ENC 3021 Brooks spring 2021

ENC 3021: Rhetoric is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major. As such, this course works to provide a foundation for the major. Studying the history of rhetoric provides students with the foundational principles and building blocks to motivate and organize their performances as writers, editors, and evolving scholars. To develop this foundation, students will read about the works of prominent rhetoricians, in addition to reading the works themselves. In so doing, this course introduces students to key concepts in the study of rhetoric; different epistemologies that underpin the conception and application of rhetoric across various contexts; and frameworks useful for the production and analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena.

In order to address these concepts, epistemologies, and frameworks, students will trace the Western rhetorical tradition as it has evolved and changed throughout its 2500-year history. Beginning with 5th century BCE Greece, students will take a tour through rhetorical history, observing the ways rhetoric shifted from an art for oral performance to an epistemic lens for understanding, creating, and even controlling meaning. At each point in this historical tour, students will attend to who can speak and who is excluded, what can be said and what is silenced, and what are considered the appropriate manners in which to speak. In addition, this class will explore how language can create reality, change reality, and secure power within that reality. In the process, students will discover the intimate connection between rhetoric and philosophy, rhetoric and community, rhetoric and media, and rhetoric and the world.