This course, as its title makes plain, is designed to teach you effective strategies of argumentation and persuasion–with a particular focus on the longstanding genre of the opinion essay. In addition to learning to recognize those strategies in play, you will learn to integrate them into your own writing repertoire, practicing them in written public arguments about issues that you are personally invested in, including those that circulate online in blogs, video essays, social media posts, and so on.
You will explore and apply theories of both contemporary and classical rhetoric (especially the latter), reading and writing as a scholar of persuasion and as a citizen actively invested in public issues of your choosing. The public writing you do in the course will be based on issues and arguments that you are passionate about and invested in, even issues that might be considered to be “merely” a part of pop culture. You will have the option (only if you so desire) to publish your written arguments to an online blogsite co-edited by the professor. (In the past, students’ published works have led to their being offered jobs in marketing and journalism, and/or they’ve been able to highlight their published work on resumes and applications for various jobs and/or advanced programs of study.) Finally, the course will involve you in critical examinations of the uses and abuses of Generative AI tools in public argumentation.
This is a Writing-Intensive course; it fulfills a 300-level breadth of field requirement for the English Major; and it fulfills elective writing credits for other colleges, such as the Shidler College of Business.
There will be no textbook to purchase or rent; the readings and writing that you do will be free and online.