Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Emphasis on major rhetorical, critical and interpretive theorists and theories of communication; classical, modern and postmodern approaches; focus on methods for researching and writing scholarly work. Pre/Corequisite: 3 units in rhetoric or criticism and COMM 200 (or equivalent).

Your completion of a master’s program in the Communication Studies department means, among other things, that you demonstrate a mastery of various theoretical and scholarly approaches toward research in our field. Like an outstanding chef, you should be comfortable with a range of ingredients, utensils, and techniques if you plan to create intellectual delicacies that are both aesthetically pleasing and beneficial.

In this course, we sample a broad array of rhetorical and critical approaches toward the construction of communication scholarship. In other words, we study approaches that reveal the processes through which individuals and groups make sense of the world, and how social, historical, and cultural forces shape that sense-making process. We are guided by a rhetorical standpoint that does not eschew scientific rigor, but broadens the scholarly process to embrace the power of argument and interpretation to reveal the structures and silences of our world. We seek no grand unifying theories or dispassionate observations in this class. Rather, we celebrate the potential for scholars to be active, engaged, and critical of the worlds they inhabit. Along the way, we will discuss methods of qualitative research.

• Employ, evaluate, and critique various rhetorical frameworks and qualitative research methods

• Demonstrate polished writing, editing, and oral communication skills

• Develop original qualitative scholarship toward the goal of presentation in a professional setting.

Foss, S.K. (2004). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.