Introduction to the study of rhetorical interpretation, examining how language and performance generate and communicate meaning, from literature, art, film and politics to visual and material culture.

"Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar," the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said. This semester we will explore the "justness" of Freud's and similar claims. We will consider how meanings are not given, but rather collaboratively constructed and subject to change through processes of interpretation, which this course introduces as a rhetorical activity—one that is based in communication and is mediated by any of the available structures and forms of knowledge and power, direct and indirect. Using the literary theorist Stanley Fish's concept of an "interpretive community" as our starting point, we will develop our understanding of interpretation as a communicative act, and explore its cultural, social, physical, and cognitive dimensions. This course will be offered again in the Spring 2026 semester.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills