johnny Cash’s to-do list recently sold at an auction for $6,400.  Birth certificates and passports have value far beyond the scope of monetary worth.  And your grocery list from last week was probably tossed in the recycling bin when your shopping was done.  Why are some things made from paper considered cheap, disposable trash, while others are viewed as prized and coveted treasures?   

Paper is a common, almost ubiquitous, material—but individual objects made from it are assigned a fascinating range of values and connotations, depending on their cultural contexts and on the content they represent.  The guiding questions of this course will be how we use rhetorical and cultural constructions to invest value into paper artifacts and documents.  The course will also look to the future of paper as our society becomes ever more digital and environmentally conscious.  Throughout the course, students will develop rhetorical skills in research, writing, analysis, and argumentation.  And they will, of course, write papers.

Assignments and Grading

Rhetorical analysis of a Harry Ransom Center holding (1-2 pages): 10%

Six short response/analysis papers (1 page each): 20%

Three major papers and revisions: 70%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Lunsford, Andrea and John Ruszkiewicz.  Everything’s An Argument.  (rhetoric textbook) Lunsford, Andrea.  Easy Writer.  (grammar and style handbook) Additional websites, documentaries, and Course Packet readings include the following:

• Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library.” (personal/academic essay)
• Berry, Wendell. “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” (essay)
• Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic)
• Dorfman, Ariel. “My Lost Library: Books, Exile, and Identity.” (personal/academic essay)
• Gabriel, Trip. “Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.” (The New York Times)
• Orlean, Susan. “The Origami Lab.” (The New Yorker)
• Lemann, Nicholas. “Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists.” (The New Yorker)
• McLuhan, Marshall. “Medium is the Message.” From Understanding Media. 
• Rourke, Lee. “Why Creative Writing is Better with a Pen.” (blog post)
• Stallabrass, Julian. “Trash.” (academic essay)
• “Between the Folds” (documentary on origami and its interdisciplinary expressions)
• Websites of paper artists Calvin Nicholls and Peter Callesen, and “Letters of Note”

The New Yorker is a highbrow magazine that’s been around since the 1920s. Published weekly, the magazine regularly offers various forms of cultural commentary, from fiction submitted by respected authors, to investigative journalism written by first-rate essayists, to cartoons composed with unfailingly witty captions in mind. Each issue contains calendars highlighting upcoming social events across Manhattan. Quite often longer content in the magazine relates to current events outside of New York City, and increasingly outside of the United States. This course will examine all the various rhetorics that surround the magazine. We will consider each week’s cover and the various rhetorical strategies therein at play. We will read several famous articles from the magazine’s past, as well as current articles commenting on the world in which we live. Ultimately, we will consider the various ways in which arguments in the magazine are made.

Regular reading of The New Yorker will guide us as we practice research and writing over the course of the semester. Students will pick a controversy towards the beginning of the semester and, in addition to our reading from the magazine, research a particular topic that interests them. The goal of this research will be for students to produce a New Yorker-style essay by the end of the semester.

Assignments and Grading

Paper 1.1 -  5%

Paper 1.2 - 10%

Paper 2.1 - 10%

Paper 2.2 - 15%

Paper 3.1 - 15%

Paper 3.2 - 15%

Research summaries - 20%

Reading Quizzes - 10%

Peer reviews - Mandatory

Participation - Invaluable

Required Texts

New Yorker subscription

“They Say / I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (with readings) – Graff, Birkenstein, and Durst

Easy Writer – Andrea Lunsford

What does it mean to be a “liberal” today? What does it say when we call ourselves  “conservative”? Where did these words come from and how does their modern usage relate to their origin? In this course, we will explore how the rhetorical constructions of different political belief systems often mirror their values and ideology. Political ideals are not based in fact, or even historical events, but abstract belief and arguments, which tend to be only superficially understood. The course will empower students by providing the tools and history to understand their own beliefs as well as other people’s. We will discuss the major political belief systems of the Western world beginning with an exploration of the origins of the democratic ideal, proceeding to classical liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and lastly fascism.

Every section will include readings from primary sources, i.e. John Locke as a representative of liberalism and Karl Marx as a representative of communism and socialism. We will break down the arguments and examine their rhetorical construction. Students will complete each section by taking a contemporary controversy and writing as  “conservatives,” “liberals,” “socialists,” and even “fascists.” By writing about current events from the perspective of each political belief system students will gain both a firm grasp of how each political belief system thinks as well as the basics of argumentation and how to apply it to future papers, presentations, or proposals.

Assignments and Grading

Drafting assignments: 5%

Research Summaries: 10%

Essay 1.1: 10%

Essay 1.2: 10%

Essay 2.1: 10%

Essay 2.2: 15%

Essay 3.1: 10%

Essay 3.2: 15%

Presentation: 10%

Participation: 5%

Texts

Sharon Crowley and Michael Stancliff. Critical Situations. Custom Edition for The University of Texas at Austin ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2011.

Andrea Lunsford. Easy Writer. Fourth Edition ed. Boston: Bedford/. Martin’s, 2010.

Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal. Eighth ed. Pearson Longman, 2010

Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader. Eighth Ed. Pearson Longman, 2010

In a world where sacred texts describe a God commanding humans to "be fruitful and multiply," the art of seduction seems the ultimate form of rhetoric. Seduction stories, and even how-to manuals, have been around almost as long as people have been writing. For instance, at the heart of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious narratives, the Book of Genesis explains the beginning of humanity with a tale of seduction: the wily serpent seduced Eve by persuading her to taste the forbidden fruit. In classical times, Ovid addressed his poetic seduction manual The Art of Love to “anyone here in Rome” who might “lack finesse at love-making, / Let him / Try me—read my book, and results are guaranteed! / Technique is the secret.” Whether we look to antiquity, or to the shelves in bookstores today, every age offers examples of seduction manuals and stories that stress Ovid’s point: when it comes to persuasion, it’s all about technique. But what techniques affect such persuasions? Do they really work on people? And if so, who do they work on? How and why?

