English 5361 is a survey of rhetorical theories from the 5th Century B.C.E. to the present. As a survey course that aims for broad historical coverage, we will study how rhetoric has been theorized and practiced in each of the following periods: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Nineteenth-Century, and Modern/Postmodern.

Engl 5372 focuses on reports as a genre of technical documents that create knowledge and support decision-making. As is typical in any graduate technical writing class, we will approach this topic from a theoretical and applied perspective. The class will provide opportunities to analyze existing documents using rhetorical theory and to produce reports based on primary and secondary research.

English 5361 is a survey of rhetorical theories from the 5th Century B.C.E. to the present. As a survey course that aims for broad historical coverage, we will study how rhetoric has been theorized and practiced in each of the following periods: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Nineteenth-Century, and Modern/Postmodern.

This graduate course will introduce current theory and research in health communication. Although the primary focus will be scholarship in technical communication and rhetoric, the course will also include some texts from other disciplines that take an interest in medicine such as communication studies, sociology, and anthropology.

Specifically, the course syllabus will be built around questions such as the following:

• What is health communication, and how does it relate to other areas of technical communciation research?
• What are the distinct contributions that researchers in technical communication and rhetoric can make to inter-disciplinary conversations about medicine and other aspects of healthcare (i.e. health policy, pharmaceutical research & development, the medical device industry)?
• What research methods are appropriate for studying health communication?
• What obstacles do we face in trying to communicate technical communication research findings to healthcare practitioners and other inter-disciplinary audiences?
• What kinds of accessibility and usability issues surround the design and delivery of health information?

This graduate course will introduce current theory and research in health communication. Although the primary focus will be scholarship in technical communication and rhetoric, the course will also include some texts from other disciplines that take an interest in medicine such as communication studies, sociology, and anthropology.

Specifically, the course syllabus will be built around questions such as the following:

• What is health communication, and how does it relate to other areas of technical communciation research?
• What are the distinct contributions that researchers in technical communication and rhetoric can make to inter-disciplinary conversations about medicine and other aspects of healthcare (i.e. health policy, pharmaceutical research & development, the medical device industry)?
• What research methods are appropriate for studying health communication?
• What obstacles do we face in trying to communicate technical communication research findings to healthcare practitioners and other inter-disciplinary audiences?
• What kinds of accessibility and usability issues surround the design and delivery of health information?

This advanced communication course teaches the rhetorical skills necessary to succeed as a professional in the field you intend to enter. The course assumes a basic understanding of the genres and techniques of workplace writing. It builds on this basic understanding, moving toward advanced mastery of reports and proposals, document design, professional research methods, communication theories, and communication ethics.

This course will help you accomplish the following things:

• Develop an understanding of field methods used in technical communication
• Develop an understanding of key concepts related to user-centered design
• Write responses to readings on field methods
• Explore one aspect of user-centered design
• Complete a Human Subjects Form
• Conduct a small-scale research project based on one of the methods

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to all aspects of writing in the health professions. By the end of the course students will be comfortable producing print and electronic documents from the beginning research stage to their final delivery to the user.

The topic of this course, broadly defined, is the role of written discourse in shaping public perceptions of social issues related to science and technology. We will begin with an introduction to theories that explain how scientific and technical texts interact with their contexts and audiences. After this theoretical introduction, we will move on to address the rhetorical dimensions of specific social issues related to science and technology. General subject areas addressed in this second part of the course might include any of the following: risk communication, health communication, environmental rhetoric, issues of difference (gender, race, culture, ability) in science and technology, and globalization of science and technology. This website is for students enrolled in the online section of the course.

This is a shared space for my onsite and online sections of English 5386: Written Discourse and Social Issues. We'll use this as a place to post information of interest to students in both classes. I'd like to keep it a fairly unstructured place that you can all use to share the products of your own research and learn what others have been up to.