ENGL 6040: Theories of Persuasion
The end is nigh.
The end is now.
The end was already.
Through the prefix post-, this graduate-level seminar explores what comes after the end, which is multiple (many things come to an end), unevenly distributed (things come to end for some and not others) and chronologically out of order (many things have already ended). Peoples have been displaced; species have gone extinct; whole ecosystems are blinking out of existence. The primary [posts] of this course are posthuman (rhetorical) theory and post-apocalyptic fiction. Importantly, both posts engage the after not simply as the end, but as a pursuit. In other words, the post- of the course not only captures what comes after (temporally) but that which we are after—what we are desiring, seeking, persuading into existence. Post- might then also signal particular modes of communication: the postscript amended to a letter sent via the post; a post added to Twitter; a sign for a lost dog nailed to the telephone poll. To post is to leverage modes and media towards some communicative purpose. With grammatical virtuosity, post moves along the prepositional, the nominal and the verbal. The ends and means to be found in post- are as much about what (might) arrive as they are what has departed.
Four key practices constitute the graded portions of this course; participation, presentations, the research binder, and the iterative writing assignment. The first two are pretty straightforward. The latter two demand a little more description. The research binder is a place to do and document your thinking along the course the semester; it’s where you compose and collect the work of the course: reading and writing. The iterative writing assignment (IWA) is the largest course component. In brief, the IWA is an essay written in layers through the semester. Each week, starting midway through the semester, students add to the essay and revise that which they have already composed. The IWA grows (or shrinks) in length while also growing in complexity and nuance as students make their way through the course readings and in response to class discussions and presentations. Feedback (from both the instructor and peers) is likewise iterative. The final form of the IWA is open: it can be a public-facing document like an op-ed or an academy facing text like an academic article or a grant proposal. The purpose and audience of the IWA likewise emerges iteratively.
Because the world is full of its own endings, the reading list for this course sprawls: across genres, identities, and affective registers. The end and the after are too much for one person to bear. Students in this course will, then, compose their own trajectory by selecting from a list of suggested texts. There is, of course, a sequence of shared waypoint readings—theoretical and fictional—that will bring everyone together. What is read is, in part, up for grabs.
Possible readings include: Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50, Eating in Theory, Herland, Glitch Feminism, Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Zone One, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, Habitat, Post York, The Posthuman, Down to Earth, Dead Astronauts, Ambient Rhetoric, Three Californias, Who Fears Death, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, The Mushroom at the End of the World, The Uninhabitable Earth, The Xenofeminist Manifesto, Severance, The Dispossessed, Experimental Practice, Medium Design, A Possible Anthropology.