 In this course, we will investigate the “rhetoric of seduction” through a series of three units, beginning with an introduction to rhetoric and how it relates to morality. Each unit requires regular reading, writing, and discussion, including two short and two longer writing assignments about a selection of essays and advertisements that encourage students to ask questions like: "what is rhetoric? What is its relation to "ordinary" or "true" language? Where are the boundaries (if any) between persuasion and manipulation, and what is the relationship (if any) between language and morality? Unit II will move into specific rhetorics of seduction, as we begin looking at seduction manuals, as well as examples of successful (and unsuccessful) seductions in a variety of textual media, including fables, plays, and poems. Students will observe the techniques of a variety of great seducers, including (but not limited to) Homer’s Sirens and Aphrodite, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and Milton’s Satan, Byron’s and Moliere’s Don Juan; we will also look at some contemporary seducers, like the “Venusian” author Mystery, host of a VH1 show called The Pickup Artist. Unit III will build up to and prepare students for a final seduction essay, where each student will write a rhetorically seductive letter to a specific audience, complete with a rhetorical self-analysis of the argument, citing outside sources to provide rationale for the chosen means of seduction.

Texts

Graff and Berkenstein. They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing.

Lunsford, Andrea. Easy Writer: A Pocket Reference.

Additional readings provided by instructor

Assignments and Grading

Essay 1.1 - 10%

Essay 1.2 - 10%

Essay 2.1 - 15%

Essay 2.2 - 15%

Essay 3.1 - 15%

Essay 3.2 - 15%

Short Essays (6) - 20%

Final grades will be calculated on a 4 point scale, according to the +/- system.

The aim in this course is to develop a better understanding and mastery of rhetoric-the art of persuasion-an art that's essential not only for your college work, but also for your participation as a citizen in a democracy.  You already know this art instinctively: every day, all day, you're immersed in rhetoric.  But our goal in this course is to become more consciously and effectively rhetorical.

To accomplish this goal, we'll use a number of approaches.  We'll complete a number of assignments addressed to specific audiences for specific purposes; we'll engage ourselves in additional assignments involving analysis and evaluation; we'll read rhetorically, with a critical awareness of the techniques and strategies adopted by writers; and we'll involve ourselves in discussions about what we read.

The course-and its assignments-will challenge you to think differently, to question age-old assumptions, and to engage in argument as part of a larger community.  This course isn't for the faint of heart.  If you're not prepared to be challenged in your thinking, or if you're not comfortable participating in conversations with others, you best not sign up.  But if you're a hard worker, you like to share your thoughts, and you're open to a slightly different approach to learning, then this is the place for you.

RHE 309S is designed for students who have earned credit by examination for RHE 306 – Rhetoric & Writing. Like RHE 306, RHE 309S teaches students how to analyze and write arguments, but it also introduces you to rhetoric as a civic art, one that prepares you to write to and for the public. RHE 309S is designated a writing flag course.

 This section will focus on reading and writing political arguments in the American public sphere. Students will have the opportunity to research topics of their own choosing, but all individual work will share a common focus on partisanship. Students will consider how the rhetoric of public figures is constrained by party-line expectations and norms, as well as the ways such norms are used by public figures to define audiences and dictate terms of debate. By analyzing specific rhetorical situations, students will consider the exigencies that give rise to and sustain partisanship, its uses and abuses by politicians and commentators, and its ultimate impact as a productive and/or destructive force on national, state, and local political stages.

Students will learn skills such as how to:

• Analyze issues and arguments, and the rhetorical situations (or public spheres) in which they are embedded
• Understand public writing
• Read texts and images critically
• Discover, evaluate, construct, and organize effective, original arguments
• Conduct research, use it effectively in argumentation, and document sources properly
• Produce a clear and supple style that is adapted to particular rhetorical situations
• Edit and proofread their own and others’ prose

Main Texts

Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy, Donald Lazere

Brief Penguin Handbook, Lester Faigley

Major Assignments and Grading

Unit One: Analysis of a Public Debate

Students will read and discuss materials related to the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (a.k.a. Obamacare). They will then write an analysis identifying major stakeholders and examining their party affiliations, their target audiences, and their preferred forms of evidence and persuasion.  (20% of grade) 

Unit Two: Partisanship and Audience

Students will choose and research a political controversy, focusing on the relationship between partisanship and audience. In the course of their research, students will identify two specific arguments made for audiences on the same general stage (national, state, or local), but from opposing political perspectives. Students will analyze the ways speakers use party affiliations, evidence, and emotional appeals, to both define and respond to specific audiences. (25% of grade)

Unit Three: Speaking to the Crowd

In this unit students will consider ways to make responsible AND effective arguments in a partisan landscape. Building on their research from the previous unit, students will craft an “internal” policy statement for an imagined politician about a particular issue. This statement will focus on logical evidence and clearly defined ethical values (though not the student’s own, “real” values or beliefs). They will then craft a fully developed argument for this politician’s use, targeting a specific, clearly defined, and partly hostile audience. In doing so, they will consider and respond to both the rhetorical limitations and possibilities provided by their audience and the speaker’s respective political affiliations, and strive to have real impact on the audience without ignoring OR pandering to these elements of the rhetorical situation. (30% of grade)

Other grade elements

Shorter writing assignments, quizzes, and participation in class discussion and critique will make up the remaining 25% of the grade.

