ENC 4218 Fall 2019 Fleckenstein

English 4218 introduces students to the principles of visual rhetoric, especially as it is enacted across diverse media, shaped by multiple genres, and designed to achieve different goals with different audiences. Students will learn to analyze the rhetorical function of imagery, use images to respond to and organize arguments, and consider the impact of visual rhetoric on professional careers. To learn the principles of visual rhetoric, we, first, establish the “basics” of the rhetorical and the visual: defining the visual as rhetorical and ascertaining its foundational concepts and components. Second, we develop a theory of visual rhetoric derived from these concepts/components. Third, we test our theories by examining different visual phenomena, ascertaining where our theories require revisions. Finally, we take the insights derived from this accretional process and extend them in one of two ways: the production of visual rhetoric, accompanied by an reflective analysis of that project, or a scholarly investigation of an aspect of the visual that contributes to our understanding of visual rhetoric. As we engage in these activities, we will also develop a metacognitive sensitivity to the operations of visual rhetoric in our visually bedazzled Western culture so that we become both better writers/designers and better readers of visual rhetoric.