Laughter Syllabus

RHE 309K: Rhetoric of Laughter SP16

Unique: 43245
M/W 12:30-2:00pm, PAR 104

Instructor: Dr. Aaron Zacks

Office/Hours: PAR 19/T 3:30-5, W 11-12:30
Resources:
Required Texts:
Everything’s An Argument. 6th or 7th Ed. Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012/16. (Amazon)
Easy Writer (EW). 5th Ed. Lunsford. Longman, 2014. (Amazon)
All other course content will be made available via Canvas and UT Libraries.
RHE 309K Course Description:

As with all classes taught in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing, the primary aim of Rhetoric of Satire is to improve our ability to interpret and participate in the world around us. We achieve this by learning about and practicing the arts of communication and argument­making. The skills learned in this class are applicable to all of your academic and professional endeavors. This class will teach you to:

● read critically;
● identify, evaluate, construct, and organize effective arguments;
● revise your own writing
● advocate a specific position responsibly;
● conduct library and web-­based research and document sources;
● produce a clean, efficient writing style and adapt it to various rhetorical situations; and
● edit and proofread formal prose.

RHE 309K carries the Writing Flag and this class will require you to write texts of all kinds from
formal papers to Forum comments and Tweets. This class puts an emphasis on the art of revision and, over the course of the semester, you will receive constructive feedback on your writing from your instructor and classmates.

This section of RHE 309K is taught within the Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) of the
Department of Rhetoric and Writing (DRW). Therefore, this class seeks to foster digital literacy and
will require you to leverage technology in service to making arguments.

This course requires active participation both in and out of class. Students are expected to come to class
ready to engage with assigned materials and classmates. Students will present to the class on multiple
occasions.

 

Rhetoric of Laughter Course Description:

Laughter can be a powerful, rhetorical tool, but intentionally harnessing and leveraging its power to make clear, persuasive arguments – this is tricky business.

What makes us laugh? What doesn’t make us laugh? How do we laugh? How does our laughter sound? When do we laugh, and when do we hold laughter back? Why do we laugh? What does it mean when we laugh, or don’t laugh? From a rhetorical standpoint, what work can laughter perform in conversations about issues both trivial and important? Also, why does laughing make us feel good? (Is that feeling, itself, an argument?! To whom? From who?)

In Rhetoric of Laughter, we will address these and other questions through personal reflection on contemporary, laughter-inducing texts before mulling over laughter’s role in public discourse.

 

Digital Literacy:
The DRW is committed to developing digital literacy throughout its curriculum. My classes require students to learn and leverage tools like Google Drive, Evernote, Flipboard, and Skitch.

Submission Instructions: 

Many assignments will require you to work in more than one application or computer program. For example, you might compose some text in Drive or Word and revise it with a partner before pasting the final text into a graphics editor like pixlr or Skitch. In this sense, such assignments are multi-layered and, therefore, will lead inevitably to file format conversion problems. To avoid such annoyances, you’ll submit all of your work in this course — with the possible exceptions of audio-visual projects — as PDFs.
Grading:
Unless otherwise indicated in the prompt, Exercises (EX) will be evaluated on a 10-point scale divided equally between two criteria: Depth of Intellectual Engagement and Thoroughness of Completion. FWs will be scored out of 100 points according to the rubrics attached to their prompts.
This class uses Plus/Minus grading according to the following scheme:
Letter
%
GPA
A
94-100
4.00
A-
90-93
3.67
B+
87-89
3.33
B
84-86
3.00
B-
80-83
2.67
C+
77-79
2.33
C
74-76
2.00
D+
67-69
1.33
D
64-66
1.00
D-
60-63
0.67
F
0-60
0.00
Grade Breakdown:
Exercises (EX)
40%
Formal Writing (FW)
60%
FW Breakdown:
WAILA 1st submission
10%
WAILA 2nd submission
20%
WAYLA 1st submission
10%
WAYLA 2nd submission
20%
WAWLA 1st submission
10%
WAWLA 2nd submission
30%

Also see: