Rhetorics of American Pop Culture
First Year Writing Seminar [FWS] | Boston College | Fall 2022
Prefer a Google Doc version of this syllabus? You can access that here.
[Rhetoric] means simply that language is more than it seems. Rhetoric scholars begin from a belief that language is not something we can step out of— we are shaped by words always. Furthermore, language is not just about words. What we say and what we hear are wrapped up in networks of assumptions about how to be in the world and how to communicate about it. Those assumptions prescribe a sort of structure that guides what we say and how we say it. (Phyllis Ryder, “Rhetorical Analysis in the Real World”)
👋 Welcome to Rhetorics of American Pop Culture!
This course, as part of Boston College's First Year Writing Program, takes a rhetorical approach to reading and writing about American popular culture. This means that we will explore the way that popular culture works in the world, grounding our analysis in rhetorical concepts like purpose (exigence), audience, rhetor (writer/stance), constraints, context, medium, genre, ethos/pathos/logos, style, context (kairos), and writing process. Additionally, this course foregrounds an intersectional approach to the study of American popular culture, grappling with the ways that popular culture engages with structural forces like nationality, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. This course explores how rather than “mere entertainment,” popular culture is both an indicator of cultural values and a producer of cultural meaning. Because this course is heavily student-centered, it assumes that you are coming into the class with your own interests, questions, and passions.
Our Guiding Question
How does pop culture operate rhetorically to construct identities and communities?
Other Course Questions
What does it mean to read rhetorically?
What is the relationship between identities, cultures, power, and discourse?
What is culture?
What is the relationship between our everyday lives and culture?
What is the difference between high and low culture?
How do texts, context, audience, and meaning interact?
What is a rhetorical situation?
How do our subject positions orient us towards culture?
How do our subject positions affect our role as producers, readers, consumers?
How has rhetoric constructed contemporary understandings of race and ethnicity?
How do popular culture texts speak to each other in ways that reinforce or challenge rhetorics of the “American Dream”?
How is class circulated and signified in culture?
How do popular displays of class work to reinforce and/or disrupt normative expectations of bodies, work, and pleasure?
How does rhetoric reinforce or challenge patriarchy?
How does the genre of “reality” television influence our understandings of authentic gender performances?
How are normative understandings of gender and family constructed and challenged in popular culture?
This course is student-centered, collaborative, and studio-based. This means that your engagement is not only crucial for your own learning and development as a writer, but key to the course's success overall. If you've never participated in a workshop or studio-based course before, the type of learning that this course requires might feel a bit different at first— there will be minimal teacher-directed discussion so that the bulk of our time together can be focused on your work— individually and in community with one another.
As a FWS course, Rhetorics of American Pop Culture aims to provide you with a solid foundation to the type of writing, research, and inquiry expected at the university level. You'll gain transferable skills in reading, writing, and research— meaning that you can expect this course to develop you as a critical reader, analytical writer, and academic researcher, no matter your major or ultimate career trajectory.