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About the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics

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In today's world, it's increasingly important that we consider the ways that language, rhetoric, and ideas operate across cultures and traditions.  As part of the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics, you'll have the opportunity to complement coursework you might already be doing in CSRE, AAAS, FemGen, and other majors, through focused exploration of the rhetorical theories and practices related to gender and the Latinx, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Asian-American, queer, and activist communities.  You'll also have the opportunity to develop your own strategies for effective intercultural communication that you can use within and across communities.

Why complete a Notation in Cultural Rhetorics?

The NCR emphasizes the rhetorical traditions and practices of communities of color that have not always been foregrounded in rhetorical study, as well as examinations of ways race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality bear on rhetorical production and reception.

The NCR offers students from all disciplines an opportunity to develop their awareness of culturally situated rhetorical traditions and practices and their communication skills across diverse audiences and contexts through a combination of coursework, advising, and reflection; ultimately their accomplishment will be noted on their official transcripts.

The Notation offers three crucial opportunities for students who pursue it:

  • The opportunity to enhance advanced culturally-informed and cross-disciplinary writing and oral presentation abilities
  • The opportunity to develop a wider range of cross-cultural and inter-cultural communication strategies and insights (e.g., understanding the challenges of demonstrating inter-cultural communications expertise to colleagues and wider public and professional audiences 
  • The opportunity to demonstrate to prospective graduate programs or employers a commitment to and expertise in culturally-informed communication

NCR Learning Outcomes

Through the Notation, students will develop as communication specialists capable of writing and presenting in clear, culturally-aware, and compelling ways to a range of audiences, learning to shape argument, content, and style in varied situations and in many genres. Students will also develop collaborative problem-solving skills and strategies for communication across media.  More specifically, through their coursework, NCR students will:

  • Develop advanced culturally-informed and cross-disciplinary writing and oral presentation abilities
  • Develop a wider range of cross-cultural and inter-cultural communication strategies and insights (e.g., understanding the challenges of demonstrating intercultural communications expertise to colleagues and wider public and professional audiences
  • Better understand diverse communities’ rhetorical traditions and their forms of production over time 
  • Develop a reflexive understanding of their own home rhetorical traditions, with attention to how their community or family’s background and worldviews are rhetorically expressed and practiced 
  • Analyze how certain rhetorical traditions and frameworks create and maintain social and power differences among people
  • Explore challenges that arise in rhetorical interactions between diverse identities, backgrounds, and worldviews, including in cultural appropriations
  • Contribute to the growing field of cultural rhetorics through research into diverse rhetorical traditions, with attention to the cultural assumptions that shape those traditions and their practices 
  • Reflect on how ePortfolios provide opportunities for crafting an authorial identity that situates itself in relation to diverse cultural contexts and inter-cultural and cross-cultural communication practices.

 

Questions? Reach out to the NCR team (notationcr@stanford.edu) for more information.