ENG 5028 Fall 2024 - Graban

This course offers an historical overview of selected landmarks in the formation of 20th and 21st century rhetorical theory, focusing on available ideas of rhetoric. Our emphasis will be on studying the influences of particular rhetoricians and theorists on their own noetic fields—what James Berlin has called “closed system(s) defining what can, and cannot be known” as well as the nature of the relationship between knower, known, and audiences—and on each other.

Rather than try to recreate the whole history of rhetorical theory in Western or non-Western tradition(s), we will focus on a few areas of theoretical activity—for example, language, philosophy, multiculturalism, new media, and transnational feminism—reading extensively in some primary treatises and secondary texts that signal contours and shifts in these areas.

Requirements: This course satisfies the requirement for coursework in the following Area of Concentration: Rhetoric and Composition.