ENG 319: Writing and Rhetorical Theory

Spring 2025 | Sec 001 | M/W/F 9:05-9:55 | Ross 2295

• Email: marc dot santos at unco dot edu
• Office: Ross 1140B
• Office Hours: Thursdays 12:30-3:00. I am also available by email appointment on Thursday mornings. If you would like to meet, but cannot meet on Thursday, email me and we can try to find a time that works.

Course Description

I often find myself facing a dreadful question. I’m at a party, meeting a group of people for the first time. It really doesn’t matter whether they are academics or not. They ask me what I do. I’ll say “I’m a teacher.” They’ll ask, “Where do you teach?” I’ll say, “At UNC.” They’ll say, “Oh, you’re a professor! So what do you teach?” I say “Rhetoric.” Their face contorts just a little bit as they nod and say “Oh, yes, rhetoric.” There’s usually a second or two pause as they wait for me to elaborate. When I don’t, then they’ll ask, usually politely and with a bit of hesitancy, “What is rhetoric?”

One would think I could articulate a simple, direct answer to this question. After all, I have dedicated the better part of the past 15 years to studying rhetoric. This semester will attempt to show why I often struggle to formulate a response. That struggle is itself rhetorical. Yes, I use the term all the time even though I cannot easily or precisely define it to a person at a party. Talking to a person at a party is a particular context. That context casts us as friendly interlocutors engaged in some likely phatic communication, i.e., empty performative small-talk that simply reaffirms one another’s presence. I pass you in a hallway, “ask how are you?” If you say “fine, how about you?” I say fine and we move on, either passively reassured of our existence or anxious about just having lied. Perhaps you aren’t fine. Your dog just died. You failed to meet an obligation. You crashed your car. If you respond to my query with “Actually I’m having a shit day because something, something” we are no longer having a phatic conversation. Now I’ve been pulled out of my joyous self-possession of the world and into another’s world. Now, depending on our relationship, my schedule, my mood, your affectation, the rest of this scene can play out in myriad ways.

And, by now, you already have a pretty good idea of whether or not you’ll like this class. This little narrative covers some pretty key learning objectives:

• That language is almost always more complicated than we think it
• That the meaning of words is always ambiguous and somewhat indeterminate
• That context shapes both meaning and experience
• That to engage in language is to engage with other people–and the affect, enigma, and intrigue they bring

The complexity of language isn’t my only learning objective. While important, we have significantly bigger fish to fry.

But not yet. Let me spin back to why I struggle to define “rhetoric.” The term “rhetoric” has a fraught and complex history. Typically, in our contemporary culture, it surfaces as a pejorative (“ah, that’s just empty rhetoric, what he’s really doing is blah blah blah”) or alongside a profanity (“you teach bullshit for a living?” Someone really asked that a party once). As our first reading, Lanham’s “The Q Question,” will address, from a Platonic perspective, the highest value of rhetoric is that it allows an informed speaker to persuade a hesitant, misguided, or uniformed audience to arrive at a more enlightened understanding or prudent course. Rhetoric, from this Platonic perspective, is at best a tool that allows a speaker to communicate their ideas more effectively. It is a tool of “persuasion,” as well-meaning manipulation.

Two things here that might surprise you (and here I am being rhetorical in that I am forming a preconception of you as an audience, what you might already believe, how you might be reacting to this writing): first, I don’t think “persuasion” works in the way that Plato (and even his more rhetorically-inclined student Aristotle) wanted it to. I don’t think I make a logical argument, a claim backed by various forms of credible evidence and appeals (logos, ethos, pathos) that trigger an appropriate emotional response that in turn changes your mind. That’s how Plato and Aristotle and nearly 2400 years worth of Idealist philosophers after them want argument to work. We’ll get into why they so desperately want it to work over the course of the semester. But, for today, for an opening bit, let me say that I don’t think that’s how it works, and the intense Ideal-ist desire for informed, rational, evidence-based argumentation to work is a major impediment to improving the real world we navigate every day. Second, I don’t think this Platonic/Aristotelian model of philosophy and rhetoric, argument and persuasion, can prepare us to live in a democratic society or diverse world. We need to build a more messy, complicated, and contingent way of dwelling with each other. And that is what rhetoric does. As Kenneth Burke says, rhetoric is “equipment for living,” a tool for wrangling in our human barnyard, navigating a world filled with others who might hold good intentions or malice and lie.

