Rhetorical Folds

I conceptualize my teaching as an effort to build students’ skills in critically reading and producing communicative artifacts (whether essays or op-eds, posters or podcasts). Teaching critical reading, for me, means teaching students to notice communication as it takes place around them (in news, advertisements, political messages and interpersonal contexts) and to link these individual instances to the larger historical and political forces that shape them.  It is my hope that building these links will allow those I teach to think about why we communicate the way we do, and how we might communicate more ethically by accounting for historical contexts and participating in the dismantling of inequalities in relations of power.  Teaching critical production means asking students to link their habits of reading with whatever they might go on to produce (whether scientific papers, broadcast journalism, textbooks, films, etc.) as well as learning how to effectively organize their thoughts and adapt them to different situations to better persuade others. Overall, my approach to teaching is premised on the idea that, in Kenneth Burke’s words, “All living things are critics”. I seek to balance a focus on research skills and scholarly rigor with the recognition that everyday habits of critical reading and advocacy are a life skill that is useful across academic disciplines, careers and social and political contexts. I see the rhetorical tradition as a powerful tool for balancing these different interests around a common ethical and conceptual core.