Course Description and Schedule

36:155 Visual Rhetoric      3 s.h.     Biesecker

Pre: 2.5 cum gpa and any course between 36:60-36:67 or 36:70-36:075     

	Sec. 001 restricted to nonmajors during Early Registration (April 22-May 3)
	Sec. 001	10:55-12:10 pm	TR	201 BCSB
	Sec. 01A restricted to majors during Early Registration (April 22-May 3)
	Sec. 01A	10:55-12:10 pm	TR	201 BCSB

With the goal of assisting students in becoming more efficacious consumers of visual rhetorics that impact contemporary American life on a daily basis, this course is divided into three thematic units: The Power of Bodies in U.S. Visual Public Culture, The Power of Place in U.S. Visual Public Culture, and The Power of Memory in U.S. Visual Public Culture.

Throughout all of the units students will be encouraged to address the same question: How is our identification with or felt sense of the nation rhetorically induced and, more particularly, what role does the visual play in the persistent reinvention of our sense of the "American people," of "what is American," of what it "means to be American," or what it means "to do things the American way"? Thus, coupled with the assistance of insights gleaned from assigned readings, students will regularly examine, discuss, and write critically about a vast array of visual texts: for example, from popular press photographs of the President to those of the "criminal"; from representations in various magazines and billboards of "work" and "home" to those of "rural life" and "city life"; from national to regional to local memorials, monuments and museum exhibits.

Students will be required to: attend class regularly, participate in class discussion, complete a midterm examination, and write two short critical essays on visual rhetorics of their own choosing.