The goal of this class is to develop your skills in writing, analyzing, and producing public arguments. The topic about which we will be arguing is either

• the environment (what counts as wilderness, how valuable it is, what is being done that preserves or endangers it, and what should be done about it)
• crime (what counts as a crime, how serious criminal activity is, what causes crime, what about the criminal justice system should change).

The class will collectively choose a set of published arguments on these issues that we will all read, analyze, and respond to. You will also develop your own position on privacy, find published sources relating to it, and write persuasively about it to a variety of audiences.

Even though you will practice analyzing and producing arguments about environmental or crime issues, this is not a class about the environment or crime. It is a class about argumentation. You will be learning to recognize and use effective strategies for every area of academics and public discourse. You will learn to write to specific audiences to achieve specific purposes--to change your readers' minds, adjust their attitudes, or inspire them to take action.

Your grade will NOT depend in any way on the position you take on an issue. But it WILL depend on the effort you invest in openly exploring the issues, analyzing the strength of your own and others' arguments, tailoring your arguments to a variety of readers (including those who may not agree with you), and refining your own argumentative techniques.

Main Texts

Having Your Say. Charney, D., Neuwirth, C., Geisler, G., and Kaufer, D. (2006).

Assignments and Grades

Your final grade will be a composite of grades on your papers and your involvement during the semester as a whole:

• 30% Argument Analysis
• 30% Problem/Solution Paper
• 30% State of the Issue
• 10% Participation: discussion board posts, peer reviews

Our purpose in this course is to study and implement rhetorical strategies for academic and public arguments. Throughout the semester, we will read theory that deals with key issues in rhetoric, including articles on revision, audience, Toulmin analysis, Rogerian argument, and visual argumentation. Additionally, we will refer to Longaker and Walker’s Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers to help guide us in the general practices of textual and contextual rhetorical analysis, style, scholarly research, and delivery. Students will also practice the progymnasmata or “preliminary exercises” used to teach rhetoric in antiquity, and from these exercises, students can expect to produce several in-class compositions on a number of issues and for a variety of contexts.

Required Materials       

Longaker, Mark, and Jeffrey Walker. Rhetorical Analysis: A Brief Guide for Writers. New York: Pearson, 2011. Print. (Bookstore)

Kennedy, George. Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Print. (Bookstore)

Blair, J. Anthony. “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments,” Argumentation and Advocacy 33 (1996): 23-39. Print. (BB)

Hairston, Maxine. “Carl Rogers’s Alternative to Traditional Rhetoric.” College Composition and Communication 27.4 (1976): 373-377. Print. (BB)

Magnifico, Alecia Marie. “Writing for Whom? Cognition, Motivation, and a Writer’s Audience.” Educational Psychologist 45.3 (2010): 167-184. Print. (BB)

McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics.” Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art.  New York: HarperCollins, 1994. 24-37. Print. (BB)

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication 31:4 (1980): 378-88. Print.

Recommended Materials

Andrea Lunsford’s style guide Easy Writer.

Coursework and Grading

I grade using a points scale. The total points possible will be 1000, broken down as follows:

Progymnasmata Exercises – 300 points (25 points each)

Research Summaries – 200 points (50 points each)

Rhetorical Analysis (first submission) – 100 points

Rhetorical Analysis (final submission) – 100 points

Public Argument (first submission) – 100 points

Public Argument (final submission) – 200 points

925–1000 = A

895–924 = A-

865–894 = B+

825–864 = B

795–824 = B-

765–794 = C+

725–764 = C

595–724  = D 

Below 595 = F

RHE 309S: Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing is a course in argumentation, primarily for students who have earned credit by examination for RHE 306. RHE 309S teaches students how to analyze and write arguments on contemporary civic or public issues. This section of RHE 309S is designed specifically for students in the Natural Sciences, and will focus on debates within the scientific community, as well as public debates about science.

Students in this class will learn to:

• Analyze issues and arguments, and the rhetorical situations (or public spheres) in which they are embedded
• Understand public writing
• Read texts and images critically
• Discover, evaluate, construct, and organize effective, original arguments
• Conduct research, use it effectively in argumentation, and document sources properly
• Produce a clear and supple style that is adapted to particular rhetorical situations
• Edit and proofread their own and others’ prose 

Major Assignments and Grading

Unit One: Analysis of a Public Debate

Students will read and discuss materials related to the 2010 recall of Toyota vehicles due to sudden acceleration. They will then write an analysis of the public debate about the recall, identifying the major stakeholders, their preferred forms of evidence and persuasion, and the rhetorical effectiveness of each. (20% of grade) 

Unit Two: Evidence and Reasoning in the Scientific Community

Students will identify and research a debate or controversy in a particular scientific field. After crafting a pertinent, arguable proposition related to the controversy, students will either defend or refute their proposition, directing their argument at scientists involved in the field. (25% of grade)

Unit Three: Science Advocacy in the Public Sphere

Students will choose a scientific debate that has obvious implications for the greater public. They'll research the scientific work being done on the topic, and write a policy statement that appeals to the general public, urging some form of action related to the problem. (30% of grade)

Other grade elements

Shorter writing assignments, quizzes, and participation in class discussion and critique will make up the remaining 25% of the grade.

