Please note that this course satisfies the “1898 to present” historical breadth requirement for the English major.
According to Thomas Miller “the rhetorical tradition is a fiction that has just about outlasted its usefulness.” He makes this argument because it is difficult for us to decide whose work, amongst all the persuasive writers and speakers in the world, to study.
We must ask ourselves whose work best exemplifies the art of persuasive writing and why. In this course, we will examine the work of a group of writers most often included in “the contemporary rhetorical tradition.” However, we will also ask ourselves how this canon of rhetoricians has evolved. Not only will we study the work of these rhetors to glean their insights on the process of writing persuasively, but we will also ask ourselves why these authors are often included in survey courses on contemporary rhetoric. Which writers have been the focus of study on persuasive writing and why? How has the rhetorical canon shifted over the years? Whose work continues to be excluded and why?
Thus, throughout this course we will not only study “the contemporary rhetorical tradition,” we will also examine how this tradition has been constructed and reconstructed over time and how we think it ought to be constructed in the future. As we do so, we will reflect on the historical and cultural situations that influenced these writers’ understanding of what persuasive writing ought to look like. Special topics will include new media and rhetoric, world rhetorics, feminist and queer rhetorics, post-truth rhetorics, and the rhetorics of popular culture.
There will be a midterm, a final, and two in-class writing assignments.
Required Texts:
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. Relevant selections will be made available on Laulima.
McComiskey, Bruce. Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition. Boulder: UP of Colorado, 2017.
Additional pdfs provided by the instructor.
Student Learning Outcomes:
• General knowledge of contemporary rhetorics and contemporary rhetorical theory.
• An awareness of primary connections to and shared concerns with related fields of English studies.
• Introductory awareness of subareas of relevant research and practice. Ability to see relations among and between those areas and to locate one’s work accordingly.
• Introductory understanding and practice in undergraduate-level scholarly writing in the field of Composition and Rhetoric.
• Ability to process and produce appropriate scholarly material independently and collaboratively in an academic context, with a sense of shared responsibility and obligation.