Rhetoric (RHETOR)

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Rhetorical approach to reading and writing argumentative discourse. Close reading of selected texts; written themes developed from class discussion and analysis of rhetorical strategies. Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
The Craft of Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Intensive argumentative writing drawn from controversy stimulated through selected readings and class discussion. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
The Craft of Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
Basic principles of rhetoric as applied to the criticism and practice of public speaking.
Fundamentals of Public Speaking: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
An introduction to practical reasoning and the critical analysis of argument. Topics treated will include: definition, the syllogism, the enthymeme, fallacies, as well as various non-logical appeals. Also, the course will treat in introductory fashion some ancient and modern attempts to relate rhetoric and logic.
Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
Introduction to the study of rhetorical interpretation, examining how language and performance generate and communicate meaning, from literature, art, film and politics to visual and material culture.
Rhetorical Interpretation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1996 10 Week Session
This class examines the way in which a distinctively rhetorical concern with persuasion, tropes, topicality, and modes of appeal can be engaged in readings of Shakespearean texts. Using written documents from the period along with contemporary rhetorical criticism and theory, the class analyzes the importance of rhetoric in the production and performance of Shakespeare's plays, in their particular rendering of verbal conflict and the scene of persuasion, and in the analysis of their participation in larger cultural contests over the legitimacy of the prevailing political, legal, moral, or natural order.
Rhetoric of Shakespearean Drama: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018
The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.
Freshman Seminars: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
Theoretical and practical instruction prepare students to vocally address diverse audiences in a variety of situations across multiple media.
Theory and Practice of Public Speech: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2018
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
What is everyone talking about when they talk politics? Do you wish you had an entry point into the conversation? Or a guide to its ABC’s? Do you wonder why everyone else seems to have such strong opinions? Or why your own opinions seem too strong–or not strong enough to go anywhere? Do you like to think about words and meanings and where they come from and how they change? Each week, students will read a selection involving one particular word and also a contemporary instance of it in discussion or debate. By the end of the course, students will understand that the words used in political and legal discourse have a history and philosophy that is worthy of further humanistic (or rhetorical) study.
Big Words in Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021
What is everyone talking about when they talk politics? Do you wish you had an entry point into the conversation? Or a guide to its ABC’s? Do you wonder why everyone else seems to have such strong opinions? Or why your own opinions seem too strong–or not strong enough to go anywhere? Do you like to think about words and meanings and where they come from and how they change? Each week, students will read a selection involving one particular word and also a contemporary instance of it in discussion or debate. By the end of the course, students will understand that the words used in political and legal discourse have a history and philosophy that is worthy of further humanistic (or rhetorical) study.
Big Words in Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
In this class we will consider big words in law that are key to our present, understood as plural and global. Each semester, the course will focus on twelve timely words that demand our attention and critical reflection. We will choose words that are often mobilized in political battles, approaching them not as fixed units of speech but as sites for arguments and visions for the planet we co-inhabit. The objective is not to secure a definition for the word; it is rather to open it up and to gain appreciation for its different layers, operations, and sometimes unrealized meanings. Because law and legal words are themselves contested, we will also consider the differing commitments that people display toward what counts as law for them.
Big Words in Law: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
In this class we will consider big words in law that are key to our present, understood as plural and global. Each semester, the course will focus on twelve timely words that demand our attention and critical reflection. We will choose words that are often mobilized in political battles, approaching them not as fixed units of speech but as sites for arguments and visions for the planet we co-inhabit. The objective is not to secure a definition for the word; it is rather to open it up and to gain appreciation for its different layers, operations, and sometimes unrealized meanings. Because law and legal words are themselves contested, we will also consider the differing commitments that people display toward what counts as law for them.
Big Words in Law: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2020, Fall 2018
Instruction for a small group of students on a topic initiated by those students.
Supervised Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
This course teaches skills necessary to succeed in major-specific research and writing tasks at UC Berkeley. Students read and discuss scholarship in writing studies and rhetoric to develop a framework for understanding the conventions of academic writing and complete a series of research tasks to determine what it means to write successfully in their major. The course culminates in an essay identifying challenges and opportunities specific to writing in a specific academic discipline.
