English 709: “Seminar in Rhetoric: Reframing Argumentation for the 21st Century”
Proposed Course Description: Goals, Methods, Salient Questions
This course examines contemporary rhetorical theory and practice in settings characterized by diverse positionings and identifications. More pointedly, students will be introduced to disciplinary conversations within contemporary rhetorical studies that have emerged in response to classical rhetoric’s emphasis on argumentation. Such scholarly inquiries will also enable students invested in composition studies to better understand the pedagogical and practical dimensions of moving beyond rhetoric as argument.
Since its grapplings with Rogerian rhetorics, culminating in the publication of Rhetoric: Discovery and Change in the 1970s by Young, Becker, and Pike and the feminist proposal for an invitational rhetoric by Foss and Griffin in the 1990s, contemporary rhetorical scholarship has attempted to respond to challenges and failures in communication in educational settings and beyond. More recently, related disciplinary concepts such as rhetorical listening, rhetorical empathy, and dialogic rhetorics and pedagogies have emerged to address conflict resolution and increase understanding across and despite difference in work by scholars such as Stenberg and Blankenship.
In examining these sorts of scholarly trajectories, this course will introduce students to scholarship that complicates notions of argument and definitions of rhetoric in both theory and practice. Further, the course will interrogate the stated goals of these theoretical and pedagogical approaches relative to the long history of rhetoric-as-argument. In addition, the course will ask students to collaboratively examine whether discussion and debate within such frameworks do indeed fare better; the extent to which they allow for a deeper understanding of complex issues; and in what ways participants who engage in rhetorical listening, rhetorical empathy, and dialogic principles are able to develop effective pedagogical and communicative practices. Finally, the course will ask students to imagine rhetorical theories and practices for the 21st century that address the realities of ideological and discursive polarization as well as the impact of increased authoritarianism on public discourses within and outside of higher education today.
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 dialogue and difference across literate activity systems. 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 and dialogic pedagogies. In terms of “salient questions,” the course will ask students to explore theoretical connections between classical rhetorical foundations of argument and contemporary practices of dialogic 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 field of English studies, and the academy.
Likely Assignments Point Value
4 In-Class Reading Responses (4 @ 5 points each) 20
(rhetorical analysis/personal essay)
Lead the Discussion Assignment 20
Oral Report on Relevant Article 20
Seminar Paper (15-20 pages, MLA) 40
(proposal, first draft, peer review, final draft)
Total 100
Likely Monographs
(Will select from among the following, including “selections from”):
Bakhtin, Mikhail M., and Michael Holquist. Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. 1st ed., U of Texas P, 1981.
Blankenship, Lisa. Changing the Subject: A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy. Utah State UP, 2019.
Cohen, C. Z. Applying Dialogic Pedagogy: A Case Study of Discussion-Based Teaching. Lexington, 2018.
Foss, S. K., and C. L. Griffin, editors. Inviting Understanding: A Portrait of Invitational Rhetoric. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2020.
Gross, D. M. Being-Moved: Rhetoric as the Art of Listening. Vol. 2, U of California P, 2020.
Oakley, T. Rhetorical Minds: Meditations on the Cognitive Science of Persuasion. Vol. 1, Berghahn Books, 2020.
Ratcliffe, K. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. SIUP, 2005.
Ratcliffe, K., and K. Jensen. Rhetorical Listening in Action: A Concept-Tactic Approach. Parlor Press LLC, 2022.
Skidmore, David, and Kyoko Murakami. Dialogic Pedagogy: The Importance of Dialogue in Teaching and Learning. 1st ed., vol. 51, Channel View Publications, 2016. New Perspectives on Language and Education.
Stenberg, Shari J. Repurposing Composition: Feminist Interventions for a Neoliberal Age. 1st ed., Utah State UP, 2015.
Vygotsky, Lev S., and Michael Cole. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard UP, 1978.
White, E. Introducing Dialogic Pedagogy: Provocations for the Early Years. Routledge, 2015.
Young, R. E., et al. Rhetoric: Discovery and Change. 1970.
Likely Articles
Alexander, Robin. “Whose Discourse? Dialogic Pedagogy for a Post-Truth World.” Dialogic Pedagogy: A Journal for Studies of Dialogic Education, vol. 7, 2019.
Daniels, Harry. “Dialectic and Dialogic: The Essence of a Vygotskian Pedagogy.” Cultural Historical Psychology, no. 3, 2012, pp. 70-79.
De Clerck, A., and K. Rutten. “Rhetorical Listening as a Pedagogical Tool in Higher Education: Exploring the Black Pete Debate in Flanders.” International Journal of Listening, vol. 38, no. 3, 2024, pp. 216-30.
Desser, Daphne. “Dialogism and Rhetorical Listening: Teaching the Memoirs of Israelis and Palestinians.” The International Journal of the Humanities. December, 2025.
Jensen, K. “Rhetorical Listening in Principle: A Burkean Apology.” JAC, 2012, pp. 185-219.
Kim, Min-Young. “Opening, Deepening, and Widening Dialogic Space in Argument Classrooms.” Theory into Practice, vol. 63, no. 2, 2024, pp. 121-32.
Matusov, Eugene. “The Relationship between Education and Learning and Its Consequences for Dialogic Pedagogy.” Dialogic Pedagogy, vol. 9, 2021, pp. E1-19.
Oleksiak, T. “Queering Rhetorical Listening: An Introduction to a Cluster Conversation.” Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, vol. 2, 2020.
Rader, A. T. “Linguistically Diverse Writers and the Shaping of a Scholarly Ethos: Rhetorical Listening as a Strategy in Composition Pedagogy.” 2023.
Ratcliffe, Krista. “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct.'” College Composition and Communication, vol. 51, no. 2, 1999, pp. 195-224.
Rivera-Mueller, J. “Enacting Rhetorical Listening: A Process to Support Students’ Engagement with Challenging Course Readings.” Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, vol. 4, no. 2, 2020, pp. 14-22.
Rosenberg, L., and E. Howes. “Listening to Research as a Feminist Ethos of Representation.” Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis, 2018, pp. 75-91.
Teo, P. “Teaching for the 21st Century: A Case for Dialogic Pedagogy.” Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, vol. 21, 2019, pp. 170-78.
Velázquez, G. T. A. “(Re)constructing Gay, a Classroom, and a Journey to Rhetorical Listening.” International Journal of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, vol. 2, 2022, pp. 89-97.