WRT 380 - Rhetorics of Gender and Sexuality (4 Cr.)

(GCR-WEC)

Who has the power to determine how we discuss gender and sexuality in the public sphere? How are queer and trans identities produced through these discourses? How do persuasive strategies aid in the formation of subcultures and in the expansion of legal and political rights for LGBTQ2 peoples? In this course, we will examine the language that constructs, normalizes, and regulates gender and sexuality, as well as the social movements that have formed to dismantle these definitions. Through critical analyses of essays, films, zines, and a range of protest writing genres, students will challenge the traditional practitioner of rhetoric as “the good man who speaks well” and participate in the academic recovery of feminist, queer, and trans rhetorics across disciplines, especially as they intersect with race, nation, and ability. Prerequisite: WRT 181 Spring semester, alternating years. Smith.