Courses
Fall 2004-05
ENG 592A/792A: Translation, Invention, Representation: Major Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Composition
Day: M/W; Time: 5:10pm - 7:00pm; Room: Ellis 203
Instructor: Candace Stewart
Course Description
This course is an introduction to selected rhetorical theories that work as disparately influential bases for modern composition pedagogy. We will move in and out of the classical, romantic, New Rhetorical, and postmodern (cultural studies, critical pedagogies, feminisms) traditions, while investigating the connections between modern composition pedagogies and the rhetorical theories. Linking the selected rhetorical theories/theorists with a quasi-parallel group of pedagogical theories/theorists in the field of rhetoric/composition we will be able to trace the ideological and intellectual histories of the rhet/comp scholars while considering the ways in which the traditions are revisited and reshaped in succeeding generations. In most cases, we will see the outcomes of the above linkages in the composition textbooks that attempt to integrate the theory with the teaching of writing, and those integrations will form part of our final investigation. Our main questions for the course, then, are:
What are the significant rhetorical theories (and from what discipline did those theories emerge)?
Who are the main mediators of these theories in rhetoric/composition?
How do the major rhetorical theories become translated into the field as pedagogical approaches to teaching writing in rhetoric/composition, both through scholarship and writing texts?
How do these theories/pedagogies, in their translated forms, interact with each other in rhetoric/composition?
What are the effects of the competing theories/pedagogies?
Course Readings
- Dewey, John. Experience and Education
- Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers
- Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality
- Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- Gilyard, Keith. Let's Flip the Script
- Gradin, Sherrie. Romancing Rhetorics
- Miller, Susan. Rescuing the Subject
- Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life
- Williams, Patricia. The Alchemy of Race and Rights
Course Exams and Assignments
- Short critical essays
- Textbook reviews/presentations
- Final paper
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