Required Texts

A grammar handbook of the student's choice

They Say, I Say (w/out readings)

A small packet of readings, supplemented by material available online

RHE 310 is an intermediate-level workshop in writing and editing designed for students who have started to get serious about learning how to make their prose sing. The emphasis is on the nuts and bolts of style, specifically, readability.  The course teaches you to identify what makes for good (and bad) prose and how to apply that knowledge when editing your own and others’ writing.

Students will write several short pieces for class, some of them essays, others more offbeat, and then get to see these pieces carefully edited by both your instructor and your classmates.  Although 310 offers help with the entire writing process, editing is the chief focus of most class meetings. Different students will volunteer every two weeks to showcase their latest work, that is, they’ll distribute copies of it, and read it aloud for immediate feedback, both oral and written, by the class.  All the remaining papers, meanwhile, are read outside of class, with each class member being responsible for line-editing about one-third of them, a different third, each set.  To ensure systematic coverage of mechanics, about 20 minutes of instruction each class is set aside for tips on how to identify and fix common problems of grammar, punctuation, and usage.

Grading:

This course uses the Learning Record Online for assessment, where students compile a portfolio of work throughout the semester and use this portfolio as evidence for learning.

You can read more about The Learning Record at http://www.learningrecord.org/

Textbooks:

Writing in the Works, Susan Blau and Kathryn Burak

Other texts TBD

The study of rhetoric, one of the original seven Liberal Arts (along with logic, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), has a  long and proud history, stretching back to the 5th century BCE and up to the present day.  Both a productive and interpretive art, it is decidedly cross-disciplinary: the principles of rhetoric (audience, context, kairos, exigency, ethos, pathos, logos, and so forth) are consistently employed, for example, not only in literary analysis but in law, politics, education, science, and religion.

This course introduces students to common rhetorical principles and to the disciplinary history of rhetoric and writing studies.  Assignments in the class will offer students the chance to identify and apply these rhetorical principles while composing, interpreting, and presenting “texts”—oral, print, and/or electronic.   The course will meet all necessary requirements to qualify as an SWC/writing flag course.

At the end of the term, students should be able to:

(1) Write an effective rhetorical analysis.

(2) Write a responsible argument relevant to a contested issue.

(3) Discourse about some of the major issues in the field (such as: What is the relationship between truth and language? How do technologies of communication affect discourse? What is "good" public argument? What constitutes a quality rhetorical education? and so on.)

(4) Situate the significance of some of the canonical figures in rhetorical studies.

(5) Apply the basic principles of rhetorical study, as mentioned above, to contemporary situations.

This course will introduce classical, modern, and contemporary (“postmodern”) approaches to the study of rhetoric -- the art and practice of effective, persuasive discourse -- or even, from a modern/postmodern point of view, the general phenomenon of effective/persuasive discourse, or the persuasive force of language itself. Put another way, rhetoric is the study, art, practice, and/or phenomenon of language that makes things happen. As we will see, there are not only differences of approach between classical and modern/postmodern views (and there are different classical views as well), but there are also significant continuities. Thus, we will consider all approaches as offering resources that can mutually enrich each other, and that are available and useful to us now. Among the topics that will concern us -- in addition to the “toolbox” each approach provides for rhetorical study and practice -- will be the broader questions of humanity as “rhetorical animals”; the relations between rhetoric, rhetorical culture, and civic culture; and the ethics of rhetoric.

 Texts

Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (third edition), and a collection of readings from classical, modern and contemporary theorists, either in a packet or on Blackboard. (This will include extracts or selections from the early sophists [e.g., Gorgias, Antiphon, Isocrates], Plato, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Kenneth Burke, Chaim Perelman, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, and others.) We will also seek, at all times, to apply the principles under discussion to contemporary examples of “rhetorical action.”

 Requirements

In addition to a number of short assignments and exercises, students will write a short paper (3-6 pp.), undertake a research project, make an oral presentation based on the research, and develop an expanded and revised version of the oral presentation in a substantial (“long”) paper (6-10 pp). This project may involve a rhetorical study (analysis, critique) of a particular text or any other “rhetorical phenomenon,” using principles discussed in this course; deeper study and explication of a rhetorical theorist or theory; or a rhetorical production (in any medium) that puts principles we have studied into action. 

 Grading

• Short assignments & exercises: 20%
• Short paper: 25%
• Oral presentation: 25%
• Long paper: 30%

Rhetoric 325M is an advanced-level workshop in writing and editing. Its goal is to make already skilled writers more polished and publishable. The standards are high: the course will focus intensely on editing individual projects with everyone in the class having access to the drafts of their colleagues' work.

Course Requirements

Members of the class will write three short papers and three longer ones. Many course sessions will focus on drafts, with students in the class routinely showcasing their work-in-progress.

Grading Policy

Literacy biography / 5%; 
Book review / 10%; 
Grammar and mechanics project / 5%; 
Major Project 1 / 25%; Major Project 2 / 25%; 
Major Project 3 / 25%; Editing / 5%. This formula presumes satisfactory attendance and the completion of all assignments (including reading assignments) on time; participating in group work; editing classmates' materials regularly, and so on

Texts

John Trimble, Writing With Style / 2nd edition

Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers / 8th edition

Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz, The Presence of Others / 5th edition

In this course, we will critically and creatively investigate rhetorical invention in relation to multimodal and multimedia communication—specifically, exploring the impacts of digital cultures and digital communicational technologies on the possibilities and potentialities of/for rhetorical invention.  We will focus on (1) how emerging digital ecologies have opened communicational possibilities beyond the singular limits of written (alphabetic) texts, and (2) how these changes in communicational technologies, specifically the media (and mediums) of digital communication, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical invention. 

