Syllabus

See the course calendar, online, at

http://www.viterbo.edu/personalpages/faculty/WStobb/471spr04.htm

— Foss, Sonja. Rhetorical Criticism. Second Edition A good college dictionary (and, preferably, a thesaurus).

— A writing handbook, preferably either The Harbrace Handbook or The Everyday Writer.

Because of the increasing importance of writing in many disciplines, the field of study called Composition and Rhetoric (Comp/Rhet) has become an important specialty within English studies. Graduate degrees in English are awarded with a specialty in Comp/Rhet. Likewise, undergraduate degrees are awarded in English with a “writing specialty” (as opposed to the long-standing tradition of the single English degree in literature). Beyond the University, the business of producing and analyzing texts has skyrocketed due to numerous factors, including electronic communication, ever-present media offering art and information of every variety, and the increasing number of advertisements that surround us on a daily basis. As a result, Comp/Rhet has become a vital and growing scholarly arena within English studies. This course provides both a thorough, challenging introduction to that arena, and an opportunity for students to practice as young scholars within the field of Composition and Rhetoric.

The brief description which follows may raise more questions than it answers, but it should serve to provide students with a preliminary sense of the directions this course will take. Briefly, the field of Comp/Rhet can be described as having its origins in the 5^th Century BC, in Athens. There, a group of teachers called the Sophists provided wealthy young people (boys, mostly) with an education that would prepare them for civic leadership. The center-piece of this education was Rhetoric, the art of persuasive public speaking. By learning to speak persuasively, young Athenians could learn to wield power within the Athenian democracy, which relied heavily on speech-making to influence citizens’ votes. Though Socrates opposed the Sophists on many points, his dialogues, as written by his student, Plato, stand as some of the first and most important texts of Rhetoric. Later, Plato’s student, Aristotle, undertook an extremely detailed, systematic study of Rhetoric which provided the foundation for the field.

Around 1860, a number of factors conspired to create the related discipline of Composition. In the U.S., higher education was becoming available to the middle class, and women were entering Universities. These new students posed problems to University teachers, who had been able to expect their upper-class students to speak and write in Latin and Greek. Because of the Morrill Act of 1860, “land grant” universities were opening, and teaching subjects in engineering, agriculture, and mechanics. Many of these students came to college without much writing ability in English, let alone in Latin. Composition, then, became the course designed to “bring students up” to the University level in their writing and argument skills.

In the 1960s, because of increased funding for writing education in the wake of the Sputnik crisis (when the Soviet Union sent a cosmonaut into space, Americans felt the urgent need to increase educational standards, in order to keep up in the cold war and its arms race), the discipline of Composition expanded and linked itself to the long tradition of Rhetoric. Based on the premise that groups or systems—such as cultures, economies, classes of people, families, genders and ethnicities—are often constructed through language-based acts of socialization, the new academic discipline of Composition and Rhetoric began to explore the ways that texts construct reality. The growing discipline was expanding its theoretical basis and exploring the cultural functions of texts. At the same time, its emphasis on the education of the student writer was also breaking new ground. In her landmark study, The Composing Process of 12^th Graders (excerpts from which we will read in this course) Janet Emig originated the field of Composition studies by actually watching students write and talking to them about their writing in an effort to understand how the writing process works. Since Emig, researchers have studied writing in innumerable ways, from a variety of perspectives, causing significant changes in how writing is taught.

The course will progress historically, beginning with early Rhetoric and concluding with contemporary studies of Composition. In the first half of this course, histories of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Rhetoric will be interspersed with readings from the Foss text, which will introduce practical methods for applying the principles of Rhetoric—methods students will employ in the semester project. In the second half of the semester, we will follow the historical progression into the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, focusing especially on the last 20 years of Composition studies, as they are represented in the Perl text.

English 471 is the culmination of the undergraduate writing major. Students should expect it to rank among their most challenging University experiences. The course will offer a great deal of subject-area material in Rhetoric and Composition, and the two exams will thoroughly test the students comprehension of that material. In addition, the semester project for the course is designed to challenge the writing abilities of strong, upper-division writing majors. Having issued these words of caution, I should also say that students will leave the course with a new awareness of the persuasive texts that surround us in the world, and sharply honed analytical abilities.

— To understand the historical progression from the earliest studies of Rhetoric to contemporary rhetorical theory.

— To understand the writing process as it is studied in the field of Composition.

— Both verbally and in writing, to explore complicated theoretical issues in Rhetoric, such as the relationship between oratorical skill and truth, and in Composition, such as questions about how language is learned, or how educational institutions should value student writing.

— To thoroughly learn and skillfully apply methods of rhetorical analysis to cultural texts.

— To challenge students’ reading, writing and critical thinking abilities at the highest level of University study.

— The Viterbo University Catalog stipulates that students who miss more than 15%

to Viterbo-sponsored events are considered excused. Absences due to illness, family

— Viterbo University policy applying to nondiscrimination on the basis of disability: “it is

the policy of Viterbo University to comply with the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans

With Disabilities Act and regulations issued thereunder to the extent applicable to

Grading in this course will be based on a 1000 point system. Students earn points by completing the assignments listed below. Details about the exams and papers will be forthcoming.

A note on exams: particularly in the first half of the course, when we cover Rhetoric, a great deal of lecture material and supplementary readings (outside of the course text on Rhetoric) will be presented. This material will be covered on the midterm exam. Also, the final exam will not be comprehensive. It will cover only material from the second half of the semester.

Detailed information about the semester project will become available in February. Briefly,

though, it will be a 12-20 page study of a “text” of your choosing, focusing on its rhetorical (i.e.,

1-3 page responses, following specific prompts (the first few of these are listed in the syllabus).

A note on course participation: everyone will begin the course with a C in participation. If you miss no more than 3 courses, and are not disruptive of others’ learning during class time, you will finish the course with a C in participation. If you make positive contributions to the course through your classroom participation, you will earn a B. If you make exceptional contributions to the course through your classroom participation, you will earn an A. Only those students who disrupt the course, or who are absent more than 3 times, will earn less than a C in participation.