Rhetoric and Writing Studies Courses

Program of study

As a rhetoric and writing studies major or minor, you’ll design a program of study that fits your interests and needs. After completing Introduction to Professional Writing, you’ll fulfill your degree requirements by selecting from our two-year course menu, which forecasts the flexible and innovative course offerings available to all rhetoric and writing studies students.

Note: Rhetoric and Writing Studies students are encouraged to take the program’s special topics courses (ENGL 4060 and ENGL 4080) twice for credit.

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Courses

ENGL 3050–Introduction to Professional Writing

A writing course designed to help students at the junior or senior level develop reader-centered writing strategies applicable to writing in workplaces and other dimensions of civic life. Projects may include such genres as resumes, proposals, reports, instructions, and user testing in print and digital forms. This course is approved as a writing-intensive course which may fulfill the baccalaureate-level writing requirement of the student’s curriculum.

ENGL 3060–Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture

This course investigates rhetorical theory and concepts as tools for analyzing consumer, corporate, organizational, and popular culture.

ENGL 4060–Topics in Textual Production

This advanced writing course emphasizes the study and production of specialized genres and media, with attention to the impact of technology on composing, designing, and publishing expository texts. Course may feature such topics as web authoring, multimedia writing, composing for print-based publication, editing and style, or proposal/grant writing.

Topics include:

  • Digital rhetoric and writing
  • Proposals and pitches: grant writing for professionals
  • Style, identification, and persona in professional writing
  • Structure, purpose, and transfer in written communication
  • Writing for social media
  • Writing in the sciences

ENGL 4080–Special Topics in Rhetoric and Writing

This writing intensive course examines contributions from scholars working in various subfields and specializations in the field of rhetoric and writing studies, with emphasis on the relationship of composition and/or rhetorical discourse to critical theory.

Topics include:

  • Parody and rhetoric
  • Visual rhetoric
  • Black women’s rhetorical traditions
  • Rhetoric and law
  • Usability studies
  • Rhetoric of science

Course offerings

Check the course offerings to see when these courses will be taught.