Laura Poladian
Rhetorical Arts Instructor | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
University Core Curriculum
Biography
Laura Poladian teaches Rhetorical Arts: Writing and Speaking for Social Justice at Loyola Marymount University. She completed her B.A. in Literature at California State University Fullerton and her M.A. in Literature at Loyola Marymount University where she worked as the English Graduate Intern in Archives and Special Collections and an English Teaching Fellow.
Her work as a Rhetorical Arts Instructor includes a series of digital exhibits co-curated by Rhetorical Arts classes on Digging Up the Dry Truth: Owens Valley Stories Told in the J.D. Black Papers and Entre Dos Mundos: Strength and Resilience in the Venegas Family. In partnership with Rachel Wen-Paloutzian, the instructional librarian in Archives and Special Collections at the William H. Hannon Library, Ms. Poladian has presented workshops and papers on bringing students to experience rare and unique historical objects: some include, Histories and Futures Colliding: Learning in Liminal Spaces of Archives and Rhetoric and Touching, Seeing, Imagining: Rhetorical Pedagogy in Special Collections.
Her Rhetorical Arts classes engage with books as objects, archival material in hands-on experiences, and Jesuit rhetorical practices for forming the self and walking with others.
Education (2)
Loyola Marymount University: MA, English Language and Literature/Letters 2013
California State University: BA, English Language and Literature/Letters
Areas of Expertise (5)
Rhetorical Arts
Women’s Studies
Religious Identity
Archives & Special Collections
Irish Studies
Courses (1)
RHET 1000 - RA: Rhetorical Arts
This course teaches an integrated set of skills, competencies, and knowledge that enables students to engage in public debate with persuasive force and stylistic excellence. It emphasizes such rhetorical concepts as invention, arrangement, claims with supporting evidence, exigency and audience. Emerging out of Renaissance humanism, Jesuit rhetoric (or Eloquentia Perfecta) developed the classical ideal of the good person writing and speaking well for the public good and promotes the teaching of eloquence combined with erudition and moral discernment. Developing this tradition in light of modern composition study and communication theory, the Rhetorical Arts course complements the other Foundation courses with topics such as ethics and communication, virtue and authority, knowledge and social obligation. The objectives of the Rhetorical Arts course are to foster critical thinking, moral reflection, and articulate expression. Ultimately, the Rhetorical Arts course furthers the development of essential skills in written and oral communication and information literacy, as well as providing opportunities for active engagement with essential components of the Jesuit and Marymount educational traditions. More specifically, students will: • have written and oral communication skills that enable them to express and interpret ideas—both their own and those of others—in clear language. • understand the rhetorical tradition and apply this knowledge in different contexts. • refine foundational skills in critical thinking obtained in the FYS. • distinguish between types of information resources and how these resources meet the needs of different levels of scholarship and different academic disciplines. • identify, reflect upon, integrate, and apply different arguments to form independent judgments. • conceptualize an effective research strategy, and then collect, interpret, evaluate and cite evidence in written and oral communication.
Articles (2)
Digging Up the Dry Truth
A Rhetorical Arts Student-Curated Digital Exhibit with Archives and Special Collections2021
Laura Poladian -- Who are you when no one's watching? : The hunger games, surveillance and the search for self
Book Chapter - The age of dystopia : one genre, our fears and our future2016
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