Course Description
Rhetoric of Performance
is designed to acquaint students with the relationships between texts and the
contemporary culture that produced the creators of texts as well as the texts
themselves. The texts produced
within any given culture will uphold the status quo or attempt to subvert the
status quo—or perhaps do both at the same time.
Over the course of the semester, students will learn to be
self-reflexive about their practices as consumers of texts and will learn to
produce texts whose elements are drawn from contemporary culture and which
comment upon that culture.
Course Objectives:
-
To understand that a producer of texts and
the texts she produces are shaped by the culture in which both are
embedded;
-
To read texts in light of the culture(s) that
produced them;
-
To understand the ways that texts position
readers in relation to social and political forces operating within a
given culture; and
-
To produce texts that comment on an aspect of
contemporary culture.