 With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical invention, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical invention, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture: i.e., making, not knowing, takes center stage.  As such, students will be required to make several digital productions. 

 By the end of the course students will have learned how to

-   communicate/create, with rhetorical purpose, in a variety of digital communication technologies;

-   engage and utilize a plethora of rhetorical invention approaches: from the classical topoi to new emerging sets of topoi;

-   critically analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;

-   critically/creatively respond to medium/message considerations, and the distinctions of orality, literacy, secondary orality, and digital literacy, and electracy.

-   approach intellectual property right regulations and plagiarism as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;

-   express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, and to learn to rhetorically invent and think in this polyvalence;

-   approach rhetoric in oral, textual, visual, and multimedia ways.

Course Grading

30% Multimedia Research Paper/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)

30% Group Projects (Viral Videos, 4-5 page Rhetorical Analysis, 2-3 page Project    

    Reflection, Class Presentation)

15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)

10%  Weekly Participation – online, scholarly conversation (blog, wiki, forum, etc.)

5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1 pg Design Rationale

5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., podcast) & 1 pg Medium Reflection

5%  Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1 pg Audience Analysis

Course Texts

McLuhan, _Understanding Media_; Lanham, _The Economics of Attention_; Ulmer, _Electronic Monuments_ and _Teletheory_; Miller, _Rhythm Science_; Lars Von Trier & Jurgen Leth, _The Five Obstructions_ (film); selected essays, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos; additional readings.

This course aims to make you a better writer, a better photographer, and a better analyst of images. We will look at the issues which have pre-occupied practitioners and theorists of this medium for the past century and a half, from the daguerreotypists of the 1830s and 40s through to the new issues raised by today's digital work. We will visit a large exhibition of photography, Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection, in the Ransom Center. One of our projects will be based on this exhibition. Expect to write eight short discussion-board essays in response to our readings and viewings, make a presentation and write an essay about a photograph in the Gernsheim collection, and complete an original documentary project. The documentary project will consist of 10-20 photographs and 1500-2000 words of explanatory text. The text and photographs should present an understandable, engaging, 'picture' of the subject, but the writing and the photos should each stand on their own.

Grading:

Discussion board essays: 25% Presentation on photograph: 5% Project 1: 5% Project 2: 20% Project 3: 35% Project 4: 10%

Required Texts:

The Little Penguin Handbook, Second edition, MLA update. Faigley. New York: Longman, 2009. ISBN 0205743390

The Book of Photography: The History, the Technique, the Art, the Future. Hoy. National Geographic, 2005. ISBN 978-0792236931

Handout essays and online readings and viewing

Required Equipment: A camera, preferably a 2MB+ digital camera

In this course, we will examine how rhetoric has been theorized, taught, practiced and revisited. Throughout its history, different voices have shaped what rhetoric is and its function in a community. At times, these different understandings of rhetoric expanded and at others narrowed rhetorical territory. Moreover, social, political, intellectual, historical changes can facilitate and mandate a revision and a retelling of rhetoric.

In this course, we will revisit and critically engage the writings of key figures exemplifying rhetoric in antiquity; medieval; renaissance; enlightenment periods. We will also explore modern times, needs and challenges, studying how the work of, for example, Kenneth Burke, Chaim Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, Jacquline Royster, Susan Jarratt and others impact our conception of rhetoric today.

Focusing on how rhetoric is revisited and retold, we will explore some influential revisions of rhetoric. These revisions continue to expand rhetoric’s territory beyond that conceived in antiquity. We will investigate revisions that uncovered women’s rhetorical contributions (Royster; Glenn); different rhetorical traditions; the intersections of culture, race, nation, etc. and rhetoric. For example, we will explore how scholars continue to shed light on the nuances of rhetoric especially when it intersects with facets of our experiential, relational and material lives including culture, ability, race, etc.

Requirements and Grading Policy

Students’ performance will be assessed based on an achievement rubric detailed at the beginning of the semester.   

Major assignments will include:

-       Two researched, peer reviewed, and substantially revised research papers

-       Short assignments

-       Participation (class participation, oral report/leading class discussion/individual or group presentation)

-       Attendance (attendance policy detailed at the beginning of the semester)

Texts May Include (but will not be limited to):

-       A history of rhetoric book

-       Primary readings will include Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Plato’s Gorgias, Cicero’s De Oratore

-       A course reader including selections from Keith Gilyard, Cheryl Glenn, Martin Bernal, Krista Ratcliffe, Susan Jarrett, LuMing Mao, Jackie Royster, and others.

Why does a joke fall flat in one situation and bring guffaws in another? Why has Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" been so successful after decades of public apathy about global warming?

Kairos (or timeliness) has been one of the most important concepts in rhetoric since it was invented in classical Greece. It is related to the classical Roman notion of Carpe Diem (or "seize the day"). In this class, we will use this concept to investigate why some writers succeed at grabbing attention and inspiring action while others fail. You will also learn to make use of these concepts in your own writing in college and in the public arena.

Grading

Paper 1: Rhetorical Analysis of Hot and Cold Texts (25%)

Paper 2: Analysis and Design of Problem Statements (25%)

Paper 3: Synthesis of "Interesting Research" in a Discipline (25%)

Informal Responses and Peer Review (25%)

Required Texts

Having Your Say, Charney, Neuwirth, Kaufer, and Geisler

Course Packet

This course will survey the history of rhetoric, one of the original seven liberal arts, exploring its impact on political, religious, and literary discourse in the West from antiquity to (almost) modern times.                

