#UWENGL309CF22
Contemporary Rhetorical Theory Mon/Weds 10:00-11:20 EV1 132
The question is not "Who am I?" but "Who are we?"
—Wayne Booth
An "ideology" is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it makes that body hop around in certain ways; and that same body would have hopped in different ways had a different ideology happened to inhabit it.
—Kenneth Burke
I am a critic because I feel that rhetoric should move a society forward rather than backward, that it should open and not close the public sphere, that it should make people generous and not craven. I am a critic, ultimately, because I am a citizen.
—Roderick Hart
Your friendly neighbourhood professor
Randy Harris
You can check him out via the
English department profile page UW flow page
UWaterloo Scholar page You can link up with him via
x45362 (but he doesn't get to these too regularly)
raha@uwaterloo.ca (usually a day or so turnaround; longer on weekends and holidays) 905.699.7410 (only for something fairly time sensitive or otherwise urgent)
You can pop in to chat with him
on Thursdays, 2:30-3:30 (shared drop-in hour for 306A & 309C); Webex
He has some challenges
Crucially, he doesn't hear very well. Please do your best to speak clearly (distinct volume, careful pace), and be prepared to repeat yourself.
Objectives
The objectives of 309C are the ongoing objectives of liberal arts education generally, and rhetorical education specifically: the enhancement of critical thinking in both the private sphere (exercising judgement) and the public sphere (engaging society and culture). If we both work hard at it, you should gain considerable understanding of contemporary life, your place in it, and the swirling flow of information and values that we swim in daily and whose currents carry us along.
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But, of course, there are also some facts you need to have a command over to know the theories and themes of contemporary rhetoric, so if we both put in the effort you should also gain specific domain knowledge about the analytic instruments and theoretical perspectives of rhetoric developed in the contemporary period.
In both of these areas, your communicating and your reasoning should improve as well. I'll do my best; please try to do yours as well.
Course epitome
Quoth the calendar:
"An examination of contemporary rhetorical theory and its relationships to criticism, interdisciplinary studies and digital applications."
But what's the point of contemporary rhetorical theory in the first place? —Where there are organisms, there is mutual influence; where there are humans, there are symbols; where there are influence and symbols, there is rhetoric. Aristotle would tell you that, and tell also you that where there is rhetoric there damn well better be judgement, too. But it takes the twentieth century to realize the full diversity of symbolic modes, to invent the elaborate symbolic distribution networks, and to develop the theoretical instruments, necessary to see the truly inescapable, mind-bending, person-forming, culture-saturating nature of rhetoric, and the twenty-first century (so far) has been taking us on a roller-coaster ride through all of those territories (mind, identity, political culture)
Texts
Required
Various books, articles, and chapters either on or accessible via the course Learn shell. Note the readings are usually paired, like food with a beverage, a theoretical/methodological piece with a critical artefact.
Recommended
Various books, articles, and chapters either on or accessible via the course Learn shell. Snoop around; see what you find.
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Requirements |
worth |
due |
|---|---|---|
|
Meme |
5% |
Before 30 /09 |
|
Midterm exam |
15% |
26 / 10 |
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Final exam |
25% |
tba |
|
Project Rhetorical circles |
45% 10% |
proposal due: 17 / 10 essay due: 05 / 12 Weekly collaborative postings |
Meme assignment
Ignore this assignment
Leave a 5% hole in your course grade.
Get 5 whole percentage points for telling the world about rhetoric!
Make a meme relevant to one of the English 309C themes (values, life, form, …), release it to the world with the hashtag #UWENGL309CF22 before 30 September, and post the link to the Discussion folder, "In the meme time." That's it. The platform doesn't matter--Twitter, reddit, Facebook/Meta, TikTok, Mastodon, ...whatever. This is a simple transactional grade; do the deed, get the mark.
Rules of the engagement:
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you must really, actually, genuinely post to a social media platform; you can't just make a meme and email it to me or post it to the discussion board
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if you don't have an account on any social media platform, or if you want to dissociate yourself from the meme (so friends and neighbours don't see it), feel free to create a burner account
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you must post the link to the "In the meme time" Discussion folder, so you share it with the class and let me know I should give you a grade
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if you fail to post it by the end of September, the grade is zero; the transaction has failed
Exams
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Midterm
You will have to know both "facts" and "ideas" for this course. The midterm will test mostly the former, with multiple-choice, true/false, short-answer questions. It will cover material up to and including the 24 / 10 class. These facts will come from the lectures and the readings (including the group posts). You need pay attention and to read carefully, taking clear, thorough notes,
asking any questions that surface, talking to each other; most of all, thinking about and applying what you hear and read. If you use the information, it will stick.
