WRIT 105R: Rhetoric and Writing
Instructor: Dr. Kevin Rutherford
Email: kjr@ucsb.edu
Office Hours: Thurs 12-2pm and by appointment
Zoom Meeting ID: 676 383 1237 (https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/6763831237)
Enroll Code 49874
Shared Google Drive
Group Membership
Enroll Code 49866
Shared Google Drive
Group Membership
Course Overview
Rhetoric is a complex collection of ideas and concepts that intersects with essentially every facet of human subjective experience. This course examines the historical emergence of rhetoric as a field of inquiry, as well as the uses, power, and applications of rhetoric. Our goal in this class will be to consider not only what rhetoric is, but what it does and how it does it. In order to achieve this goal, we’ll be reviewing texts from a wide variety of sources and disciplines. In the process, we will be writing a lot, and thinking about our own approaches to writing and communication as we also examine how we use rhetoric in our lives.
I want to ensure that the concept of rhetoric is relevant and applicable to your varied interests. Please make a conscious effort to make this course space and curriculum your own. I hope you will approach the course projects motivated by your own interests and so that they support your future purposes and aims, so just talk to me if you have ideas.
Course Expectations and Goals
Rhetoric is, in some fundamental ways, about embracing uncertainty. There may not be concrete answers to the questions that we will consider throughout this class, but we can certainly arrive at greater understanding by sharing our perspectives through dialogue. As such, this course is heavily based in interaction with one another and in order to get the most out of it, you should be an engaged participant in that interaction. Additionally, because we all can learn from one another, you will have many chances to share examples of rhetoric from your daily lives that you find meaningful. Ultimately, this class should be yours, and you will get out of the class what you put into it.
With these approaches in mind, the outcomes of this course are for you to:
- analyze texts using a variety of rhetorical theories
- learn to apply a range of rhetorical concepts to compose effective texts in written, oral, and electronic forms
- produce writing that makes use of rhetorical concepts and terms to understand writing contexts
- apply strategies for studying how writing is produced, consumed, and circulated in different contexts
- use evidence to support theories, arguments, or explorations in written, oral, and electronic discourse
- refine and develop a clear, concise, and mature style of writing, building acumen by applying rhetorical strategies and structures
- tailor writing to meet the expectations of academic, professional, and/or specialized audiences
Required Texts and Materials
- Access to our course website: https://writ105r.andmuchmuchmore.com/
- Access to our shared Google Drive
- A way to back up your work
- Access to OWL at Purdue
While I hope we can all work productively this quarter, I fully recognize that we will encounter various challenges along the way. If you are having difficulty with either an assignment or a technology, or if you have any other concerns, please let me know. We can work together to find creative and purposeful solutions for whatever challenge or issue you are experiencing.
Assignments and Grading
Roughly one third of the way through the course, you’ll write a short (one to two single-spaced pages) paper that selects a rhetorical concept and provides an exploration of that term. Your discussion should address how widespread the term is, if it’s used similarly in different academic disciplines, if it has generated controversy, etc. In other words, you’re providing both a detailed and a “big picture” understanding of the concept rather than a simple one. The goal of the paper is to show the development and use of the concept in a broader context.
By Sunday of each week, you’ll contribute at least 4 times to your assigned dialectical journal about the readings and discussion for the week in Google Drive. A contribution can be:
- a quote/paraphrase of a text or something that was brought up in group discussion (left side of notebook) and a response to a quote / paraphrase (right side of notebook)
- a response to a peer’s response (a comment in the margin).
Given how integral these are to the success of the course this quarter, there are high expectations for your participation here, and I believe you will find this space very productive for your own thoughts and approaches to the readings and conversations for the quarter.
For the second project, you will pick a rhetorical text and then offer an extended rhetorical analysis of that text (5-6 pages)–one that not only analyzes the rhetoric of the text but that also considers the context out of which it emerged. That is, you will pick a moment of rhetoric in action and then analyze what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and why. You should include outside research for this project (especially when identifying and analyzing the context out of which this rhetoric emerged); figure around 3-5 sources.