 In "The Rhetorical Tradition," we will examine the theorists and practitioners who shaped the arts of speaking and writing in Europe and America.  We will read several classical texts (including Phaedrus, the Rhetoric of Aristotle, selections from Cicero and Quintilian) to understand how rhetoric was taught and practiced in antiquity and where it stood in relationship to the other arts of the trivium—, that is, logic and grammar.  The influence of rhetoric in the Medieval and Renaissance periods will be presented chiefly through literary and religious texts--for example, selected English sermons, "The Pardoner's Tale," Julius Caesar, Areopagitica, and so on.  We will also examine the influence of rhetoric on English prose style and the on the development of scientific and philosophical writing. 

 In the modern period, the course will examine British/Scottish neo-classical and belletristic rhetorics, particularly as they shaped systems of education and literary tastes in England and America.  The decline, near disappearance, and renewal of the rhetorical tradition in the last century will be chronicled through the work of major theorists, including I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, and Chaim Perelman. 

 Our focus throughout the semester will be both theoretical and practical: we will read the theory and then examine cultural and political applications.  Anyone with a general interest in language or literary studies will probably find this course of interest.  It will be especially helpful to rhetoric and English majors going on to graduate school, most of whom will teach courses in rhetoric/composition as part of their graduate programs. 

Grades

Grades will be calculated according to the following formula:

30%: Midterm

30%: Final

10%: Oral Report

30%: Portfolio of Position Papers

Textbook

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition.

Rhetoric can be approached in unidirectional terms: a speaker or writer acts upon an audience, moving them to persuasion.  However, such a model risks overselling the power of rhetoric and oversimplifying the methods of persuasion.  Effective arguments are not incantations that magically move those who hear them.  In order to effectively persuade, a rhetor must understand the audience, anticipating its responses and addressing potential objections.  In this sense, rhetor and audience are situated in a network of argumentative interactions that is not easily untangled.  In this course, you will learn about interactive perspectives and apply them in analyzing and producing arguments.

Such perspectives can be found in both classical and modern rhetorical theory.  Recent approaches have recast rhetoric as seeking to understand different views instead of seeking to win arguments.  Despite the availability of such approaches, mutual understanding between discussants often fails.  Strawman arguments and other distortions mar civic debate.  You will use theoretical models of interaction to analyze and evaluate conversations you locate through research.  You will describe how sources represent and misrepresent each others positions.  You will apply one model in writing your own extended argument, and you will write an analysis of an extended rhetorical interchange (such as an exchange of letters, internet posts, verbal debate with rebuttals, etc.).

Assignments and Grading

25% - Two evaluations of interaction in arguments (3-4 pp.)

30% - One essay applying a rhetorical model discussed in class (5-7 pp. with two revisions)

30% - One extended rhetorical analysis of an interchange (5-7 pp. with two revisions)

15% - Weekly forum postings

Texts

Course reader including Dissoi Logoi (trans. by Rosamond Kent Sprague), excerpts from Progymnasmata (trans. by George A. Kennedy), Rhetoric of Motives by Kenneth Burke, and “Beyond Persuasion” by Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin among other texts.

What does culture have to do with rhetoric? This question taps into a crucial force that impacts rhetorical practices and scholarship, and this intersection of rhetoric and culture has attracted the attention of scholars especially since the late 1950s, resulting in the development of comparative rhetoric. In this course we will study the conception, development and practice of rhetoric in different and mainly non-Western cultural traditions. For example, we will survey research on rhetorical traditions like ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Rhodian, demonstrating how they predate, relate to and differ from those in Greece and Rome. We will also discuss the objectives, achievement, and potential of research in comparative rhetoric as well as challenges posed by this kind of research. 

Course Requirements, Assignment and Grade Distribution

Class Activities and Discussions (20%)

- Participating in and/or leading class discussion

- Peer review workshops

- Oral report/presentation of research

- Short Assignments

Short Papers (20%)

- Writing five short response/reflection papers to further explore and engage topics and questions addressed in class.

Two Research Papers (30% each)

- Further explore and reflect on issues raised by the course drawing on outside research.  Both papers will involve producing multiple drafts.

More detailed instructions, expectations and grading criterion will be provided at the beginning of the semester, and might be modified based on students’ performance.

Attendance

Attendance policy will be detailed at the beginning of the semester.

Potential Texts

- Selections from George Kennedy’s Comparative rhetoric (1998)

- Selections from Carol Lipson and Roberta Binkley’s two edited collections titled Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks (2004) and Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics (2009)

- Packet of readings

My goal in writing this course description is to persuade students to enroll who want a challenging, interesting class that will improve their writing. Does the fact that I'm trying to get my intended audience to do something mean this course description is propaganda? What I want them to do -- enroll in my course -- benefits me. After all, if I succeed rhetorically, then I have a class full of interesting students who are willing to work hard. What if, in the course of trying to persuade students, I promised certain benefits to the students -- your writing will improve, you'll learn a lot about propaganda, you'll learn a lot about how to do research -- does that make it propaganda?

Or is it only propaganda if I appeal to the emotions of my potential audience? I could have a fear-inducing paragraph about the horrors of propaganda -- the ways that people have been persuaded to go to war, support corrupt politicians, buy dangerous products, put their money in worthless investments, all through effective propaganda. Or, perhaps, I could appeal to greed, and claim that this course will enable students to sell anything to anyone, as some books claim.

But, if my claims are accurate -- if propaganda really has done harm, and if students really will improve their writing (the course won't really enable you to sell anything to anyone) -- then is it still propaganda?

Obviously, this course will raise a lot of questions about the concept of propaganda -- if it's even a useful concept, how scholars have tried to distinguish among kinds of rhetoric, what seems to make propaganda effective, what seem to be the marks of unethical propaganda.

