During the upcoming summer session, Professor Justin Staley will be teaching the online asynchronous course WRD 285-Truth in Disguise: The Rhetoric of Satire. The course will examine satire as a powerful tool for persuasion and change, or, in lieu of that, ridicule. For students planning to take the course, Professor Staley shares, “Likely, you will be entertained, disturbed, pleased, and annoyed. And while the matters we will read about are indeed serious, we will see that it’s not always most effective to take ourselves equally seriously.”
Here’s an additional excerpt from course description:
“From Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain to The Simpsons and South Park, satire has long held the power to call into question what we take to be real, true, or natural. In this course we will draw on multiple media such as television shows, editorial cartoons, essays, literature, , and films in order to understand how absurd representations of reality can persuade, convince, inform, and potentially provoke change or action on a wide range of social and political issues.”
Student projects will include weekly discussion posts, short writing assignments including a one-sentence satire and satirical meme/cartoon, a rhetorical analysis, and additional projects that will allow students to analyze and create satire in real-world contexts. Students will discuss works of satire in different genres and modalities, and compose their own textual and multimodal satires using the skills they’ve developed in analyzing other works.
Students from all kinds of disciplinary backgrounds can expect to expand their skills in critical analysis, creative communication, and the ability to influence and persuade using written communication and digital composing tools.
Professor Staley also notes, “You don’t have to be a WRD major to take the course (or enjoy it), and you can earn Liberal Studies Arts and Literature domain credit for it. If you’re a WRD major, this class can substitute for WRD 209 in the old WRD core.”
Sign up for either section (285-201 or 285-301) through Campus Connect to enroll in this exciting course!