Schedule

Note that there will be probably changes to this schedule. As of the beginning of the term, I am fairly confident in this schedule through about week seven; after that, we might have to make some changes.  Needless to say, I will alert you about any changes and update this page accordingly.

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).

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?

Monday, October 18: 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)
• D.A. Winsor, “Communication Failures Contributing to the Challenger Accident: An Example for Technical Communicators.” (eReserves)

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• Read and discuss R. Allen Harris, “Rhetoric of Science” (eReserves)
• TBA*

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

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

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• TBA selection from Bruno Latour*

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• TBA, but probably Carolyn Miller’s “What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?”

Week 11: (November 15-November 19): The Rhetoric of Images/Gender/Technology

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

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

Begin by Wednesday and complete by Friday:

• 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)

Week 12: (November 22-24): Catch-up/TBA/Thanksgiving break

Begin by Monday and complete by Wednesday:

• Catch up/wrap up any remaining discussion from assigned readings.
• Discuss progress on second short rhetorical analysis.
• Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday tradition of your choice.

Week 13: (November 30-December 4): TBA

As the class begins, I’m going to leave this as a “to be arranged” category.  We will wait to see what sort of progress we have made on the other assigned readings and also to get a sense of the “collective wisdom” of the class.  The two things I’m considering for this week are a discussion of large parts of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s book Remediation and related texts, or, going in a completely different, a discussion of the so-called “Sokal Hoax.”  Either way, I’ll let everyone know the details on this sooner than later, I promise.

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).

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!