A writing-intensive critical seminar on the roles that argument and persuasion play in the development, circulation, and translation of medical and scientific knowledge. Class discussions and writing assignments will be organized around two mutually informing themes: first, consideration will be given to the rhetorical strategies experts use to produce technical arguments; second, emphasis will be placed on how non-experts interact with and contest those arguments. This course will address issues of power, access, and social justice as it traces how scientific discourses move among diverse audiences. To that end, writing assignments will ask students to 1) analyze medical and scientific texts, 2) modify those texts to fit the unique demands of a particular community, and 3) conduct sustained original research into a scientific or medical controversy of their choosing.