Aristotle defines rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. In turn, this course will teach you to identify the
rhetorical strategies available in select discursive genres. Although
this course will focus on the mode of argumentative writing, the impetus behind
this choice of genre is to help you build your skills in analytic and inductive
reasoning, utilizing university resources, documenting evidence to support your
reasoning, and research methods.
A large part of this class will encourage you to actively participate in a research community. As such, as the class progresses, your research questions and your
research interests will take part in shaping the class. To warm up to
this, we will begin the class by focusing on different modules: we will
consider perceptions of Hawai’i, we will explore the mode of humor through
rhetorical analysis, and we will consider our relationship with science and
technology. For example, in the humor module, we will consider our
culture’s fascination with humor as expressed in a variety of media including
plays, film, music video, memoir, and image. In the science fiction
module, we will consider a science fiction text, Oryx and Crake by Margaret
Atwood.
Required Texts:
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- As You Like It by William Shakespeare (Ed. Barbara Mowat)
- The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth (Third Edition)
- Select online texts (or possibly a reader).