A chronological survey of the persuasive communication and writing strategies Black women have used towards the project of empowerment and activism in speeches, essays, poetry, drama, and novels.

An interdisciplinary introduction to the culture and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. Examines ethnic communities such as Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Asian Indian, and Native Hawaiian, through themes such as immigration, labor, cultural production, war, assimilation, and politics. Texts are drawn from genres such as legal cases, short fiction, musicals, documentaries, visual art, and drama. For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Political propaganda often persuades through conspiracy theories that create suspicion and fear. This course examines the rhetorical strategies of conspiracy-driven propaganda from the 20th and 21st centuries. By examining the arguments, evidence, images, myths, and tropes that animate propaganda and conspiracy theories, we will identify how they are circulated to inflame our emotions, exploit our prejudices, and bias our decision-making.

Iconic American sites such as Monticello, Walden Pond, and our network of national parks have inspired generations of Americans. But displacement is just as much a part of our national identity. In this class we will analyze fiction, journalism, film, paintings, photographs and other elements of visual culture that document the stories of Indigenous dispossession, housing discrimination, Japanese internment, redlining, gentrification, and homelessness. 

An introduction to critical frameworks and methods for exploring how rhetorics construct, preserve, and augment social understandings of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class and more. Areas of focus may include: cultural practices of writing, digital rhetorics, performance, popular culture, material rhetorics, visual rhetorics, race and ethnicity. Specific themes and topics may vary.

This class examines the history of voluntary, coerced, and forced migration in the U.S., tracing the paths of migrating groups and their impact on urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. We'll dig for cultural clues to changing attitudes about migration over time. Photographs, videos, books, movies, government records, poems, podcasts, paintings, comic strips, museums, manifestos: you name it, we'll analyze it for this class.

This course provides an introduction to film studies through an examination of American film throughout the 20th & 21st centuries. We will learn basic film techniques for visual analysis, and consider the social, economic, and historical forces that have shaped the production, distribution & reception of film in the US Examples will be drawn from various genres: melodrama, horror, sci-fi, musical, Westerns, war films, documentary, animation, etc.

Students in Making Books (ENWR 3810) will gain a broad view of book editing and publishing in the 21st century, as well as hands-on experience with developmental, substantive, and copy editing. Appropriate for aspiring publishing professionals, but also for anyone who simply wants to better understand the often-hidden lives of books-in-progress, or to take their writing skills to a new level. 

This course covers contemporary literary editing techniques and teaches students how to publish book-length works using modern print and electronic processes. The course may require students to purchase/lease computer software in addition to textbooks.

This seminar offers an interdisciplinary approach to disability in the social, cultural, political, artistic, ethical, and medical spheres and their intersections. It also introduces students to critical theory concerned with the rights of the disabled.