The main content areas we consider are literature, philosophy, and history.  But this is not a literature (or, "English") course; it is not a philosophy course; and it is not a history course!  What is it?  An Honors Program course, obviously!  Like almost all HON courses, it emphasizes relationships between subjects that in other college courses are usually treated separately.  The real world doesn't come bundled into to separate academic departments, and by emphasizing relationships the Honors Programs courses seek to infuse a good dose of reality into your education.

This course, as you no doubt know, meets the same general ed categories 01 and 02 English composition requirement as ENG 101, 102, or 105.  That's because it is a course in which the emphasis is on learning to write well ("compose") about the content areas; but that doesn't make it an English course, or a literature course.  Some students have complained that since this is an English course, it should have only "English lit" readings; this shows serious misunderstanding of  the course!  In addition, if you were taking ENG 102-102, or ENG 105, you might well be reading no "literature" at all!  What you read in those courses depends on the teacher's choice, and some choose science readings, or current political issues, or social studies readings.  Others, of course, choose more typical "literature" readings.

So why is it called "Rhetoric"?  When the course was designed, the goal was to have a course that emphasized writing, reading, reasoning, and speaking: four skills essential for a well-educated person.  After the course was designed, the designers asked themselves, "OK, now that we've designed the course, what shall we call it?"  After a bit of discussion and debate, someone suggested that, hey, those four skills have traditionally (that is, since Aristotle) been components of what for a couple of millenia was called "Rhetoric."  And the designers agreed that they couldn't think of a better name for the course they had designed!  [If you look at a contemporary textbook on rhetoric, you'll probably find that in recent times there's been some departure from the old, traditional meaning of the term.]