3000-Level Courses

A selection from the following courses will be offered each term. Please check WebAdvisor or the Student Handbook for course availability and schedules.

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RHET-3131(3) Advanced Editing: Principles and Practices (3 hrs Lecture)

This course addresses issues such as the negotiation of meaning in text production, changing practices of language use, and the historical and social construction of error (including attitudes about "good taste") through a study of editorial practices. Students apply rhetorical analyses of audience, purpose, genre, and context as they edit various documents to strengthen style and readability as well as to ensure accuracy and correctness. Designed to help students develop sound editorial judgement and practical abilities, the course outlines principles of editorial practice that consider the needs of the reader, improve emphasis, and remedy common stylistic flaws.

Prerequisites: RHET-2131 or permission of the instructor.

RHET-3132(3) Directed Readings in Rhetoric and Composition (3 hrs Lecture)

This course provides students with the opportunity to undertake research in Rhetoric and/or Composition in their particular areas of interest. Students will arrange a program of reading and individual study in consultation with an appropriate instructor.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3133(6) Directed Readings in Rhetoric and Composition (6 hrs Lecture)

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3137(3) Medieval Rhetoric: Origins and Echoes (3 hrs Lecture)

This course on medieval rhetoric, its origins and subsequent echoes in contemporary media, responds to the ever-increasing appearance of medievalist artifacts, themes, and discourses in popular and scholarly settings, and the implicit call to analyze and interpret this trend. Students explore selected medieval texts, and, as the course progresses, focus on modern responses to the medieval in pop culture, in media such as video games, film and television, music, political and religious rhetoric, visual art and architecture, and advertising. This course critiques the evocative effect of medieval rhetoric, then and now.

Experimental Course: This course is offered on a trial basis to gauge interest in the topic. Students who successfully complete this course receive credit as indicated.

RHET-3139(3) Rhetorics of Visual Representation (3 hrs Lecture)

This course provides a systematic and comprehensive account of the grammar and rhetoric of visual design. By looking at the formal structures of design- colour, perspective, arrangement, and materiality - students examine the ways in which images communicate meaning. This course draws on a considerable range of examples to demonstrate the differences and the similarities between the grammar of language and that of visual communication. Given the influence and sophistication of visual texts and their relative neglect in scholarship, visual critique is important and necessary.

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and RHET-2139.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3145(3) The Fifth Canon: History and Theories of Delivery (3 hrs Lecture)

This course focuses on the fifth canon of rhetoric, also known as pronuntiatio, actio, or delivery. It takes an historical approach, beginning with primary classical texts and ending with contemporary theories of delivery. Topics may include the history and theory of vocal expression, rhythm, gesture, posture, and dress. Students also discuss delivery and gender, theatricality, mimesis, rhetorics of the body, and the implications of media technologies for delivery. The course situates delivery relative to the other rhetorical canons, highlighting its relationship to character, pathos, style, identity, education, and memory.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3153(3) Studies in the Rhetorics of Gender (3 hrs Lecture)

This course focuses on issues growing from the complex interaction of gender and language use, with a particular focus on written texts. Beginning with an overview of research on the relationship between gender and communicative behaviour, including feminist critiques of language, it considers such topics as the following: the rhetorics of women's movement and of contemporary men's movements; verbal (and, to a lesser extent, visual) constructions of masculinity and femininity in advertising and the media; innovative uses of language which resist and subvert prevailing conceptions of appropriate communicative behaviour; and the rhetoric of public debates over issues such as abortion and reproductive technologies, in which gender is a central factor.

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and WGS-3153.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3154(3) The New Journalism (3 hrs Lecture)

"New Journalism" arose in the 1960s when Truman Capote, Tom Wolf, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and others began to infuse their reporting with rhetorical and literary technique, creating a hybrid genre of reportage that was both factual and artistic. They dethroned the novel as the most prestigious outlet for imaginative literary talent in their generation and instigated the first powerful renewal of North American letters in fifty years. The course includes works of both early and later periods of this movement, and considers a number of critical and theoretical statements about its practice.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3155(3) Writing on the Environment (3 hrs Lecture)

The focus of this course is writing on the environment, with emphasis on American and Canadian nonfiction writing after the 19th century. This includes what is often called "nature writing" - essays on farm life and backcountry living, writing about wilderness adventures, natural history essays, field guides, rambles, and other genres that rely heavily on personal narratives or descriptions of natural phenomena. But it also includes works that rely more heavily on explicit argument, among them polemical essays and philosophical inquiry. It is the rhetoric of such writing that is studied.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3156(3) Transnational and Intercultural Language and Communications (3 hrs Lecture)

This course looks at the origins and development of language from a historical perspective and moves into specific case studies of unilingual, bilingual, and multilingual groups, their languages, how they communicate, and representational media used by the group. We focus closely on how groups communicate with one another, often by using common languages and the practice of translation, and how groups use languages to represent their culture to other groups and within the group. Central to such transnational and intercultural communication is the representation of identity and heritage. As languages change, identity changes also occur.

