ENC 3021–Fall 2025–Stefanelli

ENC3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) track and works to provide a foundation for the major. In this course, explore the history and evolution of rhetorical practices, examining how they shape communication, power, and social structures across cultures and media. Throughout the course, we’ll engage with an array of rhetorics with diverse origins and methodological approaches. From foundational texts in the Western rhetorical canon, to visual and digital rhetorics, to those emerging from feminist, Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized perspectives, we will explore how rhetorics shape and are shaped by the sociopolitical contexts from which they emerge. Throughout, we’ll consider what rhetoric can do––how it can be a tool for (or against) social change. By the end of the course, students will have the tools to think about rhetoric not just as a way of persuasion, but as a powerful means for shaping identity, challenging power structures, and shaping our social worlds.