This Advent 2025 semester, the Rhetoric department offers a selection of challenging courses that both provide foundation speaking and listening knowledge and engage you mindfully in upper-level courses on public address and oratory. Our courses this semester fulfill a variety of requirements for the Rhetoric Major, the Rhetoric Minor, and general education requirements.

Browser our offerings below for course information, and see them on the University Registrar's page here.

Don't forget the Registration Dates and Times!
Round One: Sunday, April 13 - Monday, April 14
Round Two: Monday, April 21 - Tuesday, April 22

 

Public Speaking
RHET101AB

Section A: Professor Jamie Capuzza, T/Th 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Section B: Professor Jamie Capuzza, T/Th 1:30-2:45 p.m.
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors. 

*Required for the Rhetoric Major and Minor
*Note: this course has a lab for the first three weeks on Tuesdays from 7:30-8:20 p.m. in duPont Library

RHET101AB
Taught by Professor Jamie Capuzza
Introduction to Rhetoric
RHET201A

T/Th 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Topical survey of the major questions and controversies in rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice, including rhetorical situations, classical canons of rhetoric, the role of rhetoric in civic life, and the relationship of rhetoric to power, politics, law, education, and ethics. Students consider the rights and responsibilities of speakers and critics. Accordingly, readings include selections from a wide array of rhetorical theorists and critics as well as a diverse and open canon of orators and speakers.

*Required for the Rhetoric Major and Minor, and also counts for the Shakespeare Studies Minor

RHET201A
Taught by Professor Sean O'Rourke
Voices of American Women
RHET331A

M/W 3:30-4:45pm

Study of the precepts, theories, strategies, and ethics of argument. Students critically analyze arguments found in speeches, public debates, and controversies, newspaper articles and editorials, television news programs, and scholarly texts. Students write argumentative essays, present argumentative speeches, and engage in class debate.

*Counts for the Rhetoric Major and Minor

*Cross-listed with Women's and Gender Studies

*G7: Encountering Perspectives: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

RHET331A
Taught by Professor Melody Lehn
Senior Seminar
RHET401

W 7:30 - 10:00 p.m.

The seminar is designed to prepare and guide senior Rhetoric majors in the preparation of their senior theses. Weekly class meetings will be devoted to various topics related to their projects, including theoretical and practical problems of research, interpretation, analysis, scholarly writing and speaking, and the forms and standards of documentation and citation. Students will prepare and submit regular written and spoken assignments and read and critique each other’s work. They will deliver a final oral presentation of their completed project.

*Required for the Rhetoric Major

RHET401
Taught by Professor Sean O'Rourke
Oratory Ancient and Modern
RHET491A

M/W 2:00 - 3:15 p.m.
Oratory Ancient and Modern (RHET 491) shows how ancient ideas and techniques influence the modern rhetorical world and contribute to current discussions. The class surveys the various types of oratory and the famous orators found in ancient Greece and Rome and sets them next to prominent orators from the modern world. Persons discussed cross the whole of the Greco-Roman world -- from  Achilles to Pericles and Aspasia, Protagoras and Gorgias, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates and Socrates, Cicero and Caesar, to Jesus, St. Paul -- and then they are joined by post-classical authors such as Shakespeare, Reagan, James Baldwin, JFK, Hitler, Robert Kennedy, Winston Churchill and Nikki Giovanni.

*Counts toward the Rhetoric Major and Minor

RHET491A
Taught by Professor Terry Papillon

Questions about courses? Contact the professor here!