Though the Autumn Quarter feels as if it just began, the department is already looking towards the Winter Quarter and it’s available courses. For MA students, WRD 506 Multicultural Rhetorics is being offered, meeting synchronously over Zoom Wednesday nights from 6-9:15. This class is taught by Dr. Monica Reyes, who is uniquely qualified to teach this course given her research on the rhetorical techniques and devices of asylum seekers.
We reconnected with Dr. Reyes to find out more about the class, and how it will better her students ability to understand and contextualize other cultures.
What is a general overview of WRD 506 Multicultural Rhetoric as a topic?
As the course description outlines, “multiculturalism” deals with ethnic and racial minority groups within a society; so, in this course, we will look at rhetoric of/for/about minority ethnic groups within the U.S. This is different from “globalism” which studies people and cultures from another society, the way a student may approach a study abroad course, for example. To illustrate, we will struggle with questions like, how does a Black or Latinx person articulate their experiences within the U.S., and how do those distinct articulations overlap or resist the mainstream U.S. narratives about their individual and collective identities? I welcome the messy but meaningful conversations from such inquiries.
Will there be key theories and theorists you cover in the course? Projects? Will you incorporate some of your own research you previously described in the class?
We’ll tackle concepts like “multivocality” (Jaqueline Jones Royster); “mixed-blood” (Malea Powell); and “embodiment” (Gloria Anzaldúa; Cherríe Moraga) to name a few. Additionally, because my research focuses on how asylum applicants compose their own stories of persecution to U.S. officials, I may include an article I wrote recently about rhetorical strategies that people use when having to share their displacement stories in order to survive in a complicated and ambiguous asylum system that is embedded with dangerous stereotypes of asylum experience. I would say that an overarching theme of our readings/ discussion will center on overcoming reductive and hurtful hegemonic narratives often thrust upon ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S. and how we (as rhetorical scholars) can build more meaningful literacies.
What aspects of the course will prepare your students for future writing? Does today’s political climate make a class like WRD 506 more important than ever?
Students who (desire to) work with diverse communities (education, journalism, advocacy) may find this class helpful in their efforts toward composing and listening to someone’s lived experiences more contextually. We will do that primarily through course readings and collaborative class activities where we will rhetorically analyze the implications of a message like blackfishing in academia, for example. I hope any WRD student will walk away from this course with a more complex understanding of their own problematic entanglements with the production of multicultural rhetoric. Especially today, when discussion about race and ethnicity are taking much needed focus, each of us must examine our rhetorical roles in facilitating or resisting oppressive, exploitive or discriminatory literacies.
To register for this class, and others, be sure to check your course cart in Campus Connect to see when your enrollment appointment is for Winter Quarter registration.
Sounds like an interesting class! Can’t wait to register!