Writing at the University: A Writing Seminar for Transfer Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
A broad consideration of the historical relationships between philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, with special emphasis on selected themes of the classical and medieval periods.
Approaches and Paradigms in the History of Rhetorical Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
A broad consideration of the historical relationship between philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, with special emphasis on selected themes within the early modern and modern periods.
Approaches and Paradigms in the History of Rhetorical Theory II: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2016
An examination of the relations between rhetoric, discourse, and knowledge in selected historical eras, for example the European Renaissance, the Atlantic Enlightenment, or Victorian Britain.
Rhetorical Theory and Practice in Historical Eras: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
Consideration of the rhetoric of hermeneutics or biblical interpretation with special emphasis on the mythical, symbolic, and allegorical language as the bearer of persuasive intention.
Rhetoric of Religious Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2017
A study of how historical knowledge is produced and interpreted. Topics might include narrative and representation, the uses of evidence, forms of historical argumentation, and historical controversies in the public realm.
Rhetoric of Historical Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Examination of the characteristic functions of discourse in and about the natural sciences; with particular examination of the ways in which scientific language both guarantees, and at the same time, obscures the expression of social norms in scientific facts.
Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2020
Introduction to theoretical issues involved in applying rhetorical analysis to philosophical discourse; intensive analysis of selected philosophical works.
Rhetoric of Philosophical Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2019
Study of the terms and means by which we make and defend judgments involving the exercise of aesthetic sensitivity or perceptiveness. Consideration of the relationship between aesthetic qualities and aesthetic value. Discussion of aesthetic criticism as the means by which the capacities and salience of works of art are called to our attention and brought into focus. Topics include questions of taste, expression, and affect.
Aesthetics and Rhetoric: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2014, Summer 2014 Second 6 Week Session
Study and practice of advanced techniques of argumentation for students with well-developed writing skills. Ethical, logical and pathetic appeals; control of register and tone; assessment of a wide variety of real audiences; genre studies.
Advanced Argumentative Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Participants in this course can expect to accomplish two goals: they will become familiar with a fair amount of the two epics attributed to Homer; and they will learn how classical texts are received by later generations, with Homer as the centerpiece example. That is, we will look at the way in which classical texts are transmitted from the past and how they have survived (or have failed to survive) from antiquity into the present; how readers have sought to make sense of them and to locate them in reality; and how Homer’s originally sung texts were changed while still remaining identifiably “Homeric,” and in this way came to constitute a Homeric tradition that continues to flourish today.
Reception of Antiquity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Spring 2013, Spring 2012
Investigation of the rhetorical and cultural principles common to various genres of narrative, both prose and poetic, in nonliterate societies. Mythic, epic and folk narratives considered as well as written works from cultures in transition.
Rhetoric of Narrative Genres in Nonliterate Societies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025
Can you live ethically without following moral norms, that is, norms as these are given institutionally and reinforced by culture and/or convention? The question, which is at least as old as the Cynics, gathered steam again in the nineteenth century starting with Nietzsche, and it remains a vital problem today. Paradoxical though it may seem, some of the staunchest critics of moral systems and moral norms are at the same time powerful advocates of non-normative ethical reflection and action. This course will examine this phenomenon through close study.
Rhetoric of Ethics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2018
This course examines a range of digital media practices including hypertext, interactive drama, videogames, literary interactive fiction, and socially constructed narratives in multi-user spaces. Through a mixture of readings, discussion, and project work, we will explore the theoretical positions, debates, and design issues arising from these different practices. Topics will include the rhetorical, ludic, theatrical, narrative political, and legal dimensions of digital media.
Rhetoric of New Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020, Spring 2018
This course will examine the place and meaning of technology in culture, emphasizing the ways in which technologies shape and inflect social and political interactions. The primary focus will be on the wider reception and perception of technological and cultural shifts as represented in imaginative scientific and cultural works, endeavors and ambitions. This course will then question the conditions for the production and sustainability of these technologies and technological dreams.
Technology and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session
Analysis of rhetorical practice in the context of social and cultural change with particular reference to the historical transition from pre-industrial to industrial society in the west.
