Writing & Rhetoric 2: Seriously Funny: The Rhetoric of Humor

Prerequisite: PWR 1. As a rhetorical technique, humor holds unique persuasive power on a variety of political and cultural stages, evident in popular parody, satire, roasts, alternative news sources, public relations campaigns, and advertisements. Given this importance, we might ask, "what makes humor persuasive?" In this course, we will study humor through a variety of critical lenses, including those that examine humor as a unique appeal to pathos and those that argue it is entirely reliant upon logic. For more information about PWR 2, see https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/pwr-2. For full course descriptions, see https://vcapwr-catalog.stanford.edu. Enrollment is handled by the PWR office.