The Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies seeks to transform students into informed, critical, and ethical actors who contend with the ways symbols shape, and are shaped by, the complex power dynamics of public life.
Through the art and craft of critique, performance, and production, RHCS explores various forms of communication practices (speech, embodiment, media, code) at a range of scales, including the local, national, and global. RHCS emphasizes the rich interplay between history, memory, language, visuality, and digitality in such practices. In this creative process, students, staff, and faculty work toward a justice-oriented community, always reflecting on and addressing the powerful material effects that communication has on diverse publics and the civic responsibility that communicators have to a wide range of communities.
The versatility and rigor of our major allows for graduates to pursue any range of professional interests. Recent RHCS graduates have gone on to pursue careers in law, government and public service, education, politics, media, publishing, non-profit work, marketing and public relations, and entrepreneurial endeavors.