ENC 3021 Spring 2018 Naftzinger

ENC 3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major, and as such, it works to provide a foundation for the major. To help develop your foundation, you’ll study the works of prominent rhetoricians, and in so doing, you’ll be introduced to the following:

• key terms, concepts, and ideas in the study of rhetoric
• different knowledges/understandings (or epistemologies) that underpin the conception and employment of rhetoric at various time periods and in different cultures
• frameworks useful for the production and analysis of messages

In order to address these concepts, epistemologies, and frameworks, we’ll trace Western rhetoric as it evolved and changed throughout its history. Beginning in Ancient Greece and ending with contemporary rhetoric in the West, we’ll observe how rhetoric shifted from a focus on oral performance, to a focus on citizenship and political practice, to a philosophical subject, and to a lens for understanding, creating, and controlling meaning. At each point in our survey, we’ll attend to who can speak and who is excluded, what can be said and what is silenced, and, ultimately, how things can be said. In addition, we’ll explore how language has been used across time and space to create shared realities, to change realities, and to secure power. In the process, we’ll also discover connections between rhetoric and language, rhetoric and knowledge, rhetoric and media, and—perhaps most importantly—we will discover connections between rhetoric and the world we live in.