Course description and assignments

This course is an advanced class in writing and rhetorical analysis. We’ll examine the rhetoric of a variety of protest movements to understand how protest intersects with issues of performance and identity. The class will have two main components: course readings (a loose term that will include some documentaries and other forms of visual and oral media as well as texts) for discussion and a short paper and research project on specific protest movements of the students’ choice.

We’ll take as our premises the idea that 1) protest is a rhetorical form worth engaging for an entire semester, and 2) questions of identity are inherently entangled with these rhetorical forms. In the course readings, students will learn to analyze the written and visual rhetoric of protest movements. As a class, with the help of a few classic and contemporary works of performance and rhetorical theory, we’ll examine how protest movements mobilize rhetoric to achieve their ends, paying special attention to how this language embodies the figure of the protester. How do different identities become tied to and articulated through various types of protest? How might the locations and methods of protests affect protestors’ experiences of various aspects of embodiment? How does the performance of identity by protestors affect responses by the public, the media, and state or other authorities?

In the research project, students will choose a particular protest movement to use as an object of study. As a class, we’ll create research questions about the rhetorical aspects of these movements, and develop the research skills and critical vocabularies that will enable us to analyze how identity plays a role in protest. The protest movements we look at in class and in individual projects will not be limited to the US, and students who are interested in protest movements that intersect with questions of gender, race, sexuality, abledness, economic inequality and class, migration, religious identity, of family will have opportunities to explore these forms of identity as they’re articulated through protest.

Course Goals:

ENGL 306 aims to sharpen and build on the writing, analytic, and research skills developed in first year English across several genres of writing. Looking at protest movements will provide abundant opportunities to examine visual rhetoric and public argument in detail. Since much of our work will be self-directed, students will also learn to autonomously plan and execute a research project of significant scope while managing deadlines.