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.

When contemporary critics seek to discredit dishonest politicians, they tend to refer to their discourse as “mere rhetoric.” But there is so much more to rhetoric than deception.

If you are interested in improving your academic essay writing, then please consider taking JWE206. Our goal is to teach students to write academic humanities essays by conducting rhetorical analyses of personal essays — also called creative non-fiction.

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 brings rhetorical thought into important dialogue with health research and medical practices. You will study the relationship between persuasion, well-being and medical practices, interdisciplinary approaches to weaving the humanities and the sciences together, and ways to insert yourself into vital conversations abut health and well-being.

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 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 focuses on rhetoric as a tool for civic engagement and political action. We will analyze the rhetorical practices of citizens, scholars, and grassroots activists who pursue social change with a view to making the world a better place. These lines of inquiry will lead us to interrogate the enduring impacts of colonialism, the nature of democracy, and the varieties of dissidence activists might practice.