ENC 4218-0001- Fall 2026 - Graban

Generally speaking, visual rhetoric involves learning to analyze and critique the rhetorical function of imagery, using images to respond to and organize arguments, and creating images that operate across diverse media, are shaped by multiple genres, and are designed to achieve different goals with different audiences – learning how visual symbols act on us, on others, and on our thinking. This semester, we extend that work toward the spatial, investigating genres and sites where the visual and the spatial intersect. Taking our cues from rhetorical ecologists, political geographers, postcolonial scholars, and spatial theorists, we’ll consider what we might call the “socio-spatial dialectics” of monuments, memorials, archives, maps, and other situated performances around human rights. We’ll also consider the many ways in which these dialectics can influence people’s attitudes, opinions, emotions, or beliefs. In sum, our study of visual rhetoric is a study of how images, objects, spaces and places communicate certain ideas or raise certain questions about human rights. Major assignments include a series of short production pieces with accompanying critical analyses, a take-home midterm exam, a culminating presentation, and a take-home final exam. The course will invite us to think and work in creative genres, even as it tests our abilities to write critically about the things that we read.