Cross-listed: LING-3106(3).

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3158(3) The Culture Wars (3 hrs Lecture)

This course introduces students to the nature of communication in a divided society. Students consider the challenges that cultural, conceptual and more diversity pose to democratic dialogue and civic engagement. They consider first historical background that explains the contemporary culture wars. They then evaluate a series of recent case studies concerning moral conflict and communication breakdown. The aim is to get students to think critically about what communication means in the absence of a shared vocabulary and what kind of dialogue is appropriate for a radically diverse society.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3250(3) Composition Studies (3 hrs Lecture)

This course introduces the main theories, topics, and issues in the field of composition, including theories of the composing process; writing pedagogy; the place of the writer in the university; the relationships among writing, gender, culture, and race; and the effect of new communicative technologies on the composing process. Students rehearse many of the processes and techniques considered in the course, and they may be required to carry out a data-based research project in composition, involving systematic observation and analysis of the composing process.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3255(3) Narrative Thinking and Writing (3 hrs Lecture)

Students in this course consider narrative as a way of thinking or mode of knowing, rather than as a method of transcription. They focus on the narrative methodologies of autobiographical criticism and ethnography by examining texts that represent early and recent examples of each. Working with autobiographical criticism, students consider how feminist theory has been instrumental in the development of criticism that foregrounds the connection between self and text. Turning to ethnography, students examine changes in the relationship between observer and field. In addition to considering these issues as readers of narrative, students are asked to write narratives that engage issues requiring analysis and to reflect on how narration both enables and inhibits the development of ideas.

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and ENGL-2150 | RHET-2150.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3320(3) Forms of Inquiry in Written Communication (3 hrs Lecture)

This course examines the methods and methodologies of the research community that takes writing as its subject-defining method as a technique of gathering evidence and methodology as the underlying theory and analysis of how research proceeds. We review how the community of researchers formed since the 1960s has relied upon diverse ways to make knowledge about writing and writing processes. Students examine qualitative approaches that are common or that are gaining prominence in this community, with emphasis on ethnography, case study, and teacher research narrative. The influences of feminism, pluralism, and collaborative scholarship are also considered. Students will become familiar with these methods by reading theory and research and by conducting their own research project.

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and RHET-4320.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3321(3) Composing Our 丁香园AV: Rhetoric of/and the City (3 hrs Lecture)

In this course, we consider how our city has been written so far, and how its culture(s) and geography are a function of confrontations between language, cultures of poverty and power, and complex institutional decision-making. Rather than ignoring or mythologizing inequities -- endorsing uncomfortable silences and uneasy confrontations as our cityspeak -- we consider some material realities and social myths that shape our thinking about 丁香园AV centre and neighbourhoods: who are we, what do we do, who moves in and out? From this interaction of real and imagined city, we compose a third space that signifies what the city can be.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3329(3) Writing for Scholarly Audiences (3 hrs Lecture)

This course addresses the varieties of scholarly discourse: why academics write and speak in a particular way, and how the contexts of political and economic environments that surround a university affect textual production. By reading and analyzing representative texts of various disciplines, students will learn to recognize and practice the sort of rhetoric used by academics. The goals of this course are threefold: (1) to increase students' awareness of norms and disciplinary conventions; (2) to help prepare students for advanced scholarship; and (3) to learn more about the pragmatic components involved in writing, thinking, and speaking at an academic level. In exceptional cases, this course may be taken to satisfy the Academic Writing requirement with permission of the Instructor and Chair.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3330(3) Investigative Journalism (3 hrs Lecture)

This course provides an overview of the history, theory, and practice of investigative journalism in Canada, placing the form in historical context and surveying its major practitioners in print and broadcast. The theoretical framework of investigative journalism is analyzed and parallels are drawn to social sciences. Students learn some practical tools of the investigative journalist, including search strategies, chronologies, computer-assisted reporting, online research methods, study and analysis of public records, and access-to-information methods. The ethics and legalities of investigative journalism are surveyed and case studies analyzed.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3331(3) Writing Internship (3 hrs Apprenticeship/Internship/Practicum; Variable)

The Writing Internship involves a placement with a community organization, designed to be a writing partnership with an organization outside the university, and in some cases, university partners that need students' writing expertise. The goals of the internship are to help students learn how to write for audiences inside and outside of the academy, to learn ethical guidelines for writing with community and university partners, and to learn practical skills relating to the production of a range of texts. The specifics of each internship, including duties and responsibilities as well as start and end dates, are determined in consultation between the community organization and the academic supervisor. Training and supervision for the work components are provided by the community organization; academic oversight of the experience is provided by a faculty member. Grading is based on performance evaluation by the community organization, and on academic writing consolidating learning from the experience.

Restrictions: Instructor Permission Required.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 30 credit hours (which may include cognate courses).

RHET-3335(3) Communication and the Climate Crisis (3 hrs Lecture)

This course examines the role of media, communication, culture, and rhetoric in the public sphere in raising (or suppressing) awareness about environmental issues like climate change. This course explores how different actors (e.g., corporations, governments, environmental groups) talk about the 'environment', depending upon their interests and values. It also engages with how different forms of journalism impact our ability to address environmental problems, as well as the role communication and rhetoric play in contemporary environmental activism. These issues are explored using the climate crisis as a focal lens to better engage with the growing field of environmental communication and its relation to ecological sustainability.

Experimental Course: This course is offered on a trial basis to gauge interest in the topic. Students who successfully complete this course receive credit as indicated.

Requisite Courses: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3340(3) Technical and Professional Communication (3 hrs Lecture)

This course provides an overview of the emerging field of organizational communication and an introduction to the ways in which a variety of rhetorical theories explain the strategic choices available to professional and technical communicators. Students analyze various artefacts of organizational communication, as well as plan, draft, edit, and design a range of professional and technical documents, such as business correspondence, proposals, and reports. The assignments stress the importance of a critical analysis of purpose, situation, context, and readership for making effective, appropriate, and ethical choices as technical and professional communicators. Uses and design of electronic correspondence and on-line information are discussed.

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and RHET-2140.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3450(3) Critical Studies of Social Media (3 hrs Lecture/Seminar)

Social media and social networking websites structure many of our experiences of the world, ourselves, and the culture that surrounds us. This course takes a critical, cultural, and rhetorical approach to the study of social media. Topics include the rhetoric of the public profile and persuasive constructions of social media selfhood and identity curation; the language and meaning of social media "friendship" and "publicity;" questions about the rhetoric of privacy under conditions of constant surveillance; the relationship between discourse, algorithms, and platform logics; and the role of social media in framing the world of meaning and public discourse.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3460(3) Games and the Rhetoric of Play (3 hrs Lecture)

This course introduces students to humanities-based game studies, focusing on rhetorical studies of game design, game writing, and play as a medium of communication. Topics may include the debate between ludological (rules-based) and narratological (story-based) approaches, procedural studies, platform and software studies, gamification, games and adaptation studies, and games as rhetorical objects. This course will examine games as a discipline in its own right. While it is not a course in game design or programming, students will have the opportunity to create their own games and reflect upon them from the perspectives of rhetorical criticism, design, and play.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3750(3) Classical Rhetoric: History, Theory and Practice (3 hrs Lecture)

This course examines the history, theory, pedagogy, and practices of the classical period of western rhetoric, extending from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey of the eighth-century BCE to the rhetorical thinkers of the first-century CE. Students discuss the works of such canonical figures as Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, locating them within the intellectual, political, and historical influences of their time. Always, the focus is rhetorical, students locating the origins of many rhetorical concerns in the classical period and tracing how these concepts, terminologies and the techniques persist and change throughout the ages.

Cross-listed: CLAS-3750(3).

Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and CLAS-3750.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

RHET-3900(3) Topics in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication (3 hrs Lecture)

This course offers a study of an area of rhetoric, writing, or communications not covered by the general courses in the department. Depending on the particular expertise or research interests of a given instructor, it may, for instance, centre on the rhetorics of a particular genre, a particular political focus, or a given thematic. The course also allows students to explore a given theoretical approach at a more advanced level than they might in other offerings. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic varies.

Prerequisites: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the Writing Requirement; Completion of 24 credit hours.

Update: May 2024