[ATTW-L] tech comm course in a rhetoric department

[Drake Gossi]

Hello everyone,

I am tasked with creating an undergraduate research course in a rhetoric
department. For all intents and purposes, you can think of this course as a
first-year course. However, unlike most courses like this, it's not a
required course. So, while students at the University of Texas at
Austin--where I teach--are required to take a "writing flag" course, it's
not required that they take this specific course (RHE 309K). In other
words, the department of Rhetoric and Writing is in competition with other
departments for students who are looking to satisfy a writing flag
requirement. In sum, the course has to be interesting to an
undergraduate audience. Unsurprisingly, the most popular course of this
sort that's ever been taught there is the rhetoric of Harry Potter.

Now, because I am shooting for a job in a tech comm department when I get
out of the program, I'd like to design a course that performs membership of
the tech comm community. That being said, I was wondering if anyone has a
syllabus of something like this that's been taught before, or fun
assignments that might work in a context like this, or even fun readings
that would be appropriate for an undergraduate audience in a rhetoric
department. I'll take anything in general, although I talk about some
specific questions I'm interested in asking at the bottom of this email.

I'll give you an example idea. A course on the rhetoric of personal
branding could get into issues of reputation management, search-engine
optimization, and content creation. This idea--or a variant on this
idea--is what I'll have to turn to, if I don't find anything else that'll
work better. Rhetoric of the side hustle might be a variant on this idea.

However, the idea doesn't have to be quite as flashy as some of the ideas I
just mentioned. For instance, I have a colleague who's doing something like
the rhetoric of environmentalism, and another colleague who's thinking
about doing something along the lines of the rhetoric of suburbia.

Right now, it's looking like my dissertation is moving in the direction of
entrepreneurialism. Start ups, small businesses, entrepreneurialism, rural
communities--that's the direction I'm currently headed in. I'm so new to
this sub-area of tech comm, though, that I'm having trouble thinking of how
I might sell topics like these to an undergrad audience. So, like I said,
any ideas, readings, assignments, syllabi, etc., that you think might be of
interest to me, please do send them my way. I would be very grateful for
any help.

The assignments don't have to be super traditional or anything. For
instance, these are examples of assignments that might be encouraged:

*Project 1 (20%): digital history of fame*
For this project, you will choose one celebrity to follow over the course
of their (internet) career. You will get to know this person’s audience and
the strategies they use to maintain that audience’s attention and gather
new fans and followers. You will detail a history of this celebrity’s
digital persona and their branding tools.  The essay will be written as a
simple web text HTML file in a program called CodePen, which we will learn
how to do. You’ll submit a link to the project in Canvas.

*Project 2 (20%): analysis of a social media disaster*
Analyze a recent case study of someone whose life was ruined by social
media and narrate the incident through a short video essay (3 minutes).
This could be a celebrity, a private citizen who became famous through a
particular incident, or a corporation or brand. You’ll submit the video to
Canvas and can narrate the story in any style you like.

*Project 3 (20%): choose your own ethos*
For the last few weeks of the semester, you will draw from lessons in
internet celebrity (and disaster) to cultivate your own personal and
professional ethos. You can do this by building LinkedIn and Twitter pages
(and ensuring other accounts are private from employers), or a basic
Wordpress or Squarespace site, depending on your personal needs. Students
choosing the social media creation or curation option will need to write a
report explaining their choices.


However, while the use of digital media is encouraged, and while I will be
in a computer classroom, I would probably have to dial down the writing in
digital environments a little bit, since RHE 309k isn't a writing in
digital environments course. It's more of a Eng 102 type of course--except
one in which assignments like a traditional research paper and an annotated
bibliography would be highly discouraged.

I was thinking about doing a course that turns on questions like: to what
extent are businesses responsible to society? How should businesses or
corporations be limited or regulated for social good? Is starting a
business a more effective tactic for enacting cultural empowerment than
protesting or boycotting? I feel like a class that turned on these question
would work, it's just that, since I literally fell into the topic of
entrepreneurialism just a week or so ago, I have no idea how to make
questions like these work for a undergrad audience in an appropriate way.
No readings. No assignments. I have a few vague ideas and templates, but
that's it. Any help you might be able to offer me would therefore be very
much appreciated--on either this topic (the rhetoric of social justice? but
with a business spin to it?) or another. Anything will help at this point.

Please reply off list at

drake.gossi at gmail.com

Thanks in advance,
-- 
Drake Gossi
Phd Student
University of Texas at Austin
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