This semester I hope to show that rhetoric can mean much more than bullshit or manipulation (and that those connotations were cast upon rhetoric by its staunchest opponents: Idealist philosophers who fetishize absolute certainty and pure truth). In doing so, you should gain some sense as to why defining rhetoric can be such a difficult task: we will explore multiple different theorists with quite different ideas regarding rhetoric’s scope, purpose, and methods. We start with Richard Lanham, who will give us some sense of the major ontological, epistemological, and ethical conflicts in rhetoric’s fraught history.

• ontology means what you think reality is and how we can describe it
• epistemology is what you think knowledge is and how we develop or “certify” it
• for now, let ethical mean simply how we relate to other people and how we choose to make difficult decisions in times of interpersonal conflict

At heart in these debates are a series of complex, but as of now mostly historical, questions:

• Does language and culture come to cover (and hence obfuscate) a real (Ideal) world (truth), a world/Truth that exists beyond the shadow of mere appearances? Or is language and culture the medium through which we determine what is real? Does language keep us from accessing the real–or is it our only access to it?
• Can one get outside of language, perception, and bias– to see things objectively as they truly are? Or are we always seeing, thinking, and doing within the register of the symbolic? If we cannot escape our biases, then are we doomed? How do we make ethical, responsible decisions in a world without certainty and truth? How do we avoid paralysis by analysis, undermining any decision-making project via endless critical questioning?
• Do we control language as a tool? Or are we the tools of language’s own trajectories? Put another way, to what extent can we claim mastery over the symbols systems we use to communicate? To what extent do the symbols carry meanings that undermine our desire to control?

Again, these questions hinge upon questions of ontology (what is reality), epistemology (what is knowledge), agency (who is in control), morality (right vs wrong), and ethics (how do we determine how to act). They are some of the fundamental intellectual questions of the 20th century and its post-WWII intellectual movements, poststructuralism and postmodernism. This isn’t a course in postmodern theory, but we do have to understand postmodernism enough to 1) appreciate how it resuscitates an interest in rhetoric and 2) to understand that the thrilling postmodern questions of my youth are now by-and-large relics of history–we have new problems, and thus need new rhetorical tools. I’ll do this through a couple of lectures early in the course–they come with games! (think of a word, a cat came through my window, etc).

This class is, in many ways, my response to a line by post-post/modern theorist Bruno Latour; arguing against the primacy of critique as the centerpiece of academic work, Latour argues “that history changes quickly and that there is no greater intellectual crime than to address with the equipment of an older period the challenges of the present one” (p. 231). So this class is my attempt to share the latest contemporary tools that are influencing the way I think about the problems of our common shared world: democratic process, living with difference, and rebuilding public life.

A few quick things about this course:

• You will need to purchase two books (listed below)--the Blankenship (for next month) and the Cavarero (for after Spring Break)
• I expect that the reading for this course will be challenging. I will generally keep reading assignments small (15-20 pages on M/W, 25-50 pages over the weekend). I expect that you come to every class session with a passage from the reading for closer discussion and/or a question about the reading we can discuss as a group. I will discuss this further in class.
• You will write short reading reflections (generally one-page single space). These are called Write-Ups. You will do 6 of them. Over the course of the semester, I will expect everyone to share two of these with the class.
• Because the work for this class is challenging--both academically and ideologically--this is a self-graded class. There's a few fundamental expectations for earning a B and a few extra expectations for an A. I discuss this further below in the "Assessment" section.
• This is a discussion-based class. Your presence here is important. While I understand stuff happens, try to prioritize attendance. Understand that there are days we will go around the room and I will ask everyone to read a sentence or two about the readings.

