This post is a shameless plug for my rhetoric of science and medicine seminar at UWM in the fall. If you’re a UWM graduate student interested in rhetoric, technical communication, and/or science and technology studies, think about signing up. I’m happy to field any and all questions about the course. The description is below. You can also download recruitment flyer which includes fancy pictures of probable required readings.
English 855: Seminar in Theories of Business and Technical Writing: Rhetorics of Science & Medicine (3 units; G) Fall 2012 | Tuesdays 5:30pm
Science and medicine are each part of vastly complex cultural enterprises which include, but also extend far beyond what is done in the laboratory or what happens in scientific journal articles. Scientists, technologists, doctors, patients, regulators, policy makers, journalists, and the general public each interact with and participate in technical, scientific, and medical discourses in a wide variety of ways. English 855 will examine scientific, technical, and medical communication both in the contexts of research and dissemination and in terms of larger cultural and material concerns. The course will provide students with the foundation necessary to explore key problems in rhetorics of science and medicine and how those issues interface with rhetorical studies and technical communication more broadly. Students will read a wide range of scholarship including: 1) canonical articles in the rhetoric of science and medicine 2) related works in technical communication, and 3) cutting-edge texts in science and technology studies. Specific authors include: Annemarie Mol, Bruno Latour, Carl Herndl, Carolyn Miller, Charles Bazerman, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Joseph Dumit, Judy Segal, Peter Galison, and Randy Allen Harris. Students will facilitate one class discussion, write several reading synthesis essays, and compose a final paper of article length.