Semester Reflection

As I noted in the course policy, English 472 is course designed to begin by examining the ancient history of rhetoric before turning to its more recent history and its probable future.

The stated purpose of the course is to familiarize students with a broad overview of rhetorical studies. To do so, we a number of selected read texts that appeared at crucial moments in the rhetorical tradition: the pre-modern, including the question of what is rhetoric, the historical roots of rhetoric, the significance and purpose of rhetorical theory and the relation between rhetoric and philosophy; the moderns, including the relation between enlightenment and modernity; and the postmodern, including the question of what is postmodernity, and postmodernism, and questions of effectivity and performativity.

Finally, I claimed that this course would engage you in the reading and discussion of the works of major rhetorical theorists both ancient and modern. I suggested that if you were to do all the reading and attend class on a regular basis, at the end of the semester you will have a basic understanding of the rhetorical tradition and an understanding in depth of contemporary trends.

What I’d like you to do in this reflection is to reflect upon the ways in which this course fulfilled or did not fulfill it’s stated design and purpose. I will greatly appreciate your feedback because it will help me to better craft future incarnations of this course. So tell me: what worked and what didn’t; what did you enjoy and what did you loathe? What could be done to improve the course?

As noted in class, this is an optional assignment. I will not read these until after I have posted your grade, so feel free to be candid; it will not affect your grade in any way.

Thanks,

KLH