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.

Journalism largely goes unconsidered as a subject for literary analysis, the writing dismissed as formulaic and artless. But from the genre’s inception, there have been writers who approached it as a literary endeavour, committed to not just telling true stories about the world around us but doing so in ways that captivate and engage a reader’s imagination, with all the nuance and precision that literary techniques can afford. In this course, we will read and consider canonical works of journalism from the last 75 years, discussing them as literary works as well as exploring the reporting methods they draw on and the ethical questions they raise. Students will have a choice of assignment tracks, and either develop their own literary reporting projects or write analyses of the works we study.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

Given the climate crisis, how do environmental groups use communication to advance their aims? In this community-engaged learning course, students work with environmental organizations on professional communication projects. Students learn about rhetoric and communication as they refine and reflect on their writing processes and practice writing in multiple genres. Students create a variety of multimodal communication projects such as social media and web content for community partners. Through readings, reflection, discussion, and projects involving feedback from peers, instructor, and community partners, students learn principles and strategies to inform and persuade a variety of audiences about environmental issues.

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.