Course Requirements

Students will write and substantially revise three researched papers, each one between 1750 and 3000 words. There will be short writing assignments for every class, and there may be a midterm or final exam, depending on student performance.

Grading

Paper 1: 30%

Paper 2: 30%

Paper 3: 30%

Short Writing Assignments, Exams, Peer Reviews: 10%

Texts

Pratkanis, Anthony R. and Elliot Aronson, _Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion_

In his book On the Contrary, rhetoric scholar Thomas Sloane writes, ”Rhetorical thought is—let us admit it—highly perverse and lawyerly in nature.” In this statement, Sloane not only alludes to the closely intertwined history of rhetoric and law from the earliest days of Western thought to the modern era, but highlights their shared promotion of an agonistic “art of controversy” which seeks to facilitate controversy through the practice of arguing both sides of a case, a practice classical rhetoricians called in utramque partem (“on either side”). The principal theorists of classical Greek and Roman rhetoric promoted agonistic contests in which speakers argued opposite sides of disputed issues, often with specifically judicial contexts in mind, and the American legal system’s adversarial system of justice is founded on a contest of accusation and defense between parties in which each seeks to persuade a judge or jury of disputed issues of fact and law on opposite sides of a case. 

Despite the close relationship between rhetoric and law, however, and the fact that the lawyer remains, in the words of legal scholar James Boyd White, “the modern rhetorician in its purest form,” the modern professionalization of law has frequently attempted to deny or repress the rhetorical aspects of legal discourse and the agonistic conflict on which the adversarial system of justice is founded. Instead, modern law has promoted a view of legal discourse as a value-neutral “science” based on logical deduction and immune to social and political influence. This paradoxical relationship between law and rhetoric in modern legal discourse has produced a recent revival of questions about modern law’s denial of rhetoric, including important questions about the role of character and emotion in legal argument, the role of narrative in the analysis of legal evidence, the effect of the adversarial system of justice on social cohesion and division, and the relationship of legal rhetoric to democracy, coercion, and violence.

In this course, we will study these questions by first examining the forms of argument used in the legal profession today, focusing on arguments regarding the interpretation of evidence in legal cases and the analogical, or case-based, form of legal argument known as “legal reasoning” which is used to argue for or against the application of judicial precedent to new cases. Specifically, we will study arguments regarding the 1935 trial of Richard Hauptmann (the Lindbergh kidnapping trial), the 1982 trial of Lindy Chamberlain (the Australian Dingo trial), the 1992 trial of Randy Weaver (the Ruby Ridge trial), and other famous trials as well as the ways in which trial lawyers talk about their persuasive courtroom practices. We will also study the arguments and judicial opinions in U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding the Sixth Amendment’s right to assistance of counsel. After examining the forms and purposes of legal rhetoric as it is actually employed in the legal profession, we will then consider contemporary critiques of the adversary system and the agonistic rhetoric on which it depends, including critiques implicit in public perceptions of the legal system and cultural representations of lawyers.

Some Potential Texts:

Lloyd L. Weinreb, Legal Reason: The Use of Analogy in Legal Argument

Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “In a Grove”

Robert Cover, “Nomos and Narrative”

David Luban, “The Adversary System Excuse”

Martha Nussbaum’s “Rational Emotions”

James Boyd White’s “Rhetoric and Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life”

Selected excerpts from the Rhetoric to Alexander, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Cicero’s De Inventione, Clarence Darrow’s Story of My Life, Gerry Spence’s Win Your Case, Francis Wellman’s Art of Cross-Examination, and other works

Selected excerpts from briefs, oral arguments, trial transcripts, and judicial opinions from legal cases

Assignments and Grading:  

Weekly reading responses: 15%

Short response/reflection papers: 15%

Short application of a classical forensic rhetoric handbook to a contemporary argument: 15%

Rhetorical analysis of an evidentiary controversy: 25%

Analysis of theory at the intersection of rhetoric and law: 25%

Oral presentation: 5%

Designed for students planning a career teaching English, this course will introduce you to scholarship in composition that informs the teaching of writing today. Theories will be examined in terms of their assumptions about the nature of language and learning. Among the topics we'll discuss are the writing process; the rhetorical situation; the relationship between language and identity; the place of grammar and usage; curriculum for basic and developmental writers; collaborative learning; and creating and evaluating assignments.

Although this isn't a methods course, it will have a practical orientation: we'll discuss the implications of each approach for designing courses and for evaluating writing. In addition to reading about writing, you'll write about writing. You'll compose a number of writing assignments, each to be revised after receiving written critiques both from me and from your peers. You'll also write critiques of your peers' work as a way to sharpen your own analytical abilities and to develop the ability to offer writers detailed, pointed, tactful advice. Additionally, you'll keep a reading journal; do writing, style, and grading exercises; and investigate a contemporary educational debate on the issue of your choice. A mid-term exam will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of the information studied.

 This class is not for the timid or narrow-minded. Participation is a must as we try to hash out in a conversational setting important questions about contemporary education.

This course provides an academic foundation and practical support for upper-division students working in DRW-approved internships.It is designed to help students 1) recognize how rhetoric is applied in the workplace environments, and 2) apply their training and skills in rhetoric and writing professionally.To meet these objectives, students will participate in a variety of activities: assigned readings, class discussions (in class and online), journal reflections on their workplace experience, university-sponsored workshops about job searching and workplace protocol, and in-class workshops and peer critique sessions designed to further develop their writing skills.Students will produce 20 pages of writing (which may include Discussion Board assignments and journal entries at an instructor’s discretion) by the end of the semester. Because the amount of on-the-job writing students do will vary per internship, students will consult with the instructor at the beginning of the semester to determine the types of writing they will produce.This course is offered on a pass/fail basis. It does not count toward the rhetoric major.It may be repeated once for credit when the internships vary.

