ENC 4218 Fall 2019 Neal

Visual messages are present in print as well as in digital form, in film and television as well as other physical and virtual media. Visual rhetoric is as equally present in the Rembrandt exhibit at the MET as it is on the t-shirts of the patrons who visit it each day. This course begins with the assumption that visual language is one of many available means of persuasion that neither displaces nor functions in isolation from other modes of communication. By studying visual rhetoric in the context of contemporary culture, we will discover how frameworks used to explore the rhetoric of writing and speech are sufficient for some discussions of visual rhetoric but insufficient for others.

This course will begin by exploring several attempts to define and classify visual rhetoric and visual argument in order to get a sense of the depth and breadth of current scholarship as well as multi-disciplinary perspectives that influence our thinking about rhetoric in the visual. This will lead us to explore questions such as: What are the relationships between and among visual, oral, written, and digital rhetorics? What language is best situated for articulating visual rhetoric? How do different disciplines and professions read, make meaning from, and compose visual texts? What influences do screens, hypertexts, and multi-modality have on visual rhetoric?

Students in this course will be asked to read, critique, analyze, and produce a number of visual texts during the semester. The course does not require any previous experience or expertise with digital technologies, though a willingness to explore and experiment with readily available composing technologies is essential.