ENG 4020 - Summer 2025 - Browdy

This course offers an elaborated discussion of rhetorical theory and rhetorical criticism. We will begin with western rhetorical traditions of rhetoric and then complicate this cultural perspective by engaging the ways rhetoric gets enacted in diverse rhetorical spaces and situations. We will also consider how positionality and positions of power influence rhetoric and how/when/where/why it is employed. Reoccurring themes of the course will be the rhetorical appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos and how our notions and standards of “good moral character,” “logical reasoning,” and “empathy” are complicated ideas and beliefs that are not always applied equally to all situations and all people. Although this subject matter may be a review for some students, this course aims to offer an extended and nuanced discussion of these terms by drawing on scholarship from feminist historical rhetorics and cultural rhetorics perspectives. Ultimately, at the completion of this course, students should have a broad understanding of the many histories, meanings, and functions of rhetorics generally, and rhetorical appeals specifically.