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Final
More of the same, but with some essay questions thrown in to also chart the "ideas" quotient of 309C. It will cover the entire course, but the fact-based questions will have somewhat more emphasis on the post-midterm readings.
Rhetorical circles
You have been drafted into a Rhetorical circle, and each week your group must post a critical response to the weekly readings. You can work out the division of labour any way you like, though I recommend you have an editor each week (rotating or continuous) who is responsible for ensuring that week's post is on-time and to-spec. The other members of the circle might then generate the content.
The posts are 350-word commentaries (±10%), attitudinal summaries: synopses of the theoretical reading(s), applied to the critical artefact(s) (where relevant), inter-larded with some evaluation of the cogency, relevance, and value of those readings. I am interested in seeing (1) that you have read the texts, (2) that you have thought about the texts; (3) that you have something to say about the texts; and (4) that what you say is relevant to the weekly theme.
Your (group) postings should go on the LEARN course site by 6:00 PM on the Friday before the class meeting (e.g., 16/09 for the 19/09 class, 23/09 for the 26/09 class, etc.).† You (individually) are expected to read the posts before class, as well as to participate in related discussions.If your circle makes all the postings, on time and to spec, and relevantly address the texts and the developing themes, every member gets 10/10. If the circle misses one, every member gets 7/10. If it misses two, every member gets 0. There are ten opportunities for posting. You must post eight, one of which must be the 25/11 post on Booth's "Rhetorical stance" and (as critical artefact) English 309C, F22 edition.
Rules of the engagement:
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every posting must have an informative title that suggests your judgement on the reading (i.e., something more than "Value" or "Life")
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every posting must identify the circle at the top
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every posting must be 'signed' by all members of the circle
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"on time" I hope is self-evident
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"to spec" means that you follow the word count, titling conventions, and so on
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whenever there are critical pairings, your posting must address them in some way (if they are 'personal' pairings, like a building you chose or something on your own digital feeds, the group must decide which artefact(s) to include)
Consider the names of the circles as placeholders. Your first order of business should be to choose a new name that reflects something about the group. Email it to me and I'll change the designation.
† The posting for our Arguing module is due on 7/10, but because of reading week, the on-time requirement is relaxed and it will still be accepted if posted as late as 14/10.
Project
Your project grade is the largest and most important component of your mark. That is not an accident. It should also be your most significant learning experience. Start thinking about your project right away. First of all: what form will it take? Prose essays are extraordinarily valuable learning tools. You're probably pretty good at them by now, and I'm pretty good at helping develop and grading them. Most of the rest of this section will directly concern essays, but I am open to other sorts of projects: video and audio essays, digital exhibitions, learning objects, even games and fiction. If you can find a way to make your project relevant to 309C, I will accept it. An exhibition or a game, for instance, can't just be something random. It must be about contemporary rhetoric. Once you know the form, you can start working on the execution.
In many ways, all the rest of the course is a support system for the term project, and everyone else in the class, the professor and the students, certainly the texts and artefacts, are resources for the development of your term project. Test-fly ideas regularly through the first month especially in your circles, with your classmates, in chats with the prof.
I won't lay out the details for 'alternative' projects (i.e., non prose essays), but make sure you get them approved by me ahead of time, and help me formulate a rubric by which it will be evaluated.
If you go with a prose essay, it will not have to be very long (2,750 - 3,250 words), but it will have to be very good. This is a third-year RMPC course in the department of English Language and Literature; you should be writing and thinking about rhetorical issues at an advanced level, and you should know how to research and write an academic essay.
There are two options. You can do a critical analysis or a theoretical analysis. But these are differences in focus, not in material. A critical analysis must bring theoretical concepts to bear on an artefact (or artefacts). A theoretical analysis must bring artefacts into the argument, as a way of testing the theoretical concepts. In either case—this is a research essay, remember— you will have to go beyond the course readings, lectures, and discussions.
A critical analysis rhetorically examines a semiotic artefact in the light of some theory or theorist from the period we are studying. A typical artefact for analysis would be an oration, a political or cultural or scientific argument, a novel or play, perhaps an argumentative exchange. But a scene from a movie is perfectly acceptable, too, or a website or a streaming-service interface, or a podcast, or the poster over your room-mate's bed, even a gum wrapper would work. Remember though, critical analyses need to be theoretically informed, so you will have to draw on the concepts and positions explored in the course.
A theoretical analysis takes a concept or a particular theorist's framework and examines it for the critical payoff it provides (or fails to provide)—what it tells us about people and their symbolic inducements, or fails to tell us about people and their symbolic inducements. The first step is to become an authority on some concept (identification, kairos, simulacra, ...) or theorist (Weaver, Miller, hooks, ...). As an authority, you will then see with particular clarity how successful the concept or theorist is, where the failures might be, whether there is a need to augment, constrain, reshape, or even discard the concept or framework. Whatever your argument is, you should draw on other theorists to support or explore your position. Your essay cannot not just be an explanation of the concept or the framework. It must be an analysis.
