I’ve written a couple times in the past about the relationship of rhetoric to the liberal arts. I was in a conversation the other day that expanded my perspective. Anthony DiRenzo, David Franke, and I met to discuss our upcoming collection on building professional and technical writing programs. Anthony has an interesting piece connecting the contemporary emergence of PTW programs to Francis Bacon’s take on the humanities. Bacon was looking for a closer connection between the humanities, professions, and the marketplace than what we ended up with.

Professional Writing emerges at a time when there is a demand for the humanities to reconnect to cultural and professional demands. This does not mean becoming a "servant" to corporate interests, but it does mean struggling to understand how the knowledge and methods of the humanities connect to the professional lives our students will live: a re-emphasis and updating of the foundation of the liberal arts as those skills that are necessary for the professional lives of free people.

Today my college voted to approve the restructuring of General Education or GE (see previous post). One thing this means is that instead of a "Literature" category, we will now have a "Humanities" category, which reflects the structure of the SUNY-wide GE program. While it was difficult for our program to imagine a GE before, now we can pursue a GE course. This is important for us on several levels. First, GE courses are a good site for recruitment of majors and minors. Second, by having a GE in our program we can participate in GE without sacrificing our students interests. That is, in the past, we had to choose between teaching a literature GE in English or FYC and teaching a course for our PWR majors. Now we can forsee doing both.

This will also give us the opportunity to confront the belief that writing is a contentless curriculum. I can imagine plenty of content from history of rhetoric to new media rhetoric. Indeed there are a slew of potential "Rhetoric of _______" courses. However, to make something that is appealing to students, I think it’s best to leave the R-word out of the title. Title aside, the idea would be to have a course that would allow for some discussion of the discourse of the humanities, just as we might talk about scientific rhetoric. It would allow for some historical perspective and would also incorporate a contemporary theme or angle.

For example, a course on style would be able to be grounded in the "style vs. substance" binary, the historical role of style in rhetoric, cultural-ideological notions of style, and the contemporary interest in style (e.g. Style network, makeovers, HGTV, etc.). In short, there would be plenty to discuss. Style works because it is unarguably an element of rhetoric, as opposed to a course on work or political speeches or television or the environment, which some folks might claim as the province of another department (here I am thinking about objections that might be raised in the curriculum approval process).

A course on invention or audience might fly in a similar way.

In any case, here’s my "bold" move. Many GE courses at the College are taught to 75-100 students. GE’s in English are capped at 30 (smaller if they are Writing Intensive). I’ve taught several of these. Sometimes you can get discussion going, but a fair amount of it can end up as lecture. Usually you have a handful of students who participate and the rest just don’t. In short, I’m not sure that you gain all the much having 30 as opposed to 90 students. Obviously there are some things, like class discussion or in-class group work, that may not scale well.

However I would balance this by teaching the course as a hybrid. As I see it, online environments are enriched by moving from 30 to 90 students. So I would approach it as a 50/50 hybrid. 75 minutes in class each week–one hour lecture with 15 minutes for discussion. This could be podcast, though the attendence issue could be secured with a few quizzes. In evaluating the online portion, I think you’d have to go with a "participation" approach (i.e., expect a certain number of posts with some general consideration for quality).

Ideally, I’d pair the course with several hybrid composition courses, which would meet in a parallel time slot (i.e. my class meets 75 min on Tuesdays; the others at the same time on Thursdays). The courses would be independent but those instructors would be able to draw off the material in the GE course and use it as a basis for writing assignments, much like what already occurs with learning communities.

This would help to maximize the benefit of both courses. In addition, they could share the online, hybrid portion of the course. The larger audience of the GE course would provide an excellent audience for writing assignments in CPN. As a GE with a foundation in rhetoric, my course would naturally provide conceptual tools that would be of use in composition course. In turn, the writing assignments in the comp course would help students develop their understanding of material in the GE class.

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