At both undergraduate and graduate levels--up to and including the PhD--UHM's
English Department offers substantive areas of study in composition and rhetoric.
Although some consider them separately, the fields of composition and rhetoric are
so intertwined that most scholars speak of "rhetoric-and-composition" or
"composition-and-rhetoric" as a singular discipline, often referred to as
"rhetcomp" or "comprhet." The discipline's general aims include studying and
producing persuasive discourses (both written and spoken), the end goal of which is
the creation of socially active citizens capable of effecting change through skillful
communication.
Composition and Rhetoric (C/R) has become increasingly important to English departments
and the academy in general as critical theories have revealed the integral relations
among language, thought, identity, and power. C/R specialists employ critical theories
(many also shared with literary and cultural studies) to evaluate discourses that are
socially and politically productive in everyday life. At the same time, C/R
scholars engage in the art of creating (and teaching others how to create) such
discourses--on the page, on the screen, and face-to-face: rhetoric has
historically functioned as a practical art, one as much interested in producing discourse
as consuming it. Students studying composition and rhetoric at UHM can expect
to learn a range of communicative skills that include traditional academic
forms, technical writing, hypertexts, multimedia productions for the web, among
others; students can also develop professional editing abilities and enhance
the writing they do in both public and private spheres. Finally, students can
learn to be effective teachers of writing by studying pedagogical theories and
practices, as well as histories of rhetoric and of teaching writing--a
significant focus of the discipline's work and one reason why many education
majors take courses in Composition and Rhetoric.
At the undergraduate level,
all students beginning their degree programs at UHM are introduced to the rhetorical,
stylistic, and conceptual demands of writing within the academy when they take first-year
composition (English 100 or its equivalent), a general education course that satisfies the
university's Core requirement in
Written Communication. The
first-year course works toward its
goals
by providing students with instruction in rhetorical principles, composing
processes, search strategies, and writing from sources. The English
Department's commitment to student success in the first-year course is evident
in the additional instructional and tutorial support provided for students who
demonstrate such need on UHM's first-year English placement examination; the
Department's investment in this course is further evidenced by the fact that
all faculty--regardless of tenure or rank--teach the course on an equally
regular basis.
After completing first-year composition, students can then take an array of courses
in Composition and Rhetoric at UHM, including the rhetorical tradition (English 300),
histories of the English language, grammar, and English in Hawai‘i (302, 402, 403, 404),
writing for electronic media (307 and 407), autobiographical writing (311), advanced
argumentation (306 and 406), technical writing (308), editing (408), the teaching of
writing (405), and specialized "studies in" courses offered on a rotating basis (409).
Students can receive a
major or a
minor in English, either
of which can include the specific Composition and Rhetoric courses listed here; to see
individual descriptions of these courses, please visit the
Composition and Rhetoric Undergraduate Courses
page.
At the graduate level, students can earn an
MA degree with a
formal concentration in Composition
and Rhetoric; they can also earn a
PhD, specializing in Composition and Rhetoric through
specific coursework, area exams, and the dissertation. Students at MA and PhD levels
in Composition and Rhetoric study histories, theories, and practices of rhetorical
action--both oral and written, interpretive and productive--in a variety of contexts;
they also study how to teach rhetoric and writing. Students explore methods and contexts
of composition instruction. They investigate writing processes, examine the continual
shifts in what "counts" as literacy in the digital era, and evaluate teaching practices
of collaboration, response, and assessment in writing classrooms and programs. They
take introductory courses and seminars on the theories and practices of writing, writing
across the curriculum, professional communication, assessment, and computers and composition.
They also take courses in rhetoric and rhetorical theory, often studying intersections and
relations among discursive practices and cultural productions, examining along the way
employments of queer theory, cultural studies, feminism, and critical theories of technology:
recent or upcoming courses include, for example, studies in Kenneth Burke, postmodern
rhetorical theory, the rhetoric of popular culture, writing and difference, and new media
rhetorics.
As graduate students develop expertise and research agendas in Composition and Rhetoric,
they often engage in professional and scholarly activities in the field, serving on
committees, attending and assisting in the running of local and national conferences,
and presenting their work at regional, national, and international gatherings. Students
at both the MA and PhD levels in Composition and Rhetoric have represented UHM by delivering
papers at the discipline's primary gathering, the Conference on College Composition and
Communication; graduate students have recently presented at CCCC in New York, San Francisco,
and Chicago, in addition to presenting their scholarship at Computers and Writing conferences
and at international meetings abroad. Students also engage in publishing: recent MA and PhD
students have helped to run locally situated journals, and they have published chapters in
anthologies as well as articles in journals like Freshman English News, The Writing
Lab Newsletter, and Composition Studies.
Many of the graduate students in English also teach as Graduate Assistants (GAs); after
apprenticing with a faculty member for a semester and taking a required graduate course,
Teaching Composition (605), GAs teach first-year writing and, later, assist in or teach
a range of other courses in rhetoric, literature, and creative writing. GAs can also work in
the writing center (known officially here as the Writing Workshop) as tutors. Such professional
experiences are among the many reasons that students, upon graduating from the program, are
securing tenure-line jobs as Composition and Rhetoric specialists at colleges and universities
here and in the continental US.
