Rhetoric

This is the first version of the 2025–26 General Catalog. Please check back regularly for changes. The final edition and the historical PDF will be published during the fall semester.

Undergraduate minor: rhetoric and persuasion

Faculty: https://rhetoric.uiowa.edu/people/faculty

Website: https://rhetoric.uiowa.edu/

The Department of Rhetoric offers undergraduate courses that fulfill the Rhetoric requirement of the different colleges at the university, as well as courses that apply toward the areas of Understanding Cultural Perspectives and Values and Society; see GE CLAS Core in the catalog. It also provides individual instruction in its Writing Center and offers other undergraduate courses, graduate seminars, and an undergraduate minor.

Rhetoric for the GE CLAS Core

All rhetoric courses focus on the development of foundational skills in college-level communication: writing, speaking, listening, and critical reading. Rhetoric courses teach foundational compositional and presentational skills, such as thesis statements, introductions and conclusions, claim-evidence format, and proper citation formatting. Courses also build competence in analysis and persuasion, as well as in research and inquiry. Rhetoric is not a content course; it is skills-based and teaches students how to think, not what to think.

Once students have researched the breadth and depth of controversy-based issues that interest them, they are well-positioned to contribute to those discussions deliberately, persuasively, and with multiple interests in mind. While all rhetoric sections adhere to specific department requirements, focus primarily on responsible inquiry and analysis, and require comparable workloads in terms of formal and informal assignments, each instructor assigns a unique set of texts and contexts to teach rhetorical concepts.

Rhetoric aligns with the overall GE CLAS Core's mission to provide opportunities for individualized instruction and small class experiences by offering an intimate studio dynamic that is student- and process-centered. During their first year at the university, most students enroll in the rhetoric course indicated on their degree audit unless their English proficiency evaluation requires them to complete one or more prerequisite courses in English as a Second Language (ESL). Students planning to transfer to the University of Iowa should discuss rhetoric course equivalencies as soon as possible with University of Iowa Admissions.

Students who undergo formal evaluation by Student Disability Services and are found to have a learning disability in reading, writing, listening, or speaking should request reasonable accommodations in order to complete rhetoric. Accommodations may be arranged by Student Disability Services in consultation with the Department of Rhetoric and individual instructors.