This course will count toward the 1898-present Historical Breadth category for the English major.
This course will introduce you to the history of rhetoric from the Enlightenment to the present moment. We’ll read across a range of historical texts before arriving in the contemporary moment, where we’ll dwell for more than half of the course — mainly exploring the relationships between writing and identity, between individuals and groups, where and how divisiveness occurs, how rhetoricians can work to find “common ground,” and what it means to listen deeply to others and to our selves.
Writing assignments will be hybrid and, likely, experimental — beginning with you and quickly becoming ecological by asking you to identify, trace, and explore relations between yourself and others, across histories and texts and ideas and other creatures. Always, our work will center on ethical questions about how we engage with others (broadly conceived, i.e., not just other humans, but other animals, etc.).