The chief way to analyze theoretical claims is to test them against the domain they seek to explain. For rhetoric, that means against instances of symbolic inducement.
What matters for your understanding, and consequently for your grade, is how you develop your analysis: what your examination yields in terms of explaining central aspects of the artefact or the concept or the framework, and how you demonstrate that yield (significantly including the research you marshal and deploy, and the cogency of your argument).
A proposal is required, whichever form your project takes. You will need to write up a one- page essay plan and discuss it with me before you produce the project. The proposal should identify the thesis you are advancing (for instance, that Bitzer’s notion of the rhetorical situation is obsolete because exigence is not applicable to social media; or that Weaver’s idealism is a much needed corrective for the information ennui of the smart phone era; or that hooks's notion of feminism is too racialized). You will need to do preliminary research on your thesis: what are the important primary and secondary texts, and why are they important?
My evaluation of the project (including the proposal) will depend on the soundness, analytical sophistication, research depth, and rhetorical appropriateness of your work. Here is a rubric for an essay (prose, video, or audio), which we will need to tweak for other kinds of projects:
Proposal
Articulation of your thesis 3%
Research outline 4%
Style and grammar (sentence and paragraph structure,
diction, spelling, punctuation, agreement, ...) 3%
Essay
10%
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
|
Articulation and framing of your thesis |
10% |
|
Research |
20% |
|
Use of evidence (research and analysis) |
20% 90% |
|
Quality of argument |
20% |
|
Style and grammar (as above) |
20% |
Put your proposal in the Term Project Proposal dropbox by midnight on 17 October.
Put your project (or a link to it) in the Term Project dropbox by midnight on 05 December.
Readings
Paired artefacts bulleted below primary readings
Birhane et al. "Multimodal datasets: misogyny, pornography, and malignant stereotypes." Learn/Content/Readings
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any three ads or nudges that show up on any digital feed you have (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple News, …). What does the algorithm know about you that selected those ads/nudges?
Booth, Wayne C. "Rhetorical stance" Learn/Content/Readings and on digital course reserve.
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for our second time taking up this essay, the critical artefact is Harris, Randy, et al. English 309C, F22 edition; i.e., the course you are taking this term. How does it instantiate and/or induce the rhetorical stance
Burke, Kenneth. “Literature as equipment for living.” A chapter of The Philosophy of literary form.
On digital course reserve.
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Roupenian, Kristen. "Cat person" Linked Learn/Content/Readings and in a (physical!) copy of the book, Flat world fiction, on course reserve.
Burke, Kenneth. “Terministic screens.” A chapter of Language as symbolic action. On digital course reserve.
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Feinberg, Ashley. "This is the Daily Stormer's playbook." Learn/Content/Readings
Condit, Celeste. "How should we study the symbolizing animal?" Learn/Content/Readings Floridi, Luciano. "The Ethics of Information." A chapter of Information : A very short introduction.
On digital course reserve.
Henning, Tempest. 2018. "Bringing wreck." Learn/Content/Readings and on digital course reserve.
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Hopkins, Mary Sargeant [Merrie Wheeler]. "Bicycling for girls."
Learn/Content/Readings
hooks, bell. “Whose pussy is this?” A chapter of Talking back. On digital course reserve.
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Lee, Spike. She's gotta have it [movie]. You'll have to find this yourself, possibly renting it (if so, this is one of the few texts you will have to pay for in this course). It streams on Netflix (or did when I assembled this syllabus; things change.)
Miller, Carolyn R. "Genre as social action." Learn/Content/Readings
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Memphis Minnie; Led Zeppelin; Playing for Chainge. "When the levee breaks" All three versions are linked in Learn/Content/Readings (There are other versions of course, including a really weird monotonal rendition by A Perfect Circle. Snoop around if you like, find a bunch.)
Parrish, Alex. "Adaptive rhetoric: A biocultural paradigm for the study of persuasion." A chapter in the book, The sensory modes of animal Rhetorics. Learn/Content/Readings
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at least three social-media animal videos (domestic critters, wild critters, on their own, with other critters or people, … whatever strikes your fancy. Why does it strike your fancy? What elements does the critter's rhetoric employ? What rhetorical elements have been overlaid on the critter's rhetoric by human curators?
Rickert, Thomas. "Circumnavigation: World/listening/dwelling." A chapter of Ambient rhetoric.
On digital course reserve.
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one room of one building on the UW campus. Go in, circumnavigate. What does the room want you to believe and to do? How is it shaping the motions and actions of the other people you are co-present with?
Weaver, Richard. "Phaedrus and the nature of rhetoric." Linked in Learn/Content/Readings.