Rhetoric, Culture and Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2017, Spring 2016
Examination of philosophical dialogues from Plato to Heidegger. Focus on the interaction within the dialogue, the participation required of the reader/listener, and the relation of such interaction and participation to thinking, speaking and knowing.
Language, Truth and Dialogue: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2018, Fall 2014
An introduction to contemporary modes of reading and interpretation in the humanities, from structuralism through psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on theories of the sign (semiotics). Examples drawn from such fields as contemporary literature, architecture, history, painting, film, and popular culture.
Undergraduate Seminar on the Theory and Practice of Reading and Interpretation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2014
Studies in the history and theory of the rhetorics of place, space, and sites.
Rhetorical Places: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session
This course investigates discourses of the self, both contemporary and historical, in a variety of genres, including philosophy, theory, literature, visual media, and new media, depending on the instructor and year. Topics to be covered may include any of the following: problems of the self, identity (racial, ethnic, gendered), self-expression, self-fashioning, self-destitution, and the limits of the self as an experience or a category. No prerequisites.
Rhetoric of the Self: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
Study of the form and content of fictional narratives. Definition and techniques including voice, point of view, and time orders. Attention to cultural and historical contexts of selected narratives to consider interplay of works, authors, and readerships.
Rhetoric of Fiction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2012, Fall 2004
Examination of the way character is created in drama by repetitive rhetorical patterns and the ways themes are defined by manipulation of such patterns.
Rhetoric of Drama: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of performance studies. While themes may vary, the course considers disciplinary genealogies from the performing arts, the social sciences, and speech act theory to investigate the many ways that humans constitute themselves and their world through performance.
Rhetoric of Performance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2014
Consideration of the relationship between the texture of poetic discourse largely defined by figures of speech and overall poetic structures.
Rhetoric of Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Spring 2001, Fall 1999
Studies in the relationships between poetic theory and poetic practice from Aristotle's Poetics to the present day.
Poetics and Poetry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course examines the complex links between novelistic discourse, society, and politics. Topics to be studied may include the social and political vocation of the and the realist novel; autobiography and the rise of liberal individualism; political censorship; and the role of the novel in imagining the nation.
Novel, Society, and Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
As a common form of interacting, documenting, and informing, the interview plays a central role in the process of social and cultural inquiry. The interview is here not only studied in its popularized use as a form of oral witnessing and of privileged access to personalities. It is also explored in its critical and potentially creative dimensions as part of a mise en scene or a setting in which interviewer and interviewees function as social actors.
The Rhetoric and Politics of Interviews: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2017, Fall 2013
Rhetorical analysis of autobiographical discourse, with specific attention to the evolution of the genre in relation to changing modes of human subjectivity.
Rhetoric of Autobiography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Rhetorical analysis of autobiographical discourse in American cultures, with special attention to the ideology of individualism.
Autobiography and American Individualism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2016
Close examination of the adaptation of written fiction to the cinema. Focus on the problems arising from the transformation of five novels, which will be read, into their filmed versions.
Novel into Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Study of a particular genre (e.g., detective/mystery, horror/thriller, melodrama) with attention to theories of genre in popular culture.
Genre in Film and Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
The study of films from the perspective of directorial style, theme, or filmmaking career. This course may focus on a single or several directors.
Auteur in Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2013, Fall 2010
Classical theories of film by Eisenstein, Arnheim, Kracauer, Bazin, Metz, and others. Only one or two films will be analyzed in great depth to test the power of various theories.
Theories of Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2015
A study of a film topic not covered by the other film categories. This course might focus on a particular cinematic "theme," or a nonhistoric and nongeneric category. Examples: Feminist Film Practice, Gay and Lesbian Cinema, Race and Cinematic Representation.
Selected Topics in Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2018, Fall 2014
Study of narratives and visual cultures of art and its authors, including questions of what is art, who authors it, the boundaries of works and artistic personae, and how aesthetic, economic, and legal regimes of artistic authorship are historicized.
Art and Authorship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2020, Spring 2019
This course surveys methods and theories of visual culture, including the rhetorics and discourses of images (still and moving), media (old and new), display, circulation, value, and interpretation. Topics explored will include: spectacle, reproduction, materiality, time, style, genre, archive, truth-value, and affectivity. Students will learn multi- and interdisciplinary uses of visual materials as objects of analysis, evidence, exchange, and argumentation.
