ENC3021-0004 - Fall 2026 - Bradburn

ENC3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) track and aims to provide a foundation for the major. This course traces approximately 2,500 years of rhetorical thought, beginning with the “classics” of Greek and Roman rhetoric and moving through major developments in the Western tradition. Students will encounter key theories and frameworks that have shaped how rhetoric has been understood and practiced. At the same time, this course challenges the idea of a single, unified tradition by examining rhetoric’s multiple origins, evolving definitions, and diverse contributors. Through both historical and contemporary lenses, we will explore how rhetoric intersects with power, knowledge, ethics, and philosophy. Students will analyze how past theories continue to inform present-day communication and how rhetorical ideas often re-emerge and circulate across time recursively. This course places particular emphasis on multimodality and the expanding boundaries of the field, including visual and digital rhetorics. By examining rhetoric not only as persuasion but as a meaning-making practice, students will consider what rhetoric has been and what it might still become.