ARTS 130 - How to Talk To Strangers, Enemies, and Friends

All ARTS 130 courses are designed to emphasize foundational communication competencies that ought to be useful for students in their university careers and beyond.  These seminars are intended to help build students’ social awareness, ethical engagement, and communication competencies in comprehension, contextualization, and conceptualization.  Students will be expected to engage with the work of others, articulate positions, situate writing and speaking within contexts, practice writing and speaking for situations beyond the classroom, engage in basic forms of research, and workshop, revise and edit writing. This particular section of ARTS 130 examines the ways in which interpersonal relationships between strangers, enemies, and friends help build communities and how communities then acquire political power. Such a process is largely a result of specific face-to-face communication practices. And that process is also essential for the dissemination of innovation, the creation of social movements, and the development of ethically responsible public cultures. Creating and maintaining communities requires specific forms of conversation between strangers, enemies, and friends. This course asks how communicative acts are constitutive of community life and how communities acquire and exercise political power. The distribution of power to communities and the exercise of that power through communicative acts (often interpersonal communicative acts) are at the core of political life in a democracy. So this course will also ask questions about the defining characteristics and the functional practices of democratic life. Democracy requires active and engaged communities held together by talk between strangers, enemies, and friends.

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SPCOM 101 - Theories of Communication

This is an introductory course addressing the major theoretical issues in, approaches to, and applications of communication. Theories from various branches of communication, including interpersonal, group/organizational, rhetorical, mass and cultural, will be explored in-depth. Historical, current, and practical critiques of each theory will be conducted. Coursework is designed to encourage students to give critical consideration to the place of theory within the field of Speech Communication and within everyday life.

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SPCOM 204 - Leadership, Teams, and Communication

This course examines leadership, team dynamics, and communication in organizational contexts. Students will develop communication knowledge and skills to enhance their abilities to be effective in leadership and team roles.

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SPCOM 227 - Leadership

A workshop course in leadership combining theoretical and experiential perspectives. Students will develop and apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to be effective and perceptive communicators in a leadership position.

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SPCOM 228 - Public Communication

This course introduces a theoretical framework for understanding the nature and significance of public communication. Strategies and techniques typically employed in political and commercial contexts are examined.

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SPCOM 323 - Speech Writing

The analysis, writing, and editing of speeches. Analysis will focus on the reading and viewing of several famous 20th-century speeches using theories of communication. Writing and editing will focus on implementing oral/aural communication strategies.

 

SPCOM 324 - Small Group Communication

A workshop course which works from theory to develop the skills to work in groups effectively. The principles of group dynamics, leadership, and conflict resolution will be studied and implemented in small group meetings and presentations.

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SPCOM 399 - Communication Inquiry

This course identifies critical communication inquiry at the individual, group, public, and collective levels of theory and practice. Students will work to develop strategies of engagement or thinking that could extend, modify, or overturn standing theoretical positions and initiate new inquiry. Critique and criticism are developed in order to explore advanced questions within the field of Speech Communication, and students are introduced to critical research methods used by scholars in the field of Speech Communication.

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SPCOM 420 - Persuasion

This course examines the communicative, psychological, and sociological aspects of persuasion and persuasive messages, with attention to interpersonal contexts, the role of images, and persuasion in the media and public discourse. This course will explore the ways in which the sending and receiving of persuasive messages involve cognition, emotions, and social norms in everyday contexts.

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SPCOM 475 - Communication Ethics

An examination of the interplay between communication and ethics from historical and pragmatic perspectives. Issues discussed include communication in a variety of settings, such as intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, public, and intercultural interactions as they relate to personal development, values, meaning making, and ethical ways of communicating.

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SPCOM 491 - Community, Power, Politics

This course examines the ways in which interpersonal relationships help build communities and how communities then acquire political power. Such a process is largely a result of specific face-to-face communication practices. And that process is also essential for the dissemination of innovation, the creation of social movements, and the development of ethically responsible public cultures. Creating and maintaining communities requires communication and rhetorical practice. This course asks how communicative acts are constitutive of community life and how communities acquire and exercise political power. The distribution of power to communities and the exercise of that power through communicative acts (often interpersonal communicative acts) are at the core of political life in a democracy. So this course will also ask questions about the defining characteristics and the functional practices of democratic life. Democracy requires active and engaged communities. Finally, this course also aims to be both theoretical and practical. In other words, we will try to explain how and why communities acquire political power, but we will also try to develop a working knowledge of how we might generate political power for the communities to which we belong. In other words, we will try to explain where power comes from and develop a sense of how to acquire power ourselves in order to generate social or political change.

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