Upcoming Courses

Fall 2023

RHCS 100-01: Public Speaking (T/R) 9:00-10:15 a.m.

RHCS 100-02: Public Speaking (M/W) 10:30-11:45 a.m.

RHCS 102-01: Interpersonal Communication (M/W) 9:00-10:15 a.m.

RHCS 102-01: Interpersonal Communication (M/W) 10:30-11:45 a.m.

RHCS 103-01: Rhetorical Theory (T/R) 1:30-2:45 p.m.

RHCS 103-02: Rhetorical Theory (T/R) 3:00-4:15 p.m.

RHCS 105-01: Media, Culture, and Identity (T/R) 10:30-11:45 a.m.

RHCS 105-02: Media, Culture, and Identity (T/R) 1:30-2:45 p.m.

RHCS 245-01: Digital Humanities (M/W) 10:30-11:45 a.m.

RHCS 295-01: ST: Methods in Media Studies (T) 3:00-5:45 p.m. 

RHCS 342-01 Rhetoric and Gender Violence (W) 12:00-2:45 p.m.

RHCS 343-01 Rhetoric and Politics (T/R) 12:00-1:15 p.m.

RHCS 345-01: Data and Society (M/W) 3:00-4:15 p.m.

RHCS 412-01 ST: Rhetoric and Religion (M/W) 12:00-1:15 p.m.

RHCS 412-02 ST: Digital Humanities (M/W) 10:30-11:45 p.m.

RHCS 412-03 ST: Rhetoric and Terrorism (T/R) 9:00-10:15 a.m.

Course Descriptions

RHCS 295: Methods in Media Studies — Dr. Stringfield

In this course, students will learn about various modes of making new media and will be expected to engage in critical making themselves around topics of identity. The course will be part reading and engaging in critical conversations about how we make new media pieces, and part experimentation as students practice critical making with zines, comics, video essays, podcasts, blogging, and text-based games. Concepts of identity (such as race, representation, gender, intersectionality, etc.) covered in courses like Media, Culture, and Identity (RHCS 105) will be built upon as students learn to create thoughtful new media pieces that interrogate how we position ourselves in the world — and in media. Students are asked to come with a willingness to tinker, build, and create in community.

RHCS 342-01: Rhetoric and Gender Violence — Dr. Mifsud

We explore in this seminar rhetoric’s of gender violence, resistance, and abolition. Taking a rhetorical approach, we explore “tropes” of gender violence, the ways in which social discourses turn attention to gender violence, the ways in which public beliefs about gender get produced through rhetoric and can set or eliminate conditions for gender violence. Drawing from both classical and contemporary rhetorical and cultural theories, we explore how tropes turn attention to definitions, contexts, cases, causes, and effects of gender violence, along with means of resistance to and abolition of gender violence. We bring our explorations to bear on considerations of contemporary gender violence crises in the aspiration of developing a praxis of living that is free from gender violence.

RHCS 412-01: Rhetoric and Religion — Dr. Cavenaugh

This course investigates religions as symbol systems designed to make sense of lived experience. Most religions are by nature rhetorical because they aim to persuade others to adopt a specific worldview, belief system, and code of conduct. This course will explore the persuasive symbolic means by which religious communicators express their understanding of reality, using religious rhetoric in U.S. as a practical exemplar. This course, like all 400-level courses, is designed for upper-level students in their third or fourth year and presumes some familiarity with course concepts covered in RHCS 103 and RHCS 104, although neither course is a prerequisite.

RHCS 412-02: Digital Humanities — Dr. Wigard

Note: This is a 400-level version of RHCS 245 (Digital Humanities). Students registered at the 400-level for this course will be expected to complete an extra project and higher workload than the 200-level. Brings together computational methods with humanities questions. Explores the possibilities and limits of methods such as data visualization, network analysis, and text analysis for analyzing humanities data and modes of communication for scholarly arguments. Asks questions about computation, data, and digital methods.

RHCS 412-03: Rhetoric and Terrorism- Dr. Achter

Today we fight wars against terrorism, and war does not punctuate periods of peacetime in any noticeable way—wars against terrorism are wars that conceivably never end. What we know about permanent war and terror we learn from a Military- Industrial-Media- Entertainment-Network (MIME-NET), a collection point, circulatory machine, and production engine of war-themed TV and movie productions, video games, military design and style, sporting events, military public relations, social media, and so on. What President Eisenhower dubbed the “military industrial complex” evolved and expanded in the connected world of the twenty-first century, creating more revenue opportunities for the culture industry and intensifying the circulation of war’s signs and symbols in public imagination. How did we get here, and how do we make sense of the rhetoric of MIME-NET?