Rhetoric, Composition, and Language Courses Fall 2024
ENGL 359: English Grammar
Instructor: Wen Xin
26611 | TuTh 1:00-2:15 PM | Wescoe 4051 - LAWRENCE
For many people, the word “grammar” can be intimidating because it conjures up painful memories of trying to master so many rules and unpleasant impressions of being considered wrong when any of the rules are broken. However, grammar can also be an effective way of understanding how language is used, a framework for describing the variation and creative potentials of the English language. In other words, grammar is a language we can use to talk about how language works. This course will not only introduce you to different grammatical elements at both word and clause levels, but it will also explore the variations of those elements across different contexts (spoken vs. written; news vs. academic writing vs. fiction). At the end of the course, I hope you will be able to use appropriate terms, concepts, and tools to analyze language in any context and to understand that language users, including yourself, use different “grammars” depending on the communicative contexts.
ENGL 380: Introduction to Rhetoric & Composition
Instructor: Mary Jo Reiff
22423 | TuTh 9:30-10:45 AM | Wescoe 4020 - LAWRENCE
What do we know about writing and about how we shape and are shaped by writing? What is the relationship between writing and: thinking & learning; creativity & self-expression; identity & agency; dialogue & collaboration; community engagement & social action? How is writing culturally embedded and used to carry out communicative actions that reflect and reinforce cultural beliefs and values? What does it mean to envision writing in terms of communities, systems, or ecologies? How is writing shaped by material and embodied factors (environment/place, tools and technologies, affective and emotional elements) and by new media and new technologies? This course will introduce you to the field of rhetoric and composition, a field that investigates these (and other) questions about the complex interactions involved in writing and rhetoric. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the key issues, themes, debates, and trends that inform the field of writing studies. Through the major projects in the course, you will have the opportunity 1) to explore your own writing processes or literacy practices (via an autoethnography or digital literacy autobiography); 2) to analyze communication within communities or cultures that you belong to or are interested in learning more about; and 3) to research and explore an issue in writing studies that interests you (students in the past have explored topics such as ghostwriting, social media writing/rhetoric, political discourse, second-language writing, translingualism, journaling and diaries, writing and trauma/healing, voice in writing, activist and anti-trans rhetoric/writing, multimodal and digital composing, eco-composition, creative processes, gender/sexuality and writing, feminist writing pedagogies, queer pedagogies, etc.). All readings for the class will be online and available via Canvas.
ENGL 383: Cultural Rhetorics
Instructor: Pritha Prasad
26514 | MW 11:00-12:15 PM | Summerfield 502 - LAWRENCE
“Cultural rhetorics” describes an approach to rhetorical study that critically considers how rhetoric creates and sustains cultures, communities, identities, histories, and institutions of power. Cultural rhetoricians ask questions like: What counts as rhetoric, and who gets to decide what is worthy of rhetorical study? How can rhetorical inquiry be used not only to critique and expose discourses of power, but also resist them? In this section of ENGL 383, we will interrogate these questions at length, focusing specifically on the rhetorical features of empire, imperialism, and coloniality in the Global North (i.e. North America, Europe, Australia, etc.). We will study a range of rhetorical perspectives across critical race and ethnic studies, decolonial studies, and abolitionist studies, and we will analyze historical and contemporary examples in politics, popular culture, educational institutions, human rights rhetoric, and social movements. By the end of the semester, students will leave the course with 1) a working understanding of how cultural rhetorics operates as a subfield of rhetoric and composition studies; 2) the skills to analyze cultural, political, and legal discourses using methods of rhetorical analysis; and 3) practice designing original research/writing projects that both engage and expand the cultural rhetorics approaches discussed and emphasized in the course.
ENGL 580: Neurorhetorics
Instructor: Sean Kamperman
26526 | TuTh 2:30-3:45 PM | Wescoe 4020 – Lawrence
How does the human mind work? What are its powers and limitations? The disciplines that seek scientific answers to these questions—cognitive neuroscience, psychology, neurobiology—have greatly advanced our understanding of human thought, affect, and behavior. But like all science, neuroscience isn’t carried out in a cultural vacuum. The values of the scientists who do this work, the language they use to describe their findings, even the machines they build to access the brain’s circuitry are influenced by the cultures they grow up and live in. In short, the cultural, social, material, and communicative processes whereby we come to know about the brain determine, in part, how we think about brains—and, by extension, how we think about ourselves. Are you neurotypical or neurodivergent? Mentally well or mentally ill? More of a right-brained or a left-brained kind of person? In a society obsessed with science, health, and personal achievement, such questions increasingly define us. In this class, we will explore how public figures from scientists and surgeons to artists and activists make meaning about the brain through a variety of media: memoirs, graphic novels, scientific reports, and films, to name a few. We will engage these texts with particular attention to their rhetoric. How do claims about the brain normalize certain ways of behaving, thinking, and being in the world?
ENGL 598: Rhetorics & Politics of Horror
Instructor: Pritha Prasad
21185 | MW 12:30-1:45 PM | Wescoe 4037 – LAWRENCE
In this seminar, we will discuss and interrogate the ways horror has been used in film and television to forward political and cultural commentary, particularly surrounding identity and power (i.e. race, gender, class, nation, and dis/ability). We will cover a range of historical and contemporary examples of horror film and television, focusing specifically on subgenres like racial horror, feminist horror, body horror, and psychological horror. We will supplement and contextualize our analyses of these texts with interdisciplinary readings from film and media studies, rhetorical criticism, critical race theory, feminist and queer studies, and popular culture studies. What makes something “scary,” and how might dominant fears and anxieties be underpinned by gendered, racialized, sexualized, and/or ableist cultural narratives? As a genre that uniquely relies upon the creative, multimodal use of visual, aural, spoken, and textual elements, what kinds of “arguments” does horror make about culture, politics, society, and history? Throughout the semester, students will be required to complete regular reading and viewing assignments, as well as a series of writing assignments, including a final analytical research paper.