Each week, you will submit a participation notebook after you meet in small groups. In this notebook, you will briefly cover your group discussion. Some weeks I may also ask you to include specific additional writing in your participation notebook: the results of a brainstorming session, a major assignment prompt rewritten in your own words, a few sentences responding to a specific question about a reading, etc.
A discourse community is a group of people who share common interests, goals, values, assumptions, knowledge of a topic, and—most important for the purposes of this paper—discursive patterns (i.e., specialized vocabulary, speech genres, and ways of communicating). If you choose to write this essay, you will examine, describe, and analyze a discourse community you are a part of. You will write about the explicit and implicit rules of communication in this community: who can speak, what and how things are said, what is true and false, what is reasonable and what is foolish, and what is meant and what not.
Note that this paper is optional. If you are aiming for an A in the class, this paper is one of your options for additional work.
(includes proposal, rough draft, final draft, reflection and presentation)
Your final project in this class will consist of you creating a moment of rhetoric in action. This can be a traditional written text; however, it can also be multimodal (including pictures, video, websites, charts, sounds, etc.). In other words, you will be creating a text that uses the concepts we are exploring this quarter to make an argument for a specific purpose. In addition to the final project, you will turn in a 3-4 page reflection that explains the choices you made in creating your rhetorical argument and why you made them. Recognizing that academic writing is a recursive process, I’ll ask you to produce a substantial draft of the project by Week 9, and then you’ll deeply revise it before turning it in during finals week. I am, of course, open to negotiating the requirements for the final paper/project so that it meets your own goals.
At the end of the quarter (Week 10), you’ll have the opportunity to share your progress with your classmates. This should be seen as a chance for you to teach and learn from your peers, to see what everyone else has been creating, and to gain more perspective about how rhetoric works in our world. The presentations should be 4-5 minutes, and will be recorded and include visual aids (power point, google slides, infographics, etc.).
Course Grading: Contract Grading
We will be using contract grading in this course. Contract grading avoids the uses of grades and/or numbers on assignments. For more information on contract grading and a more granular breakdown of the requirements for grades in the course, see this page.
Essentially, in this class, your final course letter grade will be determined by your labor: completing assignments and participating in the course. This doesn’t mean that quality of work matters less, as we will regularly discuss the quality of your writing. Rather, we will focus on improving writing through hard work and collaborative efforts (instead of comparing the quality of your work to your classmates or an abstract notion of standards).
When it comes to evaluating writing, my goal is to create opportunities for receiving and providing feedback that will foster your growth as a thinker and writer. That is, we will try to create a class where you, your classmates, and I function as allies and collaborators, rather than adversaries working against each other for grades or approval by teachers. Taking grades out of the class, I hope, will allow you freedom to take risks and really work hard. Taking risks (even if they don’t pay off in our favor) can show us our weaknesses, misunderstandings, and provide opportunities to grow and change.
Furthermore, since I won’t be assigning a number or letter grade to anything and since my feedback will be less frequent than your peers’, this makes your colleagues’ and your own assessment and revision advice all the more valuable. This will help you listen carefully to colleagues’ differing judgments and build self-assessment strategies that function apart from a teacher’s approval. I want you to learn to assess the worth of those judgments for your work and make informed, careful decisions in your writing that you can explain to others. Such assessments will require time and critical thinking.
If you’re looking to game the system and do the least amount of work to get the highest possible course grade, this is not the class for you. If you genuinely want to improve yourself as a writer and reader, are willing to apply effort toward that improvement, and accept the idea that your labor in service of that goal has value, then this is the class for you. Below is a short version of the grading for this class. You can find a full table for grade calculation here.
