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!!
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The take-home final needs to be handed in to the emuonline dropbox for the final by 5 pm (Michigan time) on December 17!
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I will return comments on everyone’s final research projects no later than December 17!
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