Seminar in Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Political Discourse, and Civic Action

This course takes as its central concern rhetoric as a tool for civic engagement and political action, while taking into consideration some of the contested meanings and practices of democracy and citizen participation in local and global(ized) contexts. It examines and analyzes rhetorical practices of citizens, scholars, and activists, located within and outside of the academy, who pursue social change in diverse communities, paying close attention to a variety of partnerships across a range of institutions, media, and discourses. It takes as one of its emphases the potential fruitful connections between of the study of materialist rhetoric and community literacy by inviting students to consider the importance and implications of local political engagement through analysis of local and indigenous rhetorical practices and discursive traditions. It acknowledges the impact of new media, asking students to interrogate how existing theories of persuasion and political action can effectively accommodate the rhetorical demands of continuously evolving new media. By introducing students to activist approaches to rhetorical studies and rhetorical approaches to activist projects it hopes to inspire students to find the right words to effect change in their discursive worlds.

Student Learning Outcomes. As a graduate seminar in rhetorical practice and theory, the course is designed to broaden students’ foundational understandings of rhetoric as a form of praxis and as part of the intellectual work of the humanities. This course will thereby enrich students’ disciplinary knowledge in C/R specifically and English studies more generally. The course should additionally enable students to make connections with other courses in our graduate curriculum that emphasize civic engagement and activism as both the means and ends of much literate activity. Finally, those graduate students who are aspiring or practicing teachers will also come to see increased possibilities for curriculum development in both college and high school language arts programs; this latter goal is made manifest in the various readings that explicitly address rhetorical pedagogy and in at least one of the assignments (see below), wherein students will teach each other monographs from scholars working at the nexus of rhetoric, activism, and political discourse.

In terms of “salient questions,” the course will ask students to explore theoretical connections between classical rhetorical foundations and contemporary practices of political engagement. It will also ask students to examine linkages between the theoretical and practical work of this course and the myriad other forms of literacy and scholarly inquiry that extend beyond the C/R framework, the discipline, and the academy.

 

Required Texts

Ackerman, Coogan, and Hauser. The Public Work of Rhetoric: Citizen-Scholars and Civil Engagement

Chavez, Karma. Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities

Gerbaudo Paolo. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Kahn and Lee. Activism and Rhetoric: Theories and Contexts for Political Engagement

Dobrin and Morey. Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature

Ryder, Phyllis. Rhetorics for Community Action: Public Writing and Writing Publics

Assignments

The course will involve students in a combination of collective inquiries and individualized scholarship; we will study the material and analyze the interconnections among rhetoric, political discourse, and civic action through lectures, discussions, presentations, online participation, and sustained scholarly projects. Most in-class time will be devoted to seminar-style discussions. Students will have common readings to write about through a series of posts to an interactive class website, as well as separate monographs to summarize, reflect upon, and present to the class in preparation for the final seminar paper. In the second half of the course, each student will work on a scholarly, thesis-driven seminar paper that aims to rhetorically analyze a particular site (from the local to global, from “globalized” to “glocal”) of political discourse and community action.

 

Possible Texts for Student Presentations

Flower, Linda. Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement

Lekakis, Eleftheria. Coffee Activism and the Politics of Fair Trade and Ethical Consumption in the Global North: Political Consumerism and Cultural Citizenship

Frye and Bruner. The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power

Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism

Warnick and Heineman. Rhetoric Online: The Politics of New Media, 2nd Edition

Lunceford, Brett. Naked Politics: Nudity, Political Action, and the Rhetoric of the Body