Schedule

Note that I made changes to the schedule effective November 20! You’ll see what I mean when you get to that part of the schedule.

Week 1 (September 8 – September 10): Getting Started

Beginning Wednesday and finishing by Friday, do the following:

• Class introductions, etc.
• How to use wordpress.com
• Read and discuss Dave Cormier’s “Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum” (PDF)

Week 2  (September 13 – September 17): Introducing Ancient Rhetoric

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Continue discussion of class intro materials
• “Entering the parlor” discussion– or how to get used to jumping into this stuff (see Burke’s “unending conversation metaphor”)
• Read and discuss Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen.”
• Read and discuss preface and chapter 1 of Crowley and Hawhee Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students.

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss chapters 2 and 3 of Crowley and Hawhee Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students.
• Read and discuss Kenneth Burke, “Introduction:  The Five Key Terms of Dramatism,” from A Grammar of Motives (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Watson and Crick, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids” (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Carolyn R. Miller, “Kairos in the Rhetoric of Science” (eReserves)

Week 3 (September 20 – September 24): Writing, Technology, and Logical Proof

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss selections from Plato’s Phaedrus.  See also John Zuern’s guide to Phaedrus and  the Wikipedia entry on this dialog.
• Walter Ong’s “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” (eReserves)
• Selections from Alexander Reid’s The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss chapters 4 and 5 of Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics.
• Read and discuss Walzer and Gross, “Positivists, Postmodernists, Aristotelians, and the Challenger Disaster.”

Week 4 (September 27 – October 1): Ethical, Pathetic, and Extrinsic Proofs

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss chapters 6 and 7 of Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics.
• Read and discuss S. Michael Halloran, “The Birth of Molecular Biology: An Essay in the Rhetorical Criticism of Scientific Discourse” (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Marshall Myers, “The Use of Pathos in Charity Letters: Some Notes Toward a Theory and Analysis.” (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss chapter 8 of Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics.
• Read and discuss Heather D. Bell, Kathleen A. Walch, and Steven B. Katz, “‘Aristotle’s Pharmacy’: The medical rhetoric of a clinical protocol in the drug development process.” (this is a PDF, and you will be prompted to login to EMU’s library)
• Elisabeth M. Alford, “Thucydides and the Plague in Athens: The Roots of Scientific Writing.” (eReserves)

Week 5 (October 4 – October 8):  Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss chapters 9 through 12 of Crowley and Hawhee’s Ancient Rhetorics.

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Continue discussion of Crowley and Hawhee.
• Read and discuss Collin Brooke’s “Ecology” from Lingua Fracta:  Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. (eReserves).
• Read and discuss Jill M. Parrot’s “I’ll Google It!:  How Collective Wisdom in Search Engines Alters the Rhetorical Canons,” from the first issue of Present Tense.

Week 6: (October 11-October 15): Peer review, and a little Burke and Foucault

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss Kenneth Burke, “Terministic Screens” (eReserves)
• Begin discussion/peer review of the first short rhetorical analysis projects.  By the end of the day on Wednesday, October 13!

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss Michel Foucault’s “The Discourse on Language” (eReserves)
• End discussion/peer review of the first short rhetorical analysis projects.  By the end of the day on Friday, October 15!

Week 7:  (October 18-October 22): Just what is “Science,” anyway?

Wednesday, October 20: First Short Rhetorical Analysis Due!

