Genre as/for Social Action

Anis Bawarshi’s seminar (developed in partnership with Charles LaPorte) introduces the notion of genre and its possibilities for engaging publics. Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) examines the ways that genres help create and respond to recurrence, making genres important social and rhetorical constructs. More recent attention to genre uptakes in RGS has shifted the focus of attention from genres as normalizing phenomena to the dynamic forces that mobilize knowledge and action between genres. This shift opens possibilities for thinking of genre not only as social action but also of how genre can be deployed for social action, including ways that new genres or reconfigurations of genres can help transform how we relate to, engage with, and mobilize publics. Topics the seminar explores include imagining ways to make genre knowledge (and its complex formations) public and useful to local communities; helping students develop methods for studying genres in their public contexts; and exploring how existing genres often manage boundaries that separate academic and public spheres and how genres can be changed or new genres developed that enable more interactive and reciprocal relations between universities and various publics.