C501-Introduction to Rhetorical Studies is designed as a first course
in rhetorical theory for graduate students interested in exploring the
relationship between public discourse and society.  The course will
begin by asking: What can a rhetoric be in late or postmodernity?  Or,
to put it a bit differently: What does (or might) it mean to think/act
rhetorically in contemporary times?  To address these questions we
will explore three separate but related conceptions of rhetoric as (a)
practical reasoning, (b) the constitution and performance of self/
society, and (c) socio-political critique/judgment.  In each instance
we will examine the connections between premodern and late or
postmodern rhetorical theory as they implicate and are implicated by
the problematics of contemporary social and political theory (e.g.,
power, agency, ideology, hegemony, mediation, subjectivity, etc.).
Particular attention will focus on the remediation of rhetorical
practices manifested by the movement from oral to print to electronic
to digital and hypermediated technologies of expression and
interaction. So, for example, we might ask how the shift from an oral
to a print culture (or from a televisual to a hypermediated culture)
affects the role of invention and style or the importance and
centrality of memory in the crafting of individual and collective
identity, social and political ideologies, conceptions of audience as
publics, etc. Alternately we might ask how the conventions of
prevailing rhetorical practices limit and constrain the possibilities
for both employing new technologies and/or the enactment and
construction of new and different identities, ideologies, and publics.
By the end of the term students should have a clear sense for the
range of problems and possibilities of thinking and acting
rhetorically in contemporary times.

	The class will be conducted in a seminar format and students
will be expected to contribute regularly to class discussions.
Readings will draw from premodern and contemporary rhetorical theory
and criticism.  Writing assignments will include a series of short
position papers (4 or 5 250-500 word essays) and a seminar paper (4,
000-5,000 words + endnotes and
bibliography).