The Department offers both masters and doctoral degrees in Speech Communication. Masters students take classes in three of the four areas. It also offers extensive production opportunities in its performance laboratory, the Marion Kleinau Theatre , a weekly conversation analysis listening group, a professional seminar series, and teacher training workshops. Reflecting interests in learning styles, special populations, communication apprehension, cultural diversity and education, and teaching speech communication at the university level. Reflecting interests in communication across the curriculum, intercultural communication, and teacher training.
Students choose courses from three broad categories.
Reflecting interests in organizational communication, organizational cultures, health communication, mediated interpersonal communication, and small group communication. Reflecting interests in performance as a way of knowing, including historical and theoretical approaches to performance, literary criticism, performance criticism, writing as performance, conversational performance, gender and performance, and teaching as performance. Reflecting interests in hermeneutic and semiotic phenomenological orientations deriving from French and German scholarship and informed by postmodern theories. Reflecting interests in argumentation theory, gender studies, philosophy of rhetoric, pragmatic theories of communication, rhetoric of inquiry, and theories of communication, culture, and language. Reflecting interests in classical and contemporary rhetorical theory in the American and Continental traditions, public address, and rhetorical criticism.