RHET: 2070 Persuasive Stories: The Rhetoric of Harry Potter
Cassandra Bausman
This course explores the potent legacy of Harry Potter, focusing on how the Potter texts and paratexts are interpreted, referenced, and used to ask complex socio-political questions about race, gender, and sexual identities, ethics, social justice, toxic relationships, youth agency and resistance, definitions of heroism, racism and prejudice, class privilege, governmental and journalistic abuses, transphobia, celebrity, and systems and practices of education. The course culminates in a multimodal project.

RHET: 2085 Speaking Skills
Takis Poulakos
This course helps students become confident and effective speakers; assignments include formal presentations and shorter, informal speaking activities; peer and instructor feedback helps students to improve the impression they create as speakers; strengths developed include earning credibility, capturing and maintaining audience interest, and coming across as personable, professional, and confident.

RHET: 2090 Conversation Practicum
Ben Hassman 
Intercultural conversation with international students in small groups or pairs; readings, classroom discussions, and in-class training to develop cultural competence and related skills.

RHET: 2135 Rhetorics of Diversity and Inclusion
Jennifer Stone 
Disability activist, Emily Ladua, asks in her 2021 book Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, And How to be an Ally (our course textbook): “How do we appropriately think, talk, and ask about disability?” This course takes up that question through reading and discussing the research of disability scholars; narratives in disability life writing; representations of disability in the media, and more. For example, why did so many disability advocates protest the film Tropic Thunder (2008), or the film Me Before You (2016), or the series The Big Bang Theory? Answering this question means developing an awareness of how common narratives draw upon ableist assumptions and perpetuate structures of oppression. Historically, the rhetoric of disability has examined how certain rhetorical practices generate harm. We examine how cultural, social, and political influences shape understandings of bodies and difference, leading to rhetorical hierarchies which underpin ideologies which police, control, dehumanize, or otherize. More recently, as Abby Wilkerson notes in Keywords for Disability Studies, disability scholarship and culture has shifted toward a focus on embodiment as “a way of thinking about bodily experience that is not engaged solely with recovering the historical mistreatment of disabled people (67). This course examines how this shift has played out in popular culture, from discussing the documentary My Beautiful Stutter (2021) to exploring how social media influencers use their platforms to change representations of disability. Major Assignments: a social justice project (podcast or video essay) and a reading portfolio. This course counts as credit toward the Disability Studies Certificate Program, as well as the minor in Rhetoric and Persuasion and the Social Justice major. It also fulfills the General Education “Diversity & Inclusion” Core requirement.

RHET: 2350 Forensic Rhetoric
Sonja Mayrhofer
We use the past to make arguments all the time: “It’s your turn to do the dishes. I did them yesterday.” Sound familiar? There is a technical term for dipping into the past to make arguments – forensic rhetoric. You’re not far off if you think of “forensic” evidence being used in court cases to determine guilt. But what about using historical evidence that’s not as clear-cut as DNA samples: what if we have to rely on witness reports about a specific historical event, on somebody’s memories woven together in artful narrative? Can we trust storytelling to give us a realistic, first-person perspective about historical events? Or is it safer to look at evidence from archives, which often lack context that we have to establish through research (in which case, we become storytellers)? These are questions which we’ll explore in this course by looking at major international events such as the Holocaust, as seen through the lens of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus. We’ll also learn about Iowan film archive enthusiast Michael Zahs through the documentary Saving Brinton – an example of local, small-town Iowa history that invites international interest. Students will then get a chance to explore artifacts in UI Special Collections and craft their own stories based on their research findings. Course requirements include short reflective responses, a podcast assignment, and a multi-modal project related to archival research.

RHET:3350 Gaming (the) Systems
Justin Cosner
Knowing that Rhetoric is the art and study of persuasion and meaning making, students examine how games—one of the newest and most important forms of modern media—participate in these rhetorical practices. Students play, discuss, and read about games and how games interact with the cultural discourses surrounding us on their way toward crafting their own rhetorical contributions to the world of games and gaming media. Students play small, indie titles and a few major games as they produce an argumentative article, a game review, a video blog, and finally a game itself. This course is beginner friendly—no prior knowledge of games or design programs is required.

RHET:3700 Advocacy and Sustainability
Consuelo Guayara Sanchez
How do our social and environmental imaginaries impact our relationships with people, the environment, and animals? How do different ways of thinking, experiencing, and/or mitigating climate change by local and first nation communities across the world enrich conventional science and heighten our ability to combat imminent threats to human existence?  These questions are central to this Sustainability and Advocacy course that invites you to explore exciting discursive and material practices that can transform a pessimistic sense of inevitability into more hopeful ways of thinking, interpreting, and acting. This highly interactive class is discussion-based and infused with multimodal assignments.