James Sanchez
Associate Professor of Writing & Rhetoric
- Office
- Carr Hall 206
- Tel
- (802) 443-5971
- jcsanchez@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- T/Th: 1-2pm and a Wednesday Zoom Block
James Chase Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Middlebury College. He has recently published two books that deal with race and racism, especially in his hometown: Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods (published with co-authors in 2021) and Salt of the Earth: Rhetoric, Preservation, and White Supremacy (2021). He has a third book, co-authored with April O’Brien, under contract with the University of Alabama Press, which is tentatively titled Countermemory: A Rhetoric of Resistance.
In 2018, Sanchez produced his first documentary, titled Man on Fire, which won an International Documentary Association Award and aired on PBS via Independent Lens. Sanchez currently has two films in post-production through his production company, A Pound of Snow Productions: North Putnam, a feature-length observational documentary about an uplifting school district in rural Indiana, which is executive produced by famed author Dave Eggers, and In Loco Parentis, an investigative documentary that explores the historical cover-up of sexual abuse in elite New England boarding schools, which is co-produced with Submarine Entertainment and Arts + Labor. These films will premiere soon.
Courses Taught
ENGL 7583
Upcoming
American Memoryscapes
Course Description
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENVS 0500
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
In this course, students (non-seniors) carry out an independent research or creative project on a topic pertinent to the relationship between humans and the environment. The project, carried out under the supervision of a faculty member with related expertise who is appointed in or affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program, must involve a significant amount of independent research and analysis. The expectations and any associated final products will be defined in consultation with the faculty advisor. Students may enroll in ENVS 0500 no more than twice for a given project. (Approval only)
Terms Taught
FYSE 1058
Documentaries & Social Justice
Course Description
Documentaries & Social Justice
In this course, students will explore how contemporary documentaries perform social justice via different rhetorical filmmaking styles—including direct cinema, verité, and investigations—and specific social justice tactics—including explicit and implicit calls for change, social pressure, and activism. After watching documentaries and reading reviews, interviews, and theories of filmmaking, students will write various analyses and codes of ethics for documentary films. The final project has students either produce or storyboard their own short social justice-oriented films.
Terms Taught
Requirements
WRPR 0100
Writing and Power
Course Description
Writing and Power
Power: who has it, who doesn’t, and what does it have to do with your writing? This course both instructs students in how to access power in academic contexts and to critique power structures. We’ll learn how power connects to literacy, and how it's shaped through rhetorical contexts. Students will explore their own power as writers and thinkers while engaging in meaningful personal, reflective and argumentative writing. The professor will work with each student extensively on their writing process and development, and we'll create a writing community. This course bears elective credit but does not fulfill the college writing requirement. 3 hrs. lect/disc
Terms Taught
WRPR 0101
Writing and Power
Course Description
Writing and Power
Power: who has it, who doesn’t, and what does it have to do with your writing? This course both instructs students in how to access power in academic contexts and to critique power structures. We’ll learn how power connects to literacy, and how it's shaped through rhetorical contexts. Students will explore their own power as writers and thinkers while engaging in meaningful personal, reflective and argumentative writing. The professor will work with each student extensively on their writing process and development, and we'll create a writing community. This course bears elective credit but does not fulfill the college writing requirement. 3 hrs. lect/disc (Students who have already taken WRPR 0101 cannot take this course again.)
Terms Taught
WRPR 0205
Race, Rhetoric, and Protest
Course Description
Race, Rhetoric, and Protest
In this course we will study the theoretical and rhetorical underpinnings of racial protest in America. We will begin by studying movements from the 1950s and 1960s, moving from bus boycotts to Black Power protests, and will build to analyzing recent protests in Ferguson, Dallas, and New York. Readings will include texts from Charles E. Morris III, Aja Martinez, Shon Meckfessel, Gwendolyn Pough, and various articles and op-eds. Students will write analyses of historical and contemporary protest, op-eds about the local culture, and syntheses on the course readings. 3 hrs. Lect
Terms Taught
Requirements
WRPR 0211
Upcoming
Trickery, Bodies: Rhetoric
Course Description
Trickery, Bodies, and Resistance: The Tradition(s) of Rhetoric
How do female identifying subjects position themselves (and their bodies) rhetorically in a male-dominated society? How do Black and Latinx rhetorical traditions of call-and-response and code-switching connect with and resist classical traditions of oration and stylistics? In this course we will study the tradition(s) of rhetoric by moving from the trickery of sophists to budding works in feminist rhetorics and cultural rhetorics. Students in this class will learn to synthesize the various traditions of rhetoric in historical and contemporary terms and to critically understand cultural customs that exist outside the white, heteronormative Greco-Roman tradition. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
WRPR 0304
Upcoming
Documentary Rhetorics
Course Description
Documentary Rhetorics
In this course students will explore the rhetorical performances of documentary film—in terms of production, ethics, and editing—and how documentaries are used for different means: investigation, activism, and even propaganda. After watching contemporary documentaries and reading reviews, interviews, analyses, and theories of filmmaking, students will analyze specific films (with cultural rhetorics and social consciousness lenses), conduct and transcribe interviews, and write a code of ethics for documentary filmmakers. The final project has students either produce or storyboard their own short documentaries.
Terms Taught
Requirements
WRPR 0354
Rhetoric of Public Memory
Course Description
The Rhetoric of Public Memory
This course focuses on public memory and the various statues, memorials, sites, and spaces that construct public memory in contemporary U.S. society. In this course, we will study local Middlebury and Vermont public memories, Civil War and Confederate memories, and spaces of contention and controversy, while visiting nearby memorials and museums. Students in this class will compose analyses on these public memories and create arguments on the viability of memories in different shapes and forms. Overall, students will leave this class with a stronger understanding of not only public memory rhetoric but the various components that keep these memories alive. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
WRPR 0500
Current
Upcoming
Independent Research
Course Description
Independent Research
(Approval Required)
Terms Taught