🗣️ Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

Upper-level undergraduate course

This course familiarizes students with some of the contemporary conversations that highlight debates and trends in writing and rhetoric studies, following the theme of "Rhetoric is..." meaning we will explicate rhetorical theory along the lines of what prior scholars have claimed about rhetorical action. These broader themes comprise the more specific avenues of rhetorical thought reviewed in this class as, since the field first developed in the mid-twentieth century, writing and rhetoric has used rhetorical theory derived from theories of history, culture, and politics (to name a few) to develop underlying foundations for the work in the field, drawing from perspectives from across the breadth of the humanities and social sciences (linguistics, literary theory, philosophy, communication studies, anthropology, history).