Rhetoric of the Image: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Fall 2013
An introduction to the close analysis and evaluation of television texts. Consideration of a range of examples drawn from classical television series, sitcoms, dramas, news programming, and contemporary reality television. Students learn the narrative, aesthetic, and stylistic aspects of television's story-telling modes and strategies through readings, screenings, short exercises, and a final project consisting of a substantial work of criticism and an oral presentation.
Television Criticism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2018
Studies of the theory and practice of the rhetoric of visual evidence relating to catastrophe. Themes may include witnessing, testimony, the photographic record, news media, and archival knowledge around such subjects as genocide and crimes against humanity, war and other forms of political violence, the AIDS epidemic, natural disaster.
Rhetoric of Visual Witnessing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2019, Fall 2017
What is the role of narrative in science and conversely? How do images supplement or displace these narratives? How have scientific conceptions impacted narrative forms and theories of narrative? How important are images to the rhetoric of scientific persuasion? Finally, how can science itself be narrated or visually represented? This course will examine critical discussions of these questions.
Science, Narrative, and Image: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2020, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session
Examination of the characteristic rhetoric of a variety of manifestations of modern politics. Emphasis on building a theoretical foundation for critically observing and participating in the contemporary political process.
Rhetoric of Contemporary Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2012, Fall 2010
This course charts the discovery and conquest of the New World; it treats the ways in which New World peoples were understood--and exploited--by Europeans. It explores not only questions relating to the origins of New World peoples, but also climate and zonal theories of race, and racial ideas of degeneration and corruption. In examining Europe's multivalent relationship with the "other," the course investigates the legal, moral, and spiritual status of New World peoples.
Rhetoric of Contact and Conquest: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2011, Spring 2002
The rhetorical context of . Examines the tradition of Anglo-American constitutional argumentation in the eighteenth century, its sources, and its implications. Readings include Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, pamphlets of the American Revolution, and Anti-Federalist writings.
Rhetoric of Constitutional Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
This course will explore how the social issue of race in the new American republic shaped the political founding of the United States in 1787. We will investigate perceptions of race at the time of the founding, and try to understand the origins of those perceptions. We will examine how those same perceptions affected the founding and establishment of a new nation and how they have affected our contemporary social and political discourse.
Race and Order in the New Republic: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2020
A survey of the ways in which Americans have discussed their existence as a distinct nation their rights and obligations, and the legitimate modes of political action open to them. Readings cover the 17th through the 20th centuries and may include discussion of sermons, novels, philosophy, social and political theory, autobiographies, declassified government planning documents, Congressional testimony, and films.
American Political Rhetoric: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2019, Spring 2015
This course critically explores key concepts and figures used in the public discourse of European colonialism to justify territorial expansion in the 19th century such as "race," "culture," "civility," and "the Orient" and their disturbing legacies for the knowledges, practical projects, and problems of contemporary postcolonial societies in a globalizing world.
Discourses of Colonialism and Postcoloniality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2013
Investigation of major 19th and 20th century works of fiction in which political stances are exploited as dominant themes; close reading of authorial viewpoints and rhetorical strategies.
Rhetoric of the Political Novel: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
Study of the textual strategies of important works of modern European and American political theory from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
Rhetoric of Modern Political Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2015, Spring 2013
Study of the textual strategies of important works of 20th century European and American political theory.
Rhetoric of Contemporary Political Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
Close study of selected works of modern political theory, including debates over the nature and interpretation of political theory and the role of the political theorist. Specific themes and readings vary from year to year.
Advanced Problems in the Rhetoric of Political Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2014, Fall 2011
This course explores the development of one or two theorists or an important theme or issue, with close readings of major texts as well as attention to important commentators.
Great Theorists in the Rhetoric of Political and Legal Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2019, Fall 2012
This course concentrates on aspects of 20th century political, social, and legal theory that are too complex to be treated comprehensively as one section of the courses in modern theory.
Great Themes in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Political and Legal Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
The application of rhetorical methodology to all categories of legal texts.
Introduction to the Rhetoric of Legal Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Through close readings of and about law and literature, the course explores the role of language in both law and literature and the relations between law, language, and literature. Focus may be on particular historical periods, authors, or law-related themes.
