English 758: Topics in Rhetoric and Writing

War and Peace in the Global Village: Rhetorical Acts Post 9/11
3 Credits, Fall 2008, Thursdays 6:30-9:00
A bachelor’s degree and Graduate Student Status are prerequisites.

Instructor: Kevin.Brooks@ndsu.edu
Phone: 231-7147 (w); 293-1065 (h)
Office: 322F1 Minard Hall
Office Hours: M-F, 9-5.
Website: http://virtualpeacegarden.com

Texts:
Baudrillard, Jean. The Spirit of Terrorism And Requiem for the Twin Towers.
Blitz, Michael, and Mark Hurlbert. Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age.
Giroux, Henry. The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.
Haraway, Donna. The Haraway Reader.
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. War and Peace in the Global Village.
Ulmer, Gregory. Electronic Monuments.

Additional readings online. Considerable reading of secondary material you find relevant to your work.

Course Description
What does 9/11 have to do with our rhetorical acts, the way we communicate? Maybe nothing, certainly not a causal something. But 9/11 as a "thunder," as an "event," maybe the event we use to mark the day the emergence of the global village was announced (or at least accepted). It may be the day that world went online to find out what was really happening: a watershed event for global, networked, electronic communication.

Course goal 1: to answer these questions.
1. How might we (as rhetoricians) interpret 9/11? We will look at how others have interpreted WPGV generally, 9/11 specifically, and then add our voices to the conversation.
2. How might we act rhetorically and materially: engage an issue through a MEmorial (virtual engagement) and through community (civic engagement)?
3. How might we teach in a way that acknowledges and builds on our interpretations and actions, post 9/11?

Course goal 2: to explore the tools of communication, to expand the walls of the classroom.
1. Do not use Microsoft Word--ever. I have already broken this rule in prepping for the class, but give it a good try.
2. Do most of your class work online, through the virtualpeacegarden.com, a class wiki (tba), or your own preferred online spaces.
3. Experiment with new ways to respond, interpret, argue, act rhetorically, act materially, teach.
4. Draw others to the website, interact with others online, including Second Life inhabitants.

Course goal 3: identify your goals, and work towards them in this class.
1. As a student.
2. As a future professional.
3. As a (post) human being.

Course goal 4: understand the methods and practices of the critical and post-critical traditions.
1. McLuhan, Baudrillard, Ulmer, perhaps Haraway work in the post-critical tradition. How do they research and write? What are the effects, benefits, limitations?
2. Kellner and Giroux work in the critical, dialectical tradition. How do they research and write? What are the effects, benefits, limitations?
3. Is it possible to work at the interface, the intersection of critical and post-critical? What would that mean? What do these terms mean?

The emergent goal is (I hope) to find, adapt, or develop definitions of rhetoric(s) and poetic(s) that are relevant and useful for thinking about and working with new media. The course, as it has evolved in my thinking, is also very much about the rhetorics and poetics of scholarship—as influenced by growing importance of new media.

The final products of the class, I hope, will cohere as a "book" of sorts--our MEmorials collected online through this site or a class wiki, but also accessible through Second Life as a museum of MEmorials, not unlike the International Peace Garden's contemplative locations, or like visiting Washington DC and visiting the many monuments there.