English 369: Research Methods in Language and Rhetoric
Urban Justice and Sustainability in Seattle: Studying Language, Rhetoric & Culture in Everyday Life
Rhetoric—which is foundational to all communication—is an interdisciplinary public art that facilitates cross-cultural, critical, and ethical capacities for deeper understanding across difference and for collective problem solving and action. This course engages critical research approaches for studying place, power, culture, and rhetoric in everyday life, specifically around questions of urban justice and equity.
We’ll ground our explorations within local histories, contemporary work, and activism within the City of Seattle's Race & Social Justice and Equity & Environment Initiatives and other local and regional urban issues that explore various interrelated and intersectional dynamics that underscore and perpetuate urban inequities within issues associated with those initiatives, such as housing affordability, environmental and racial justice, education, food security, and transportation. We’ll deepen our understanding of these inquiries through experiments with methods, such as archival research, interview, survey, fieldwork, visual/rhetorical/cultural analysis, (auto)ethnography, mapping, photography, embodied, and community-engaged approaches.
Students will design final projects that engage course inquiries and have some public-facing or community-engaged components. The genres, audiences, aims, and scope of final projects will vary greatly based on students’ goals and interests. This course might appeal to students who are interested in language, literature, culture, critical geography, Communication, sociology, urban spaces, public policy, politics, and more.
This course uses flexible and equitable grading practices and open-source readings provided via Canvas.