Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper explores the Loyola Marymount University Rhetorical Arts Festival, which was created by contingent faculty to provide a forum for first-year students to increase engagement and high-impact learning through a persuasive speech competition concerning topics of social justice. Rhetorical Arts, a signature Core Curriculum course, combines public speaking and academic argumentative writing under the umbrella of Jesuit rhetoric and interdisciplinary humanities. Through the creative use of funding from the Office of Undergraduate Education, five instructors organized a competition for students to deliver speeches on topics concerning social justice from this course. Instructors shared assignments in order to assign a similar persuasive speech assignment and, before the presentations, informed students that they would be given the opportunity to elect a speaker who would represent their class at the upcoming festival. In order to increase student participation and involvement, the event is heavily student supported, with previous students and Festival participants as student judges, a student Master of Ceremonies, student-created promotion, and a student-filmed video of the competition. The goal of the festival is to create a more active, dynamic rhetorical situation for students than what is often presented in the classroom as well as to strengthen a sense of community across the campus and across departments. Since its inaugural year in 2015, the Rhetorical Arts Festival has grown to be a cornerstone event of the LMU Core Curriculum, with fifty sections participating each year and designated funding through the Office of the Director of the Core.