Law, Language, and Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2009
Rhetorical methodology applied to close analysis of the argumentative framework of important works in modern legal theory.
Rhetoric of Legal Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2013, Spring 2012
Consideration of basic philosophical issues related to the political and moral foundations of the law.
Rhetoric of Legal Philosophy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Summer 2022 8 Week Session
Examination of the role of rhetoric in the legal and political thought of a particular era or culture. Course may compare societies or periods. All foreign texts will be studied in English translation.
Rhetoric in Law and Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Thorough consideration of particular rhetorical themes in the field of legal theory, legal philosophy, and legal argumentation.
Advanced Themes in Legal Theory, Philosophy, Argumentation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
Thorough consideration of particular rhetorical themes in the fields of contemporary law and legal discourse. Sample topics include entertainment law, First Amendment law, copyright law.
Advanced Topics in Contemporary Law and Legal Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2016, Spring 2012
Analysis of the ways in which political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists and psychologists establish the authoritativeness of their claims. Focus is on the presentation of data as fact, the use of quantitative methods, and other "strategies" through which social knowledge is transformed into objective information.
Rhetoric of Social Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2017
Study of the textual strategies whereby the masses and mass culture emerge as objects of anxiety, hope, and scrutiny for social theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Problem of Mass Culture and the Rhetoric of Social Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2019, Fall 2011
Rhetorical analysis of theorists from Durkheim and Weber, as well as Marx, Ricardo and Bentham, to contemporary representatives of social and economic thought.
Rhetoric of Social Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2010, Fall 2007
Science in public takes different shapes. It is defended as universal knowledge essential to human thriving. It is critiqued as a particular form of knowledge that does not take stock of the historical and social conditions imposing on its claims. It is dismissed or vilified as false or fake. How then does modern science relate to social and political values? Can and should scientific facts be independent of these values? In what ways are the sciences constitutive of modern publics and republics? Should publics decide not only on the value of scientific projects, but on the truth of scientific claims? Through historical and contemporary case-studies and analyses, this course seeks to approach, investigate and refine these questions.
Science and Public: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2014, Fall 2010
Where did the first collections originate? Why did people begin to collect? How did--and do--museums and museum collections contribute to the definition of the cultural values/power of elite groups? How do we define ourselves--as citizens, as members of a discipline or tribe, as nations--with reference to collections? What values/ideologies structure the debates and conflicts over definition, meaning, and ownership of collections? These are questions we will try to answer in the class.
Rhetoric of Material Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2020, Spring 2016
This course examines the centrality of sexual difference and sexual exchange to the structuring of societies, cultures, and political life. Possible topics include theories of desire and corporeality; the figure of woman as object of exchange in historical and contemporary contexts such as Sati, prostitution, surrogacy and IVF, and the global traffic in female labor; and an examination of how sexual difference functions as a blind-spot in theories of culture, society, and economy.
Rhetorics of Sexual Exchange and Sexual Difference: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018
How does one become more aware of oneself as mover, doer, learner, knower? How does one learn? Does one learn to do things with language - to read, to write, even to think - in the same ways as one learns to move? In this class, we will consider these sorts of questions through experiences with and responses to very basic movement lessons and to academic readings, as well as through writing and discussion. The primary aim is for you to become more aware of the way you move and the way you use language and, through this awareness, to become more skilled at what you want to say and do.
Class meets 2 hours studio and 2 hours seminar per week.
Language and Movement: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session
Group instruction and investigation of topics not accommodated in regular course offerings.
Special Topics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018
Group instruction and investigation of topics not accommodated in regular course offerings.
Special Topics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2020
Independent study under guidance of a faculty director culminating in a written thesis. Required of all rhetoric majors desiring to earn the A.B. degree with honors.
Honors Thesis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
Independent study under guidance of a faculty director culminating in a written thesis. Required of all rhetoric majors desiring to earn the A.B. degree with honors.
Honors Thesis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
Supervised field work in an off-campus organization or business. Field work should be relevant to themes or topics covered in the undergraduate curriculum studied in the department. Additional meetings with faculty sponsor required. Weekly journals and a final paper also required.