Course Materials

Most course readings for this class will be distributed as .pdfs via Canvas. However there are two books that you will need for the class. Currently, both are available for $16-20 dollars. They should be available at the bookstore.

• Cavarero. 2021. Surging Democracy: Notes on Hannah Arendt's Political Thought.
• Blankenship. 2019. A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy

Course Expectations

I want this course to work like a seminar. Seminars revolve around four things: reading, thinking, sharing, and discussing. You should expect to read a lot this semester, between 75 and 100 pages a week. By seminar standards, that's not a lot. But this will probably be difficult reading. The Roberts book is a remediation of a longer scholarly work meant for a wider audience; the Blankenship and the Cavarero are not--those are academic books published for fellow academic professionals. So you should set aside at least 75-90 minutes to read 25-30 pages. You'll be writing one-page single-spaced reflection papers called "Write Ups" (minimum font size of 10, minimum margins of .5"). Generally, the first 1/3rd of this paper tries to summarize the reading--its problem, its purpose, its proposition. the other 2/3rds does something with the reading (close analysis of a passage, relating it to a reading from another class, using it to think about the news or a meme or whatever). You will share at least 1 of these Write-Ups with the class. If you want an A, then you will need to share more than one. I will also ask you to annotate readings. This means writing notes, questions, references (to other places in the reading or other readings) in the margins. I will always expect you to have two or three annotations in a reading to share in class. I'll ask you to come to class being able to point at a line from the reading and saying "I want to talk about THIS." In addition to this workflow, we'll be working on three major projects:

• Non-Demogogic/Totalitarian Rhetorical Analysis: This project will run over the first five weeks of class. Drawing on the work of Kenneth Burke, Hannah Arendt, and Trish Roberts-Miller, I'm going to ask you to do a rhetorical analysis and review of a current policy proposal. But we will attempt to do this in a "non-demagogic" way. I will not explain to you what that means. Part of the project, which you will do collectively as a class, is to explain to me (and each other) what that might mean. Deliverables: Non-Demagogic paper (8-12 pages), Public Remediation ("Do Something")
• Rhetorical Empathy: Dwelling with Race. We live in a strange time in which teaching "diversity, equity, and inclusion" has itself been labeled racist. This project questions such discursive gymnastics. We'll do readings on rhetorical empathy by Lisa Blankenship and Jim Corder (which is probably a re-read for 90% of you, but situated in a different context, those texts will mean differently). Then I will ask you to read some pretty charged critical race theory and reflect upon it. I will NOT ask you to share that reflection with me or with your classmates. I fear that I were to force you to share that writing, then it would become performance rather than introspection. I'll talk more about this dynamic and assignment later in the course. I have now taught it twice, and both times over 90% of students have reported that it was powerful and that I should teach it again and that the "private" nature of the assignment is important. Deliverables: 3 sentences, mid-term "exam" reflection (Google Form)
• Staging a Rhetorical Carnival: We will design and execute some "carnival" events for the UPC's campus-wide spring festival. Drawing on the Cavarero's insightful reading of Arendt, we will aim to develop events that are "horizontal, nonviolent, creative, affirmative, participatory, and non-ideological." That is the language that Cavarero uses to describe the core principles of Arendt's notion of public happiness. We will have to work hard to grasp Cavarero/Arendt's concept of politics (which is, by our everyday sense of the word, quite non-political) and to define those terms (and identify others!). Deliverables: Event planning activities, Event participation, Project Reflection (Google Form)
• Final "Exam": The final paper for this class will be a slightly extended Write-Up. In it, you will offer a definition of rhetoric. Everyone will share this paper on our final exam day (and this does not count towards the 1/2 listed above). Paper length TBD based on number of students [Spring 2024 Prompt; this might change in 2025]

A few quick notes about the Write Ups:

