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- Home Page - basic course information
- Assignments - information and policies concerning the major course assignments
- Policies - course policies
- Homework - information and policies concerning homework, readings, and the portfolio, as well as links to readings not in the texts.
- Calendar - Course Calendar
Assignments
- Project 1 - Analysis of a Community of Discourse/Interpretation - Rhetoric takes place in communities; it can be seen as the "glue" that holds communities together, both helping to preserve the traditions of the past and helping to instigate change and innovation. The word "community" and the word "communication" have much in common.
- Project 2 - Dialogue - This project will ask you to dramatize two of the perspectives related to your chosen issue. This dialogue will not be descriptive (the variety used to advance a story), but rather didactic. Didactic dialogue, which emphasizes ideas, is used as an end in itself in instruction, propaganda, and philosophical discourse; the participants may be imaginary characters, portrayals of real people, or portrayals of literary or historical characters.
- Project 3 - Repurposing an Argument - The purpose of this paper is to provide you with practical experience writing in the rhetorical tradition. You will use concepts from class to briefly analyze an artifact from your political issue, criticize it, and then rewrite it for a specific audience (identified in the introduction to your rewrite).
- Project 4 - Parody - Ultimately, parody serves a critical function: it must first identify a characteristic stylistic habit or mannerism and then make it comically visible, rather than simply deconstructing it. Through this, it can serve both a normative critical function and as a contribution to stylistic evolution (Dentith). This assignment asks you to parody a discursive artifact deriving from your chosen issue.
- Portfolio - The purposes of the portfolio assignment are manifold. First, it will help both of us track your understanding of concepts pertinent to the course material. Second, it will help you reinforce concepts with which you may have difficulty, those which you find particularly interesting, or simply those you feel deserve more thought, providing you with an opportunity to research and discuss the topic in an informal document, the chance to "think in writing." Finally, it will serve as a study guide for our two exams.
Course Downloads
Readings
- For 8/27 - Chapters from Fish Is There A Text In This Class?
- For 8/29 - Porter "Intertextuality & The Discourse Community" Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): pp. 34-47
- For 9/12 - Bitzer - "The Rhetorical Situation" Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): pp. 1-14.
- For 9/15 - Vatz - "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation" Philosophy & Rhetoric6.3 (1973): 154-61.
- For 9/24, 26, 29 - Plato - Phaedrus
- For 10/17 - Burke - "Terministic Screens," from Language as Symbolic Action.
- For 10/22 - Barthes - "Rhetoric of the Image," from Image Music Text.
- For 10/24 - Foss - "Rhetorical Schema for the Evaluation of Visual Imagery" from Communication Studies 45 (1994).