Rhetorical Theory and Practice

Catalog description

People have been theorizing about, defining, and re-defining rhetoric for more than two thousand years. Rhetoric has been praised as a force for enhancing the commonwealth and criticized as a tool for deceiving the masses. This course conceives of rhetoric as a way for people to achieve important things together if they listen deeply and conscientiously to what each other is saying, but part of your job in this course will be to think through which of the many definitions of (and attitudes toward) rhetoric works best for you. More broadly speaking, rhetoric matters because it is a powerful force for creating change in the world, and it is important both to consider how rhetoric is used to create these changes and how to intervene in these processes. Rhetorical theory and practice are closely intertwined, and in this course we will use theory to improve our rhetorical practice and use practice to better understand rhetorical theory.