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Schedule |
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|---|---|---|
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Dates |
Topics |
Readings |
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07 / 09 |
Me, course |
The syllabus! |
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12 / 09 |
Who are you people and what are you doing here? |
The 309C Learn shell |
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14 / 09 |
Rhetoric, rhetoric |
Booth (“Rhetorical stance”), Condit ("Symbolizing animal") |
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19 / 09 |
Values |
Weaver (“Phaedrus”), Floridi ("Ethics of information") |
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21 / 09 |
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26 / 09 |
Life |
Burke (“Literature as equipment for living”), Roupenian ("Cat person") |
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28 / 09 |
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03 / 10 |
Form |
Miller ("Genre as social action"), three versions of "When the levee breaks" |
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05 / 10 |
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10 & 12 / 10 |
Reading week |
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17 / 10 |
Proposal due Arguing |
Henning ("Bringing wreck"), Hopkins ("Bicycling for girls") |
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19 / 10 |
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24 / 10 |
Critters |
Parrish ("Adaptive rhetoric"), at least three social-media animal videos |
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26 / 10 |
Midterm |
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31 / 10 |
Ambience |
Rickert ("Circumnavigation"), one room of one building on the UW campus. |
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2 / 11 |
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7 / 11 |
Power |
hooks (“Whose pussy?”), Lee (She's gotta) |
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9 / 11 |
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14 / 11 |
Words |
Burke ("Terministic screens"), Feinberg ("Daily Stormer's playbook") |
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16 / 11 |
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21 / 11 |
Algorithms |
Birhane et al. ("Multimodal datasets"), at least three ads from any of your personal social media feeds. |
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23 / 11 |
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28 / 11 |
The Rhetorical Stance |
Booth (“Rhetorical stance”), Harris et al. (English 309C, F22 edition) |
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30 /11 |
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05 / 12 |
Project due; Course review, exam preparation |
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Academic Integrity
Members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Check uwaterloo.ca/academicintegrity/ for more information.
The late policy is simple: don't be. If personal concerns, including health issues, prevent you from meeting a deadline, contact me ahead of time to make arrangements; if unforeseen circumstances prevent you from meeting a deadline, contact me when you are able and we can work something out. Please note that bad planning, conflict with assignments in other courses, and video-game addictions (to list a few attested reasons offered by students in the past) are not interpretable as personal concerns.
Discipline: You are expected to know what constitutes academic integrity [check www.uwaterloo.ca/academicintegrity/] to avoid committing an academic offence, and to take responsibility for your actions. If you are unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or you need help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about how to act responsibly in group work/collaborative contexts please ask me, or the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in English, or the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in Arts. For information on categories of offences and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71, Student Discipline, uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-71.
Similarly, if you feel someone else is breaching ethics or acting without integrity in the course, please inform me, the Associate Chair, or the Associate Dean, whomever you feel is appropriate or with whom you are most comfortable.
This applies to applies to me, too: If anything I do in class or in connection with the class makes you uncomfortable, please let me know; if you aren't comfortable doing so, then tell the English Chair, the Undergraduate Associate Chair, or the Dean of Arts's office—again, whomever you feel is most suitable. It is in the nature of the liberal arts generally and rhetoric specifically that difficult topics arise, including violence, sexuality, racism, religion, political affiliation, and so on. Such topics are often predictable from the readings and the syllabus, but not always. I will always do my best to be responsive to individual student concerns while also maintaining my commitment to the free and open nature of a liberal arts education. Again, if I cross a line that is important to you, please let me, or others, know. (Also, see Appeals and Grievances below.)
Appeals: A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70 (Student Petitions and Grievances), other than a petition, or Policy 71 (Student Discipline) may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes they have grounds for an appeal should refer to Policy 72 (Student Appeals) uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guidelines/policy-72.
Grievance: A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of their university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4, uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures- guidelines/policy-70. When in doubt please be certain to contact our undergraduate coordinator who will provide further assistance.
#UWENGL309CF22 Bingo card
If any of these things get mentioned out of the blue (no fair marking form when we have a class on form!), mark the space with the date and a clear relevant note ('Harris said the 'interviews' in She's gotta have it embody patriarchy). First one to spell BINGO gets 5% extra credit. First one to complete their card gets 5% extra credit. Note: 07 & 12 September classes do not apply.
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B |
I |
N |
G |
O |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Burke |
(mis-) (dis-) information |
agency |
public sphere |
antimetabole |
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Miller |
orality/ literacy/ digitality |
neuro- cognition |
science |
parallelism |
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Aristotle |
semiotics |
aesthetics |
metaphor |
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|
hooks |
form |
materiality |
politics |
metonymy |
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Booth |
framing |
embodiment |
identity |
ploke |