This course foregrounds the Caribbean as a transnational space, where sexuality, gender, race and class are intimately connected and shaped by colonial legacies and contemporary circuits of globalization.

This course maps genealogies of black insurgency and transnational itineraries of intersectional theorizing, organizing, and praxis from the 20th century to our present moment. Through close study of works by and about black revolutionary migrants, exiles, intellectuals, fugitives, and so-called terrorists, participants will critique and create radical visions for emancipation. Major topics and themes may include black feminisms; queer insurgencies; transnational imaginaries and solidarities; silence and intracommunal violence; accountability and transformative justice. Through collective discussion, writing, and reflection we interrogate visions and strategies of emancipation, and imagine radical futures historically and in our own times.

This course introduces students to the strategies and practices of successful writing at the university and beyond. WRR103H1 challenges students to reflect on and cultivate their strengths as readers and writers as they enter the university. Students will develop their critical reading abilities and written communication skills through meaningful writing projects in diverse genres, including multimodal composition.

Students will learn the fundamentals of report writing, including how to write abstracts and conduct literature reviews as well as qualitative and quantitative research. Students also learn to communicate visually, including how to create tables, charts, and graphs with attention to purpose, audience, structure, style, skills they apply to a formal report and a poster presentation.

When contemporary critics seek to discredit dishonest politicians, they tend to refer to their discourse as “mere rhetoric.” But there is so much more to rhetoric than deception. This course examines the history of rhetoric, the art of persuasion, from its birth in Greco-Roman antiquity to its rebirth in twentieth and twenty-first century thought. In addition to tracking the history of Western ideas about persuasion, we will bring rhetorical theories to bear on vital questions about philosophy, psychology, media, and advertising.

This introductory course focuses on the process and craft of creative writing. Students will study short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry by established writers, and learn to respond to works-in-progress by their peers. A variety of activities will help students generate, develop, and revise a portfolio of original creative work.

Students learn the theory and practice of effective and ethical communication in the workplace, including business, government, and non-profit organizations. Students apply ethical reasoning models to case studies. Students have an opportunity to work directly with a community partner, helping them to solve an industry-specific problem or concern. This experiential learning enables students to work together as a team to develop relevant solutions as they strengthen their written and verbal communication skills.

Designed for and restricted to Rotman Commerce undergraduates, the course reflects the program’s learning goals, which include critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and business and professional communication (oral and written). Students apply business communication theory and ethical reasoning models to business cases. Students have an opportunity to work directly with a community partner, helping them to solve an industry-specific problem or concern. This experiential learning enables students to work together as a team to develop relevant solutions as they strengthen their written and verbal communication skills

This course explores the pivotal role that media plays in our culture. Beginning with U of T rhetorician Marshall McLuhan’s far-reaching ideas about media environments, WRR303H1 takes students on a journey through a wide variety of ideas about media, technology, and rhetoric. Topics include the rhetorical dimensions of social media platforms, the strengths and shortcomings of online activism, the emergence of surveillance capitalism, and the operation of persuasion in dating apps.

This course examines the persuasive power of writing about visual art and texts. Students will analyze a variety of texts about visual images from several disciplines and genres: journalism, informal essays, poetry, and scholarly writing.

This course uses rhetoric, the study of persuasion, to analyze the cultural, political, and scientific importance of plants. We examine Indigenous knowledge related to plants and the environment as well as debates about plant communication, urban tree coverage and inequality, and environmental justice issues. We also explore the social and health benefits of community gardening, horticultural therapy, and forest bathing. Students reflect on their own relation to land as they deepen their knowledge and appreciation of plants and develop expertise in communicating with public audiences through multimodal writing projects (such as podcasts and video essays) and local field trips.

Since its inception, rhetoric has been concerned with persuasion and its relationship to human flourishing. This course brings rhetorical thought into important dialogue with health research, medical practices, and pharmaceutical advertising. Medicalized phenomena—like hypochondria, depression, sexual dysfunction, and death & dying—are all bound up with influence. A rhetorical perspective on health and wellness tracks this influence through networks of individuals, institutions, texts, media forms, genres, and narratives.

Courses on selected topics in Writing and Rhetoric.

Given the health benefits of green spaces for people, how can we achieve more equitable access to such places in downtown Toronto? This is one of the environmental justice issues that we’ll explore in this community-engaged learning course. Through partnerships with environmental groups, students will deepen their knowledge of rhetoric and develop their professional and public writing skills as they create multimodal communication projects such as social media and web content. Through readings, reflection, discussion, and writing projects, students will learn principles and practices for informing and persuading a variety of audiences about pressing environmental issues.

