intro

From my classroom experiences, I value a learning space that is not singular and reductive but, rather, interconnected. Maintaining a holistic environment in academia involves a commitment to connectivity, community, and engagement. To uphold this sense of interconnectivity, I invite my students to connect their reading and writing with one another: this, in turn, sprouts a natural form of inclusivity. At the beginning of each class, our visual prompt opens the space wide for rhetorical observations, inviting each learner to enter the class collective and calling them to be active members rather than passive participants. We then respond to communal texts by linking our subjective and sensory takeaways—or our punctum moments—from art and literature to share what specifically pricked our minds or caught our eye. Beyond linked readership, we reflect on individual writing styles (austere and spare or ornate and embellished, for example) to underscore the value of rhetorical expression within a world of diverse and divergent voices. These practices sustain a classroom ecology where each learner holds relations to one another and to the class materials.

course adventure 1: eco-rhetoric

A multidisciplinary methodology follows naturally from this practice of inclusion and interconnectivity: open to a kind of metamorphic methodology, we sustain a semester-long interest in arguments that echo environmental culture. We practice public speaking skills through the staging of a “climate summit,” echoing the rhetorical strategies of Greta Thunberg. We hone skills in the art of media communication by creating environmentally themed instagrams—or “eco-grams,” as we call them—that visually animate the natural elements that students select in class (out of a hat, of course). We then channel these visual and cultural understandings through literary discourse: as one example, we insert pictures and personal anecdotes on “going green” into Jonathon Foer’s best-selling We are the Weather. I teach writing courses with the same commitment to medium as message; for my Eco-Rhetoric courses, these messages deplore us to listen to arguments created by citizens, politicians, and activists of the world—for the world.

course adventure 2: artful rhetoric

My teaching practice further considers the endless intersections of art and life. As my Artful Rhetoric syllabus begins: “rhetoric is an art—and art is rhetoric.” In this course section, we agree with Aristotle that rhetorical arguments are first and foremost an art form. A course bolded by visual literacy and media articulacy, we navigate the mediums of art that saturate our world, including (but not limited to) literature, fine arts, street art, special archives, and museum exhibits. Visiting the University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art, we peruse the collection spaces and the visual laboratory with a balanced sense of criticism and curiosity. Following this hands-on experience, students share their analysis of a chosen exhibit and its “arguments,” considering the spatial dynamics; visual displays; and textual discourse of the collection. By the end of the semester, students have not only become critics of rhetorical situations and spaces, but curators of the argument and its many forms.

conclude

Across various teaching terrains, my students and I sustain a commitment to exploring how diverse disciplines dovetail through rhetorical studies, including that of environmental and artful rhetoric. Through this interdisciplinary practice, we consider how art, nature, and life endlessly web into one another. Students are finally encouraged to contemplate how these interwoven forms argue for a kind of cultural collaboration and connectedness in the classroom—as well as in the wider world.