Topics Title: Post-Truth Rhetoric and CompositionAmidst claims and counter claims of false news, alternative facts, and a post-truth society, teachers of writing and their students today can feel that language has lost its capacity to enable deliberation and understanding across difference. One tempting response is to emphasize facts, objectivity, and impartiality in hopes of purifying public discourse of all the false claims and misleading arguments. In this seminar, we will explore intellectual resources available to compositionists that point to a larger understanding of the challenges of truth and the best ways to respond. Specifically, we will attempt to historicize, analyze, and creatively re-engage post-truth rhetoric as a resource rather than an obstacle for our work as scholars and teachers of writing. To historicize the phenomenon, we will situate post-truth rhetoric in the technologies and political environment of neoliberalism. Next, we will analyze contemporary debates and assessments of post-truth rhetoric in scholarly and popular venues and consider the implications of these analyses for the work of Writing Studies. Finally, we will work to define research and teaching projects that imagine contemporary public discourses as resources for inquiry into writing and the meanings of democratic engagement.