ENC 5735 Neal Spring 2021

Visual Rhetoric introduces students to key texts, readings, and theories of visual rhetoric and visual culture. Visual messages are present in various media across a range of contexts: film, television, advertising, social media, architecture, design, etc. 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. It also assumes that visuals are a relevant discourse within society that shape and are shaped by various individuals, collectives, and ideologies.

This course will begin by exploring several attempts to define and/or classify visual rhetoric and visual culture 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 throughout the semester.