English 5362: Rhetorical Analysis of Text
Spring 2015 Graduate Course
Dr. Abigail Selzer King
Course meets: MW 12:00-1:20 pm in English 353
This is a how-to class. Our core questions will be: how do rhetorical scholars select artifacts to study? And, how do they conduct rhetorical analysis?
To explore these questions, we will be experimenting, drafting, revising, expanding, refining, and generally muddling about in four rhetorical contexts, each of which will be the topic of its own unit: written and spoken text, visual culture, organizational discourse, and the texts of new media.
This is a strategically broad interpretation of what counts as a text. It engages with developments in contemporary rhetorical scholarship that have dramatically enlarged the scope of rhetoricians' interests. At the same time, tracing rhetorical analysis through these four contexts focuses us on the methodological nuances that different approaches to rhetorical analysis generate.
Will you craft one elegant, polished, and vivid rhetorical analysis of one artifact in this class? No, not really. Instead, we will invest our time together confidently failing forward to try different approaches to rhetorical scholarship and develop ourselves as curious and resourceful critics.
The course's main assignments reflect this approach to learning rhetorical analysis. In place of a term paper, students will write one mini-paper and will take one in-class exam for each of our four units. This means that by the end of the course students will have developed their own approaches to at least four modes of analysis. Further, these four mini-papers may function as valuable springboards for developing complete manuscripts for conference presentations and publication in the future.
The reading list will include the following books, as well as some selected articles available through the TTU library:
- Brummett, B. (2010). Techniques of close reading. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Hoffman, M. & Ford, D. (2010). Organizational rhetoric: Situations and strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Selections from Olson, L., Finnegan, C. & Hope, D. (2008). Visual rhetoric: A reader in communication and American culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- Warnick, B. & Heinman, D. S. (2012). Rhetoric online: The politics of new media. New York: Peter Lang.
Please contact Dr. Abigail Selzer King (AS.King@ttu.edu) with any questions about the course.