• This is *not* an academic writing class. The Non-Demagogic paper is, I suppose, an academic paper. It needs citations and section headings and topic sentences etc. But the Write Ups aren't short academic "papers." They aim to be something different, and I will talk about their progeny later. Here I will just quickly address voice: you should use whatever voice feels right. Don't try and be pretentious, and don't feel compelled to "invent the University." I am naturally pretentious, and that will often come through in my writing. But this is my voice, developed over a few decades of writing, and try as I might I cannot turn it off. It doesn't have to be yours. The audience for these papers is our group, just the people in the room. No one else. The purpose of these papers is to make sense of what we are reading. Ask questions. Try to answer them. But you do not have to pretend to be an authority over the things we read (you will notice that I will be honest when I don't know how to think through some of the material we are reading). You are writing for us, but you are also writing for yourself. Write however you want. Think of your papers as scripts for performance. Dare I say: have fun. Be experimental. Write creatively.
• Some people hate public speaking. I know that. But, um, I'm going to make you do it. Some people absolutely cannot *do* public speaking. That's a problem. If you are unable to read a paper to the class, then you are welcome to record a short video of you reading for Youtube or simply asking me or a friend to read the paper for you. Let me know if my proposed accommodation causes an issue for you or if you have another suggestion. Email me and we can talk about it.

Assessment

This course uses a form of ungrading that I am calling "self-assessment." Non-major assignments will be assessed on a 0/1 point scale--you will receive a 1 if the assignment is submitted and at least relatively complete. My expectation is that any work you submit will earn a 1. If I believe the work is insufficient, I will provide feedback on what I would like you to address and you will have an opportunity to resubmit.

Major assignments will also be assessed on a 0/4/5 point scale. My aim is to provide some feedback on all assignments, but I do not want to score them. Given the subjective, political, racial, and ontological nature of our readings, I believe it is paramount that you do not think your grade depends on *what* you think. And certainly not on what you think I think of what you think. I am not assessing the propriety of your thought. As a seminar, this is a place to encounter, labor, and grow. Your grade should be a measure of how much thinking you did, and how much you believe you have learned. I trust you to assess that.

Thus, I will award a 4 on a paper that I believe has some lingering questions. I will specify 2-4 things for you do address in order to earn a 5. Papers of exceptional quality will earn a 5 and I will request no revisions.

During exam week I will distribute a Google Form that asks you to assess your work this semester according to the courses' learning objectives. The final question will ask you to tell me the grade I should enter into Canvas. I reserve the right to question a grade and/or require revisions, but it is my intention to exercise this right only in the most egregious of situations. This class is hard. The readings are hard. I recognize that sharing your work with the class can be daunting. But if you do the work, if you try, then you deserve an A.

And, as I indicate above, I am willing to discuss alternatives for sharing your work with the class. As a seminar, I do think the sharing of ideas is essential.

To earn a B in the class, you must:

• Complete 5 of the 6 assigned Write Ups
• Share at least one Write Up in class
• Complete the Non-Demagogic Analysis paper
• Complete the Rhetorical Empathy mid-term "exam"
• Participate in the Carnival event planning
• Participate in the Carnival
• Complete the Carnival Reflection
• Complete the Final Write Up

One last note, to earn an A for the course does require a bit of extra work:

• Share one (or more) extra write-ups with the class
• Read an additional book on contemporary rhetorical theory from a list that I provide. You will then write a two-page Write-Up on the book, tying it to other class readings and themes. Near the end of the year, I will dedicate a class session to these Write-Ups and ask participants to share a truncated version with the class.

(Mostly) AI Free Zone

As many of you know, I have taught several courses on/using AI. This is *not* one of them. This course prioritizes invention, the formation of thought. It also asks you to develop your own writing voice. While I recognize that AI can have positive impact on both of these learning outcomes, I believe that you will be better served working on these without AI assistance.

I am okay with you using grammar checkers if you are anxious about sharing your work. But this should be copy editing completed work.

This is a self-graded course--in part because I hope to disincentivize the use of AI. I recognize that learning--especially learning to write--is hard. But here you have a space to learn, to struggle, to practice, without having to fear whether failure (or signs of struggle, a lack of perfection) will affect your grade. Take advantage of that.

