ENC 5720 Spring 2018 Yancey

A course in epistemology, that is, a course that takes as its threefold focus (1) what we know in Rhetoric and Composition; (2) how we know what we know; and (3) how we circulate what we know. Such a course is both disciplinary--taking up questions and methodologies defining the discipline--and (as in many fields) interdisciplinary--begging, borrowing, and stealing concepts and methodologies from elsewhere to re-make them as the discipline's own. Because research methods in Rhetoric and Composition are diverse--including the historical, the theoretical, and the empirical--we'll read a diverse array of texts and create, as a class, a number of research designs. We'll review theoretical scholarship and large-scale studies for two purposes: to critique and to use as (adapted) models. We'll pose questions that guide historical research projects, and we'll sketch out designs relying on adapted social science methodologies. Projects in the course include 3-5 written reviews of research and scholarship; a research notebook; and a research design project that may lead to thesis or dissertation projects.