Prerequisites

Consent of supervising instructor must be obtained. Upper-division standing and twelve semester hours of work in Rhetoric & Writing are required.

Texts

A course packet

Others TBA

In this course, we will explore how the changing multimedia landscape is opening the possibilities for rhetorical communication and how those changes impact critical scholarship.

Particularly, we will focus on how the changes associated with the emerging digital culture, changes intricately linked with digital communication technologies, radically alter how we come to and come to understand rhetorical discourse.  From this perspective, we will consider the production/creation, distribution/dissemination, and assessment/evaluation of multimedia, and critically/creatively examine potential methodologies, heuristics, and heuretics for examining these areas.

With our focus being on digital communication technologies and rhetorical discourse, we will approach the course in terms of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical/pedagogical knowledge), and making (productive knowledge)—placing an emphasis on making.  This emphasis is paramount as making not only opens a variety of ways to engage different types, kinds, processes, and practices of rhetorical communication, but also is one of the key advantages of working in digital culture where making, not knowing, takes center stage.  As such, students will be required to complete several digital productions. 

By the end of the course students will have learned how to

-       communicate/create rhetorically in a variety of digital communication technologies;

-       analyze, interpret, and invent (with) images, sounds, texts, and their integrations;

-       critically/creatively navigate medium/message dynamics;

-       consider the role of experience design in the multimedia paradigm;

-       approach intellectual property right regulations (and plagiarism) as well as understand how these issues manifest in murky areas of digital environs;

-       express themselves and their ideas through multivocality, approaching digital rhetorical discourse in terms of choice and mediums (utilizing oral, textual, visual, and multimedia methods of communication [and their integrations]).

Course Projects:

This course has a "substantial digital production component" as well as a "substantial writing component," as each is crucial to understanding and extending the potentialities of the other.  As such, each digital production, in addition to any text-based writing in the production itself, will also include meta-discourse and other text-based writing (i.e., essays, papers, etc.)—at minimum, a design reflection and/or design rationale (following common industry practices).

Additionally, students will have an opportunity to design and produce a special themed issue of The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP).  This will allow them to immediately apply the knowledge and skills developing in class, to bring together our knowing, doing, making focus.

Course Grading:

Minor Assignments:

5%  Visual Rhetoric (static image) Creation & 1-2 pg Design Rationale

5%  Short Audio Production (e.g., re/mix or podcast) & 1-2 pg Medium Reflection

10% Micro-Video Production (e.g., YouTube) & 1-2 pg Audience Analysis

10% Multimedia Critical Response Paper

15% (3) Critical Response Papers (2-3pg each) – (15% in total, 5% each)

Major Assignments:

15% Research/Argument Paper (12-15 pgs)

25% Multimedia/Digital Scholarship Project (ebook or website platform)

(This assignment builds from the previous argument paper)

Class Project/Group Projects:

15% Design & Produce Issue of TheJUMP

- Class Project will be divided into Group Responsibilities

Course Texts:

Kress & Van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication

Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary

- CD Insert: Hayles, Montfort, Rettberg, & Strickland Eds., Electronic Literature Collection

Brooke, Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media                 

Shedroff, Experience Design 1

Selected essays, chapters, articles, hypertexts, websites, ebooks, podcasts, and videos (provided)

This course will treat the gospels as rhetorical texts, rooted in time in place and shaped by the communities they were written for. Students are expected to apply rigorous historical method and careful literary analysis to gain a nuanced understanding of how the leader of a Jewish renewal movement became the object of devotion in earliest Christianity. We’ll explore the strategies each gospel writer uses to achieve purpose for his audience, considering the information the writer selects for presentation; the ordering and apportioning of that information; and the language used. By studying the gospels in this way, we’ll be prompted to consider how these texts — both canonical and non-canonical — emerged from the communities following Jesus. We’ll also consider the form of the gospel itself — what it is, what it is not — as we explore the conventions that governed the first-century Mediterranean world (both social and literary).

In addition to examining the gospels, we’ll consider more recent — and vigorous — arguments about the historical Jesus, as offered by organizations like the Jesus Seminar, and as presented in documentaries like PBS’s From Jesus to Christ and ABC’s The Search for Jesus, in attempting to gain a fuller understanding of the gospels. By exploring both the original arguments and the responses to those arguments, we’ll observe the ongoing conversation that exists regarding the quest for Jesus and the role the gospel writers played in crafting his story.

Assignments and Grading

Rhetorical Analysis of Mark and Matthew (20%)

Analysis of “Q” Passage (20%)

Research Paper on the First Century Mediterranean World (20%)

Refutation of Historical Jesus Argument (20%)

Midterm exam (10%)

Final exam (10%)

Texts

There are four principal texts:

• Gospel Parallels (5th edition), Burton H. Throckmorton Jr., Thomas Nelson.
• The Gospels and Jesus (2nd edition), Graham Stanton, Oxford University Press.
• The Historical Jesus — the LIfe of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, John Dominic             Crosson, Harper One.
• Misquoting Jesus, Bart D. Ehrman, HarperOne.

In addition, a course packet includes excerpts from six sources: John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew—Rethinking the Historical Jesus; E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus; Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus—Two Visions; Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them); Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable—A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus; and Dale C. Allison, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan and Stephan J. Patterson, The Apocalyptic Jesus—A Debate.