By now I expect you know that I cannot, with certainty, prove that you are using AI tools to aid your writing process. If I have a suspicion that you are relying on AI tools, I will email you to arrange a meeting so that we can have a conversation. If I believe your use of AI tools extends into areas of academic dishonesty--specifically, if I think that the you are passing off AI-generated ideas as your own and/or relying on AI to draft your papers--then I reserve the right to fail you on particular assignments and revoke your right to self-assess your final course grade.

I take learning very seriously. This class is designed to help you learn free of the tyranny of grades. I ask that you work hard and respect your own learning.

OLD AI Policy: I want to discourage you from using AI technology in this course. First off, these technologies will generally do a bad job with our assignments since they can only synthesize topics about which a lot has been written. We're working with small slices of some fairly recent and obscure material, and AI won't be great at that. Second, if you are taking this course, then I'm assuming that you want to learn how to read and respond to difficult reading. There's way easier paths to your Inclusivity, Diversity, and Community Engagement credits that this class. If when reviewing your writing I suspect you are using AI programs, then I will email you to set up a meeting. I reserve the right to override self-assessment and assign you a different course grade based on your use of these programs.

Final Exam Inclement Weather

If the University is forced to close or cancel final exam week, then I will collect your final reflection papers and score them on a 0-5 scale. We will not meet to share papers.

Attendance

Given the importance of discussion for this class, attendance is essential. Students are expected to attend all scheduled class meetings. That said, things happen. You may miss up to 4 classes this semester without penalty. Consider these sick days at a job. You do not need to email me to explain why you are missing class, and I don't expect or accept something like a doctor's note for those classes. If you miss a 5th class, then your final grade cannot be higher than a B. If you miss 7 classes, then you automatically fail the course.

That said, if you develop an illness or have a family situation that requires you to miss more than one class session, something serious, then please contact me as soon as possible to see if we can work something out. In these situations, I will allow a student to miss additional classes assuming they are in good academic standing up to that point in the course. If you have a medical condition that forces you to miss class, let me know about it. I understand that life happens and will work with you to see what can be done. Note that we might not be able to work something out.

If you miss class and want my assistance catching up, then plan to come to office hours. Always check the class notes to see what we covered.

Student Code of Conduct and Academic Integrity

A quick note. Below is the stock plagiarism material you'll find on every syllabus. Allow me a quick TL;DR: Don't borrow another person's ideas without giving them credit. This is a class about thinking, and, as I've covered, the grading system doesn't weigh whether your thinking is right or wrong. It just asks that you encounter and think. To struggle. Copy and pasting someone's ideas as presenting them as your own is wrong. This class gives you no incentive to do that.

If you do that, then I am institutionally obligated to do a lot of unpleasant stuff that neither you are I want me to do.

The institutional boilerplate:

All members of the University of Northern Colorado community are entrusted with the responsibility to uphold and promote five fundamental values: Honesty, Trust, Respect, Fairness, and Responsibility. These core elements foster an atmosphere, inside and outside of the classroom, which serves as a foundation and guides the UNC community's academic, professional, and personal growth. Endorsement of these core elements by students, faculty, staff, administration, and trustees strengthens the integrity and value of our academic climate.

The Department of English at UNC has adopted the following policy regarding plagiarism. Pretending that another¹s work is one¹s own is a serious scholarly offense known as plagiarism. For a thorough discussion of plagiarism, see the Dean of Students website: http://www.unco.edu/dos/academicIntegrity/students/definingPagiarism.html

Students who are caught plagiarizing will receive a final grade of “F” in the course. In addition, they will be reported to the Chair of the Department of English and the Dean of Students office for possible further disciplinary action. If you need help with understanding documentation systems and avoiding plagiarism beyond the instruction given in class and as seen in the UNC Code of Conduct, speak with the instructor or visit the UNC Writing Center’s web site for a series of PowerPoint tutorials at http://www.unco.edu/english/wcenter/academicintegrityindex.html. Instructors use experience and a plagiarism detection service, Safe Assignment, sponsored by the University, to aid in spotting cases of plagiarism. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.

