This course satisfies distribution requirement
for Arts & Humanities, Literature & Ideas (AHLA),
in addition to fulfilling the Intensive Writing requirement.

The purpose of this course is to develop skills in persuasive writing.
Students will be asked to write in a variety of persuasive modes,
from corporate advocacy to political campaigning and the art of ceremonial
display.  Through crafting such discourse, we will explore the
possibilities and potential for remaking rhetorical situations through
discourse itself.  That is, we will explore the potential for artful
rhetorical discourse to command control of a situation as well as respond
to it, and to fashion an audience as well as speak to it.

We will utilize various teaching methods and materials.  Fundamentally,
students will be asked to emulate exemplars of public address, including
not only speech texts but also popular and scholarly articles, book
chapters, film reviews, etc.  The exemplars of public address will be
supplemented by theoretical and historical articles as appropriate.  The
purpose will not be to copy the exemplars, but rather to mine them as
living repositories of persuasive strategies -- as case studies in which
theory is enlivened when a speaker engages a particular situation.
Through this form of emulation, students will broaden the array of
rhetorical strategies at their command, but more importantly they will
begin to develop their own voices as persuasive rhetors.

The class will not function as a lecture, but rather as a workshop
and discussion group.  Reasoned critique, as a skill complementary to
skillful composition, will be developed as we read and evaluate each
other's work throughout the semester.  There will be no midterm exam, but
students should expect to produce an average of five pages of writing per
week.  There will be no final exam, but the course will culminate in an
extended persuasive project due during finals week.