English 7620: Modern Rhetorics
Spring 2017 | Syllabus

Instructor Information
William P. Banks, Associate Professor
Director, University Writing Program
Office: Joyner 1009
Phone: 252.328.6674
Email: banksw [at] ecu [dot] edu
Office Hours: Monday, 1:00 – 3:00 pm; Tuesdays 4:00 – 6:00 pm

Introduction
One key contribution that rhetorical study has made to contemporary disciplinarity is the idea that perhaps time, whether chronos (linear, watch time) or kairos (opportunity, situational time), isn’t a particularly useful method for understanding how ideas come into being, how they operate, how they proliferate or how they move into disuse. In fact, rhetorical study continues to suggest that while any historical moment may privilege certain ideas about the world, about language, about writing, and about text, each of these moments also contains a host of resistant, subversive, or counter ideas that exist for the effective rhetor to marshal/make use of.

As such, this course is both a ‘history’ in the sense that we are going to explore certain rhetoricians/rhetors based on when they lived and what ideas they worked with during their lives, but it is also an applied course in that we will be working to connect rhetorical concepts over time to the impact those ideas had on our ideas about writing/composing, and ultimately how those ideas worked to shape modern and contemporary composition instruction.

Course Goals
Upon completing English 7620, graduate students should be able to

• articulate a working definition of rhetoric that is both historically and personally relevant;
• recognize and articulate rhetorical patterns/strategies and intellecutal genealogies at work in major rheotrical theorists of the last three hundred years;
• differentiate among different rhetorical theories based on their understandings of writing as an act, an artifact, and an idea;
• locate, evaluate, and synthesize primary and secondary print and electronic bibliographic sources that contribute significantly to projects developed in consultation with the professor;
• propose and carry out a sophisticated rhetorical genealogy project which demonstrates 1) the ability to postulate an advanced thesis regarding modern/contemporary rhetorical theories, and 2) the ability to integrate course texts and individual research in ways that assist in supporting the thesis/argument of the project.

To meet these goals, graduate students will typically read between 100 – 150 pages per week, take part in online disucssion boards, post responses to readings/activities on individual blogs, and engage in other projects listed below.

Required Texts

• Hawk, Byron. A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2007.
• Knoblauch, C. H. Discursive Ideologies: Reading Western Rhetoric. Logan: Utah State UP, 2014.
• PDFs available on the course website

Projects
The following brief annotations will provide some context for the sort of projects that this course will require this semester. More thorough explanations, where necessary, will become available over the course of the semester through the “Schedule” and “Assignments” links on this website:

• R² Trading Cards (20%) — In order to foster both depth and breadth of thinking/coverage in the course, students will be responsible for creating Rhetorician Trading Cards. Each card will focus on a particular rhetorician from 1700 – 2000 CE. Additional information and formating available on the Assignments link above.
• Textbook Survey (20%) — Using a selection of textbooks designed for a first year writing courses, students will explore what types of rhetorical strategies we typically make available to college students and produce a brief report on their survey.
• Rhetorical Teaching Activities (20%) — Following the “application” thread of the course, students will be expected to develop two teaching activities, suitable for a first year writing course, that take some of the rhetorical theories from the course and render them applicable for first-year students.
• Genealogy Project (30%) — Around midterm, students will propose a rhetorical genealogy of a key term or concept in modern/contemporary rhetoric (e.g., invention, ethos, argument, visual). This essay will address what scholars have said about the term or concept, paying paticular attention to where scholars have disagreed and agreed regarding the concept or term. Essays will typically be 10 – 12 pages.
• Studentship (10%) — Studentship refers to attending class, participating in face-to-face and online discussions, and meeting assigned deadlines for projects.

Expectations
Obviously, I expect a great deal of commitment from graduate students. By choosing to tackle graduate school, you have plunged yourselves further into the world of the scholar. I hope you will enjoy that work and take advantage of this time to read, write, and think about issues and ideas you haven’t considered before, or to go further than you have in the past. “Reading” in graduate school, especially for doctoral students, is an exhausting activity. While I expect graduate students to “read” everything I assign, I hope that you will learn quickly how to “skim and save.” Do NOT try to read all these texts like you would poems or novels, pouring over each sentence looking for nuances of meaning. Try to get the big picture, isolate the key arguments/points in the text, and keep it archived for future reference. Develop coding strategies for helping you to read the text now and that will be useful in a year or two when you need that text again. Some texts, I expect you to devour; others may not hold you interest. That’s normal. Regardless, I expect you always to have a passing acquaintance with ALL our readings and an engaged friendship with selected others. Obviously, I expect that we’ll have tremendous fun as we work hard together this semester.

Attendance
Graduate students by default should be at every class meeting, especially for a class which means only once each week. Emergencies and problems arise, so I can overlook your missing one week of class, especially since individual students can contribute significantly on the course blog the week they miss in order to “make up” for not being physically present. Missing more than once, however, will impact the course grade. Graduate classes rely on the presence of engaged students to be successful; as such, your absenses will jeopardize learning for others, which isn’t acceptable.

Late Work
We all have very busy, trying lives, and as such, there come times when we have to complete some work late. Each student in this class is allowed an occasional late blog response, or other short piece of writing. Midterms assignments are set in stone and may not be late. Neither major projects nor drafts of major projects may be turned in late, as turning the drafts in late would invalidate the reason for drafting in the first place and turning in final projects late would prevent me from reading and evaluating them in time to turn in grades at the end of the semester. Students may always turn projects in early.

Conferences
Students should schedule conferences with me when they do not understand comments I’ve made on their projects or when they become confused about the expectations of this course. Likewise, I may require a certain number of individual and/or group conferences during the semester. After midterm, I will schedule conferences to discuss major project proposals.

Academic Integrity
Students are expected to be honest about individual effort and responsible to peer/secondary source materials that are included in their projects. Both plagiarizing and turning in work written partially or completely by someone else are forms of academic dishonesty and carry serious penalties, the least serious of which is a grade of zero on the particular assignment (and thus a D, at best, in the course), but could also result in failure of the class and even expulsion from the university. Students who keep up with their work and consult with their peers and their professor have no reason or need to “cheat.” Since this course is focused on research ethics, I expect that students will see me if they are unsure about how to cite or represent ideas/writing by others so that we can figure it out without ending up in a nasty plagiarism case.

Accommodations for Students with Special Needs
East Carolina University seeks to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Students requesting accommodations based on a disability must be registered with the Department for Disability Support Services located in Slay 138 ([252] 737-1016 [Voice/TTY]).