Some but not all UNC instructors regard double or repeat submissions of one¹s own work as a form of plagiarism. If you intend to use in this course written material that you produced for another course, please meet with me first. Otherwise, you may be guilty of cheating. I am open to remediating and expanding previously completed work in this class.

Disability Accommodations

Any student requesting disability accommodation for this class must inform the instructor giving appropriate notice. Students are encouraged to contact Disability Support Services (www.unco.edu/dss ) at (970) 351-2289 to certify documentation of disability and to ensure appropriate accommodations are implemented in a timely manner.

Parental Accommodations

As a parent, I understand that life can come at you fast. If you would miss a class session due to babysitting issues, please don’t. Feel free to bring your child to class.

Important Dates

• Class Begins: Jan 13th
• MLK Holiday, No class: Jan 20th
• Drop Deadline: Jan 27th
• Spring Break: March 15th to March 23rd

For convenience, here is a link to the complete spring 2025 academic calendar.

Rough Schedule

• Week One: Lanham, Rhetorical Analysis. Herrick, What is Rhetoric?. Write Up #1 (Miller Demo).
• Week Two: Miller, Demogoguery. Burke, Hitler. Introduce Major #1.
• Week Three: Miller, Demogoguery. Arendt, Totalitarianism. Work on Major #1
• Week Four: Postmodern Lecture/Games. Non-Demagoguery group work. Work on Major #1
• Week Five: Corder, Love. Blankenship, Empathy. Complete Major #1.
• Week Six: Blankenship, Empathy
• Week Seven: Kendi. Coates, Reparations
• Week Eight: Coates, Prisons. Ore, Lynching
• Week Nine: Sentence Share Day. "Mid-Term Exam"
• Week Ten: Spring Break
• Week 11: Cavarero. Write Up #5
• Week 12: Cavarero. Write Up #6. Being Carnival Planning
• Week 13: Carnival Planning
• Week 14: Carnival Planning. Extra Book Presentations
• Week 15: Rhetorical Carnival. Carnival Reflection Day
• Week 16: Finals (What is Rhetoric? Paper Day)

UNC Catalogue Course Description & Learning Outcomes

OLD: This advanced writing course is designed to help students study and employ rhetorical concepts that will enable them to write persuasively in a variety of contexts.

PROPOSED REVISION: Students explore how contemporary rhetorical theory helps us understand and address our political and cultural divides. Students will work to incorporate theoretical readings into their daily lives.

WEP Program Learning Outcomes

1. Communication: Research, compose, and revise communications in a variety of professional, public, and academic genres
   • Practice: The Non-Demagogic paper practices traditional academic writing. The public remediation of that paper thinks about how to revise writing for a different rhetorical situation. The Write-Ups practice a different form of public writing and oral communication. The Carnival project speaks to non-written communication.
2. Diversity: Think critically and engage questions about cultural, racial, economic, political, gender, and sexual differences, ethics, and intersections
   • Mastery: All three projects in the class deal with recognizing and negotiating difference. Miller's non-demagogic stases, Blankenship's concept of rhetorical empathy,and Cavarero/Arendt's concept(s) of "public happiness" approach productively navigating difference in political, personal, and public ways
3. Research: Think critically while reading, analyzing, and conducting research in a variety of venues, including writing to identify needs and/or address problems with creative, evidence-based responses
   • Practice: The Non-Demagogic paper requires research into a public problem and policy proposal for solving that problem (in spring 2025 we worked through chapters of Project 2025 and their corresponding executive order(s)
4. Theory: Demonstrate understanding of rhetorical theory and core rhetorical concepts, drawing upon classical, postmodern, feminist, queer, and multicultural writers. Graduates will analyze contemporary problems and contexts using these theories
   • Mastery: the course requires students summarize theoretical texts, place them in conversation with each other, and apply them to public policy and personal life
5. Engagement: Experience working in publishing, non-profit, civic, and community organizational contexts. Their engagement work will address audience, rhetorical situational and cultural context, exigence, and/or ethical problem-solving
   • Introduces: We design a collection of public events for a carnival (and talk about the importance of public interaction and spaces for the building of a collective ethos)