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Rhetoric
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Rhetoric is the study of how language is used to persuade, inform, and influence audiences, and it sits at the center of communications, English, political science, and philosophy curricula. Its academic interest lies in the tension between language and reality, form and meaning, power and reason. Students engage with foundational questions about what makes an argument effective and how speech shapes public life. Core thinkers and frameworks that appear across coursework include Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, Plato's critique of false rhetoric as it relates to democracy, Foucault's contributions to rhetoric and ideology, and the competing positions of Bitzer and Vatz on how rhetorical situations are constructed.

Papers on this topic take several distinct approaches. Some are historically oriented, tracing classical and modern rhetorical theory to compare how ideas about persuasion have evolved. Others focus on close analysis of specific texts or speeches, such as Carmichael's Black Power speech or George Orwell's political writing, using rhetorical frameworks to examine how language and power operate together. Additional papers explore rhetoric within specific domains — religion, education, and political ideology — while others work through theoretical debates about the relationship between knowledge and rhetoric or the role of rhetorical education in shaping civic life.

A strong essay on rhetoric grounds its thesis in a clear claim about how a specific use of language achieves — or fails to achieve — a persuasive effect. Evidence drawn from the text, speech, or theoretical framework under analysis carries the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating rhetoric as merely a list of devices; effective essays instead connect those devices to broader questions of audience, power, and meaning.

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Paper Undergraduate
Domestic Terrorism Cause and Prevention
The Al-Qaeda group is probably the most popular terrorist group known this century for their very high-profile attacks; their most bold move was the destruction of the World Trade Center, now known today as 911, or…
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Paper Doctorate
Social Inequalities and Industrialization in the US and Soviet Union
Comparative Analysis of Industrialization in the Former USSR and United States
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Case Study Undergraduate
Study on Improvement of Low Cost Airline in Thailand
The Profitability of Low Cost Airlines in Thailand
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Paper Undergraduate
Community policing strategies and implementation
The Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994 heralded the beginning of a massive effort to reform policing strategies in the United States, in part through implementation of community-policing programs at the local level. Congress has allocated billions of federal dollars over the years since to support such efforts and by the end of the 20th century, close to 90% of all police departments serving communities larger than 25,000 reported implementing community policing strategies. However, empirical studies examining the effectiveness of this style of policing are limited and most reveal a modest improvement. This report examines studies that have revealed some of the factors that contributed to the failure of community policing programs to meet the expectations of policy makers. A lack of police organizational commitment and citizen leadership are major factors that have undermined attempts to implement community policing more fully.
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Paper High School
Literary Components of Analysis Letter From Birmingham Jail
An analysis of Martin Luther King, Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Literary tropes that are looked at are commiseration, parallelism and allegory, and paradox. These elements help to make the letter effective and the letter is strengthened by King's personal background and rhetoric. King appeals to the audience regardless of their race and finds a common ground with religion-which he uses to appeal to society.
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Essay Undergraduate
War on Terror: Redefining Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy
This is a five page paper analyzing the key points in Understanding the War on Terror by Patrick Coaty. The paper has a premise stated in the introduction, followed by evidence and support, with a conclusion at the end. The various types of terrorism are discussed. The focus of the paper is on the evolution of the war on terror, which hinges on an understanding of what terrorism itself is.
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Paper Masters
Civil disobedience in democratic societies
This paper compares Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" with "Just Walk on By" by Brent Staples. The paper draws similarities between the two works with respect to pathos, logos and ethos. Both letters are also responses to critics and this is also discussed in this paper.
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Paper Undergraduate
Theme of Love in Relation to Natural Sciences and Geometry in Metaphysical Poetry
This paper compares how love is addressed in the Metaphysical poet John Donne's "The Flea" and "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" and Andrew Marvell's "The Definition of Love." Although these works may seem superficially like love poems to modern readers, ultimately the poets use their personal lives to make generalized statements about God, religion, and man's place in the universe, rather than use poetry to explore their personal psychology.
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Essay Doctorate
Isocrates as a sophist: characteristics, differentiation, and sophistic practice
This paper examines the question of whether or not Isocrates may be considered a Sophist. It examines sophistry and shows that it was a school of thought that emphasized rhetoric over philosophy and morality. Isocrates did emphasize rhetoric but he also emphasized morality and so may be seen as a middle-road between sophistry and philosophy.
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Paper Doctorate
Difficulty of Starting a Gun
This paper focuses on debating gun control within the public sphere. It begins by defining the public sphere and explaining how the public sphere serves as a mediator between the private sphere and public authority. It then goes on to describe how the modern gun control debate, though occurring in the public sphere, has been co-opted by small private-sphere public interest groups, which do not represent the interests of most Americans.
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