To receive an A for the course, you should have
- completed all weekly work (participation notebooks and dialectical journals), with no more than four being late,
- met with me at least twice,
- completed all major assignments with no more than one late, and
- completed two pieces of additional work.
To receive a B for the course, you should have
- completed almost all weekly work (participation notebooks and dialectical journals), with no more than two missing, and no more than four late,
- met with me at least once, and
- completed all major assignments with no more than two late.
- No additional work is required for a B.
Grades lower than B mean you have
- not completed multiple pieces of weekly work,
- been routinely late with weekly work,
- been routinely late or missed major assignments, or
- failed to meet with me during the quarter.
- Thus, the quickest way to slide to a C, D, or F is to not submit weekly work or major assignments.
Policies
Keeping Up To Speed: The course schedule and assignment prompts are available through our course website at https://writ105r.andmuchmuchmore.com/. Keep in mind, the course schedule is subject to change based on the needs and interests of the class, as well as what is going on in the world. You are responsible for regularly checking the schedule for updates. However, I do my level best to communicate all the logistics of the course (deadlines, updates, changes, procedures).
Respect: While we will often engage in vigorous and lively debate in this class, personal insults or attacks on an individual person’s race, class, gender, sexuality, or disability will not be tolerated. In other words, be courteous and respectful to those around you.
Complete Work: Major assignments and weekly work are considered “complete” if they satisfy the criteria in their prompts. For example, if an assignment requires you to analyze a scene, and you instead spent your essay discussing internal politics at a film company, that assignment would not be considered complete. Similarly, if you write a last-minute and ill-considered draft that does not seem to be a good-faith effort to satisfy the prompt, that would not count as a “complete” assignment, and I would ask you to try again. (Contract grading means that in that case, the assignment would only count as “late” or “make-up” rather than receiving a lower grade.)
Academic Integrity: Two key features of academic integrity are honesty and truthful representation of self. My assumption is that work you submit is your own original work — that is, produced by you, and for this class. You should identify any of your work which is collaborative with others, or which is borrowed from others, or which is your own work from other contexts. In other words, you should credit others’ contributions to your work. You should not claim to have written any writing that is not your own. To do so is considered plagiarism, a serious violation of the principle of academic integrity. If you have doubts about whether you are using your own or others’ writing ethically, ask me. All students are required to carefully read and familiarize themselves with the following guidelines: https://judicialaffairs.sa.ucsb.edu/CMSMedia/Documents/academicintegflyer.pdf
Accommodations: If you have a disability, please let me know early on so we can discuss your learning style. I am happy to work with you to establish a plan for academic success and life learning. If you wish to request further accommodations, please contact the Disabled Students Program (http://dsp.sa.ucsb.edu/). Information regarding your disability will be treated in a confidential manner. Because many accommodations require early planning, requests for accommodations should be made as early as possible.
Resources
- Campus Learning Assistance Services (CLAS) offers the opportunity to improve your writing in several ways, including one-on-one tutoring sessions. For more information, visit the MyClas website, http://my.ucsb.edu/clas.
- Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS) is committed to providing timely, culturally appropriate, and effective mental health services. All registered students are eligible for services at CAPS. You can find their site at http://caps.sa.ucsb.edu/. Please take care of your whole self while you’re in college (and afterwards). We all need help to do that sometimes.
- Disabled Students Program (DSP) provides a wide array of academic support services to eligible students with documented disabilities. These services include note takers, readers, sign language interpreters, facilitation of access, and adaptive computing equipment. If you have a disability and would like to discuss accommodations, please contact them directly and/or me as soon as possible.
- Don’t be afraid to rely on one another for the questions you have regarding the readings, the work we’re doing in class, software we may be using, etc. You all, both individually and as a collective, embody a vast bank of knowledge and experiences.
- Finally, me: I will do all I can to assist you in succeeding in this course. Feel free to meet with me during my office hours or another scheduled time. Email is a reliable way to contact me and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner.