Field Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Instruction for a small group of students on a topic initiated by those students.
Supervised Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Summer 2019 8 Week Session, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session
For special projects that cannot be otherwise accommodated.
Supervised Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
An introduction to the questions around which classical rhetorical theory and practice are organized. Through analysis of materials drawn principally from the Ancient Greek and Roman periods, possibly including later revivals of classical rhetoric, the course will examine the formation of rhetoric in the West as an intellectual stance from which to practice a range of related fields, including but not limited to philosophy, history, literature, politics, religion, law, science, and the arts.
Classical Rhetorical Theory and Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
An introduction to the questions around which contemporary rhetorical theory and practice are organized. Through an analysis of materials drawn principally from the 18th century to the present, the course will examine rhetorical inquiry in relation to critique as well as the disciplinary construction of knowledge-domains. The course will attend to rhetoric in relation to a range of fields, including but not limited to philosophy, history, literature, politics, religion, law, science, and the arts.
Contemporary Rhetorical Theory and Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2019
What do we do when we do rhetoric? Seminar addresses methods, themes, and issues in the changing field of investigation known as rhetoric. Required for second year doctoral students in Rhetoric.
Rhetoric Graduate Proseminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
What are the possible forms of long-form (dissertation) research in the rhetoric department? Required for third-year doctoral students in Rhetoric.
Rhetoric Graduate Research Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2020, Fall 2018, Spring 2015, Spring 2013, Spring 2011
A close reading and discussion of the major texts of modern aesthetics, from the 18th century to the present, with emphasis on the Continental tradition of Kant, Adorno, and Derrida.
Aesthetics as Critique: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
This course investigates both the concept of history and the practice of historiography, using an engagement with the literal and metaphoric archives of the past to consider their empirical and philosophical claims on the present. While the methods, themes, and historical reach may vary, the course requires Rhetoric graduate students to investigate pre-1900 material in some form and to consider both the pragmatics of conducting historical inquiry and the interpretive frameworks that structure them.
Rhetoric and History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 1999, Fall 1997
Advanced investigation of the rhetorical dimensions of various modes of discourse. Specific topics to be announced.
Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Nonfictional Prose: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Fall 2007, Spring 2006
Advanced investigation of the rhetorical dimensions of various modes of discourse. Specific topics to be announced.
Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Political Discourse: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Advanced investigation of the rhetorical dimensions of various modes of discourse. Specific topics to be announced.
Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Legal Rhetoric and Philosophy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Advanced investigation of the rhetorical dimensions of various modes of discourse. Specific topics to be announced.
Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Rhetorical Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2012
A theoretical examination of a film topic which falls outside the purview of traditional categories of film analysis, such as "genre," "history," or "theory." Examples: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, The Essay Film, Feminist Film Practice, Cinema and the Phantasmagoria of History.
Special Topics in Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2008
This course studies various modes of rhetorical discourse. Specific topics to be announced.
Special Topics in Rhetoric: Limited study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Spring 2021
A study of the visual image as a mode of discourse, together with an analysis of the terms in which images have been interpreted and criticized. Focus may be on the rhetoric of a particular image or set of images, or on more broadly theoretical writings about image.
Rhetoric of the Image: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Summer 2018 3 Week Session, Summer 2017 3 Week Session
Open to qualified graduate students wishing to pursue special topics under the direction of a member of the staff.
Special Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
Open to graduate students who have passed their Ph.D. qualifying examinations.
Directed Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2019
This is a required course for all undergraduates participating in the Art of Writing Departmental Tutoring program at UC Berkeley. This program supports students taking R&C in Comparative Literature, English, Film & Media, and Rhetoric. Upper-level majors with proven writing skills participate in discipline-specific composition and pedagogy workshops and in turn, provide one-on-one writing help to students taking R&C courses in participating departments. Tutoring is targeted and disciplinary-specific, responding to the parameters of R&C instruction and the challenges faced by R&C student writers in each department.
The Art of Tutoring Writing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2017, Fall 2015
Instruction in teaching argumentative writing and rhetorical analysis.
Teaching Rhetoric: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual study for degree or language examinations in consultation with staff member.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2018, Spring 2016
Individual study in consultation with faculty director as preparation for degree examinations.
Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]