This course introduces students to professional editorial conventions at two later stages of the editorial process. Both stages require analytical skills and sentence expertise. Through stylistic editing, students learn how to improve a writer’s literary style; through copy editing, they learn how to ensure both accuracy and consistency (editorial style).

This workshop-based course teaches students about the creative writing process and the fundamentals of writing fiction specifically. Through readings of fiction in various genres, discussions, creative writing prompts and longer assignments, students learn how storytellers work with setting, character, scenes, structure, point-of-view, style and other elements. Students will learn how to take creative risks and grow through writing fiction, how to develop solid work from shaky drafts, how to be generous yet shrewd editors of their own and others’ work, and how and why to be active in a writing community.

This course introduces students to works by some of the most influential literary journalists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Classes will be devoted to individual literary-journalistic genres: the personal essay, the profile, the polemic, the memoir, literary reportage, and cultural criticism. Students will look closely at key writers who worked across these genres: George Orwell, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates. Over the semester, students will develop and write a feature-length work of literary journalism in a genre of their choice, to be refined through peer workshop and instructor feedback.

This course examines how images and objects communicate with and persuade viewers. Visual rhetoric is part of the broader academic field known as rhetorical studies. This course will introduce students to the “language” of display, exploring questions such as the following: How does physical arrangement, context, and architectural space give voice to the silent object? How are fine art and decorative art objects invested with meaning? Students will be introduced to object-based learning and material culture and learn to analyze and interpret visual grammar in international exhibitions, in auction and exhibition catalogues, in reviews of exhibits, and in museum collections. Objects will include ceramics, jewellery, interiors, architecture, and fashion in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

This course examines features of style and rhetoric in creative writing (fiction and non-fiction prose), professional writing (including AI-assisted writing), and academic writing (published articles, academic blogs, and research-informed social media). A series of questions will frame course themes and concepts. What are the rhetorical effects of the strategies of storytelling observable in the non-fiction prose of fiction writers? What are the unspoken rules and observable patterns in the products of those who write in the professional workplace? What is the impact of AI on the production and reliability of knowledge in the research setting and beyond?

This course guides students in a creative writing process that is engaged with place and time. Classes are held outdoors at various locations in Toronto. Through guided writing activities, discussions, assignments and writing workshops, students learn how writing grounded in and informed by territory can expand their work, adding intimacy, immediacy, authenticity and depth. Readings and techniques are drawn from literary fiction of different genres (e.g., realism, speculative, YA, fantasy), and a range of creative nonfiction. Students are invited to explore any genre.

This course introduces professional editorial conventions at two early stages of the editorial process. Both stages require editors to think critically and creatively as they assess content, organization, and argument. Students learn how to analyze and evaluate these elements, envision possible improvements, and explain these suggestions persuasively.

This course will introduce students to an array of thinkers who scrutinize the history of rhetoric and communication from the standpoints of critical race studies. Over the last decade, scholars working in the field of rhetorical studies have dedicated a great deal of attention to the importance of race to critical interrogations of communication. Black and Indigenous scholars, in particular, have been at the forefront of thinking about communication through the lens of race. From persuasive oratory to recent calls for a rhetoric of sovereignty, the rhetoric of race takes up the intersections of communication, justice, and history. This course provides students with an opportunity to reflect on traditional rhetorical concerns about persuasion and influence in relation to colonialism, systemic racial prejudice, and conceptions of social justice.

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by the Writing and Rhetoric staff. Open only to students who are completing the Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric Program. Applications should be submitted to the Program Director by June 1 for a Fall session course or by November 1 for a Spring session course. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by the Writing and Rhetoric staff. Open only to students who are completing the Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric Program. Applications should be submitted to the Program Director by June 1 for a Fall session course or by November 1 for a Spring session course. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by the Writing and Rhetoric staff. Open only to students who are completing the Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric Program. Applications should be submitted to the Program Director by June 1 for a Fall session course or by November 1 for a Spring session course. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Seminars in special topics designed for students who are completing the Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

Seminars in special topics designed for students who are completing the Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

We will read and write a variety of texts focused on understanding and effecting social change. Students will be encouraged to engage with different theories of social change and an array of writing genres, ranging from journalism to critical theory to fiction. Ultimately, students will focus on one or several key social issues that they wish to write about for their final project.