Ghosts, bigfoot and UFO’s: Oh, my!

Students in the UTRGV Writing and Language Studies Department are trading traditional textbooks for thermal monitors and electronic voice phenomena recorders in a new advanced specialization course, “Otherworldly Arguments.” 

The ENGL 4340: Advanced Specialization in Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy Studies class, taught by Associate Professor Randall Monty and Lecturer Brittany Ramirez Carter, explores how communities on the “fringe,” use scientific rhetoric and evidence to legitimize their work.

The Rider met with the two educators at The Caffeine Library, a coffee shop in Edinburg, to discuss the topics at the center of their course. 

The focus of the course is not on proving whether Bigfoot is real; it is on dissecting how researchers in specialized areas communicate their work to broader publics, according to the professors. 

“We’re trying to learn about researchers and everyday folks in these very specialized communities who are very, very interested in these things … are making sense of the world,” Monty said.  

As she took a sip from her coffee with the cautionary name “Midnight Hour,” which Carter joked would likely do the job, she explained the course’s conception was surprisingly casual.

She was listening to a podcast about Bigfoot sightings while cooking dinner and jokingly texted Monty about turning it into a class. 

After a year of research and contextualization, the course was born. 

Ramirez Carter said the curriculum is structured in three units: Bigfoot, paranormal investigation and ufology.

The central, semester-long project requires students to translate specialized scientific research into accessible, public-facing genres, Monty said.

For the Bigfoot unit, students work on a public science project that requires them to read a technical primatology article and “repackage” the language and concepts into different media, such as a children’s book or a video-game design, according to the professors. 

The exercise is meant to help students understand how academic scientific language is both used by primatologists and co-opted by fringe groups to lend “scientific credibility.” 

A key rhetorical concept the class examined during the Bigfoot unit is the “argument of absence.” 

“The lack of evidence of the thing becomes evidence of the thing,” Monty said, explaining the rhetorical strategy where researchers cross off all known animals, such as mountain lions or grizzly bears, until Bigfoot is the only explanation left. 

Another central feature of the course is experiential learning and cross-disciplinary collaboration. 

Students interviewed and observed professionals working at the Gladys’s Porter Zoo in Brownsville and collaborated with UTRGV’s Comparative Psychology Lab, which explores intersections between animal behavior and human psychology.

Perhaps the most hands-on experience will involve the paranormal unit, where students during the week of Halloween will partner with a local investigative group named Revenant Watch. 

The paranormal team will guide students through the University Library on the Edinburg campus, which will serve as the location for the ghost hunt. Students will get “firsthand” exposure to the tools and practices of ghost hunting.

 “They’re going to be using the tools, the EVP readers, the temperature monitors, you know, all that stuff, touching it, like this visceral … sort of experience,” Ramirez Carter said. 

She added paranormal investigative communities similar to Bigfoot researchers, who use technology such as bioacoustic recorders, are constantly leveraging advanced technology for data collection. 

Revenant Watch, for example, uses methods such as “coding audio recordings” to vet potential evidence, a process Monty said is “pretty similar to what we do in academia.”

The goal for students, he said, is to learn not just the writing process, but also the physical and rhetorical dynamics of research—recognizing that the presence of the researcher automatically impacts the space and how meaning is constructed. 

“When you are occupying a space, you are automatically impacting what’s happening in that space,” Ramirez Carter added.

Whether analyzing the argument of absence in a grainy photo of a creature in the woods or reviewing coded audio from a supposed haunting, the core lesson remains constant: all knowledge, mainstream or fringe, is built through rhetoric. 

Through this course, the educators said they hope to ensure students leave with a practical understanding that effective communication and persuasive evidence are the most powerful tools—no matter how otherworldly the subject matter might be.

The instructors said they plan for future iterations to continue the science theme, with the next one potentially focused on the deep sea and encouraged students of all majors to consider joining in the fun. 

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