English 3890: Critical Writing focuses on the rhetorical moves that professionals in English Studies use on a regular basis in order to create knowledge and share their research and thinking with others in English Studies. Students in this course will practice writing critical arguments and will develop meta-disciplinary understanding of the rhetorical moves that English Studies requires of its practitioners.

The rhetorical moves that English Studies scholars have adopted (and adapted) have a history dating back to early rhetorical training in the Europe, particularly in Aristotle's Rhetoric. This tradition has evolved over time, inflected by the ideas of notable rhetoricians and critics like Quintillian, Ramus, Vico, Campbell, Scott, Bain, Hill, and more recently by a group of writers called "critical theorists" (i.e., Saussure, Lacan, Butler, Jameson, Eagleton, etc.). Likewise, current scholars are even beginning to embrace non-Western rhetorics for argument and critical engagement.

While undergraduates majoring in the various areas of English Studies (writing/rhetorics, linguistics, literatures) might read published criticism in their different courses, they may initially find the pieces obscure or obtuse, jargon-laden and difficult to understand. Students in this course will discover, however, that these texts actually follow several common patterns that other professionals in English Studies easily recognize. In fact, one of the ways that academic disciplines establish themselves is through the appropriation of certain texts, names, critical terms, etc., discourses that create insiders and outsiders. This course seeks to professionalize students by helping them to explore the complicated disourses of English Studies.