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss Michael J. Zerbe, “Chapter 1: The Dominance of Scientific Discourse: Theoretical Contexts,” from Composition and the Rhetoric of Science: Engaging the Dominant Discourse (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss R. Allen Harris, “Rhetoric of Science” (eReserves)
• D.A. Winsor, “Communication Failures Contributing to the Challenger Accident: An Example for Technical Communicators.” (eReserves)

Week 8: (October 25-October 29):  “The Rhetorical Situation”

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Read and discuss “The Character of the Rhetorical Situation”(an intro to the other readings on situation) and Lloyd Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Richard Vatz’s “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation” (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Scott Consigny’s “Rhetoric and Its Situations” (eReserves)*

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss Barbara Biesecker’s “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation From Witihin the Thematic of Différance” (eReserves)
• Read and discuss Jenny Edbauer’s “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” (eReserves)

Week 9: (November 1-November 5):  Cultural Studies and Usability

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• J. Blake Scott, Bernadette Longo, and Katherine V. Wills.  “Why Cultural Studies?  Expanding Technical Communication’s Critical Toolbox.” (eReserves)
• Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak.  “The Technical Communicator as Author:  Meaning, Power, Authority” (eReserves)
• James Paradis.  “Text and Action:  The Operator’s Manual in Context and in Court.” (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Bradley Dilger.  “Extreme Usability and Technical Communication.” (eReserves)
• Begin reading and discussing selection from Bruno Latour’s Science in Action:  How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (eReserves)

Week 10: (November 8-November 12): Automation, Agency, Writing

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Finish reading and discussing selection from Bruno Latour’s Science in Action:  How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Jim Johnson (aka Bruno Latour).  “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together:  The Sociology of a Door-Closer.” (eReserves)

Week 11: (November 15-November 19): More on Automation and The Rhetoric of Images

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Carolyn Miller’s “What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?” (eReserves)
• Clay Spinuzzi.  “Compound Mediation in Software Development:  Using Genre Ecologies to Study Textual Artifacts.” (a chapter in Bazerman and Russel’s Writing Selves/Writing Societies)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Rudolph Arnheim.  “Pictures, Symbols, and Signs.” (eReserves)
• Roland Barthes.  “Rhetoric of the Image.” (eReserves)

Week 12: (November 22-24): “The Visual” continued and Thanksgiving Gender/Technology/Thanksgiving break

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Continue Arnheim and Barthes
• Watch Futurama.
• Stephen Bernhardt. “The Shape of Text to Come:  The Texture of Print on Screens.” (eReserves)
• Edward Tufte.  “The Decision to Launch the Space Shuttle Challenger,” from Visual Explanations:  Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. (eReserves)
• Second project pitch email: By Wednesday at the latest, send me an email where you give me a short “pitch” about what it is you are going to do your second project about and why.
• (And) enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday tradition of your choice.

Week 13: (November 30-December 4): Gender and Technology and start thinking about the second short project

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Gail E. Hawisher and Patricia A. Sullivan.  “Fleeting Images:  Women Visually Writing the Web.” (eReserves)
• Cynthia L. Selfe.  “Lest We Think The Revolution is a Revolution:  Images of Technology and the Nature of Change.” (eReserves)
• Anne Frances Wysocki, “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty:  On Some Formal Relation in Teaching About the Visual Aspects of Texts.” (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Continued discussion of the readings for this week.
• Continued discussion for second short writing project and final.
• Optional face to face gathering, location and time TBA, but probably early in the evening on Wednesday, December 1; Friday, December 3, or Saturday, December 4, at The Corner Brewery.

Week 14: (December 6-December 10): Peer Review and Preparing for the Final

Monday!

• Begin discussion/peer review of second short rhetorical analysis project.  (Though with any luck, this will be something that you will have begun thinking about before we get to this stage, too).
• Revisions of first short rhetorical analysis due! If you decide to revise your first short rhetorical analysis essay, it is due by today.

Wednesday!

• Finish discussion/peer review of second short rhetorical analysis project.

Friday, December 10:  Second Short Rhetorical Analysis Due!

Friday!

• The take-home final will be posted. We will have a chance to discuss any questions you might have, but my assumption is it will be a pretty straight-forward exam.

Week 15: (Finals week): The End of Time!!

• The take-home final needs to be handed in to the emuonline dropbox for the final by 5 pm (Michigan time) on December 17!

• I will return comments on everyone’s final research projects no later than December 17!