Teaching
A selection of courses I’ve taught, most recent first.
English 460: The Scope of Rhetoric
From the syllabus: “Our popular culture is riven by deception. Fake news, propaganda, alternative facts: these days, it seems like everyone’s a liar or being accused of lying. The term ‘rhetoric,’ historically associated with what Aristotle called ‘the available means of persuasion,’ is today regarded with suspicion. In this course, we’ll investigate various forms of deception and how they function rhetorically. Our vulgar word for some of those forms is ‘bullshit,’ which is a useful term to start from: what’s the difference between bullshit and a lie? Do we believe in Plato’s concept of a ‘noble lie’? How do we feel about unreliable narrators? And perhaps most importantly: how can thinking about deception help us understand what constitutes truth, honesty, and forthrightness?”
English 509: Rhetoric and Empire
From the syllabus: “This seminar uses the concept of empire as a way to investigate the problematic notion of a Western-oriented classical rhetorical tradition and canon. While rhetorics ostensibly rely on persuasion, they are often sustained or advanced by unequal relations of imperial power and domination. This seminar proposes that those unequal relations of power merit investigation: the rhetorical tradition does not exist outside of politics or materiality. For those reasons, this seminar investigates texts from the classical rhetorical tradition in their historical and material contexts.”
English/DTC 561: Studies in Technology and Culture
The Digital Technology and Culture program used to offer a moribund course, Electronic Research and the Rhetoric of Information, centered around library catalogs and online discourse. I rebuilt that course as DTC 356: Information Structures, and it has been in near-continuous rotation in the DTC curriculum since. This seminar is what that course grew into for the DTC graduate certificate: it proposes that digital environments are no less material than any other. The refocused work of the course investigates how practices of archiving, privacy, coercion, surveillance and persuasion operate in those information structures. I present here the syllabus and assignment documents embedded within a thematically appropriate apparatus.
DTC 375: Language, Texts, Technologies
Adapted from the syllabus: This course explores the relationships among technology, communication, and composing from a historical perspective, with a particular focus on various forms of literacies. Many of the issues of current concern to people who study and work with digital technologies and culture have deep historical roots, and writing and computation are technologies that are thousands of years old. We use face-to-face and online discussions and collaborative work across multiple media to explore connections between today’s digital culture and its material history and practices.
Paralipsis: First Year Composition
English 101 is my favorite course. First year composition reaches more students than the above courses combined and is staffed on the reasoning that tenured faculty are too expensive to teach it: a claim about how universities price instruction, not about the value of the course. My revision of first year composition as curriculum, pedagogy, and method is on the projects page.