Words as Weapons: Heated Summer Brings New Relevance to MET Rhetoric Class

Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development Megan Sullivan’s MET course, Art of Rhetoric in Life and Work (MET IS 421), generally focuses on the power of writing, and how language can make an impact in our real world. But during this turbulent summer of 2020, as the world reckons with both airborne and social crises, she tells BU Today, “the course is also exploring how other artists use their medium to do the same.”

Offered online and open to all, the course is also part of MET’s Undergraduate Degree Completion Program, which gives students who have previously completed at least 52 college credits a chance to earn a Bachelor of Liberal Studies in Interdisciplinary Studies from BU via online learning. Also the director of BU’s Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning, Sullivan knows the vital nature of blending skills and experiences in learning. To help ground her lessons, she regularly invites guest speakers, including Ben Hires (CAS’00, STH’03, MET’08), CEO of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center.

Sullivan crucially hopes that students will look to history and its lessons on effective leadership—to guide their language, and their message. She knows that as BU alums, they are privileged to have a shining example to strive to follow.

“I want them to always remember that [Dr. Martin Luthur King, Jr.] used his intellect, knowledge, and logic to differentiate between just and unjust laws,” Sullivan says. “That when he implores his readers to consider how they would respond as a Black father who must tell his daughter why she cannot be admitted into a local amusement park, he is appealing to a reader’s emotion or pathos.”