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rhetoric can be particularly effective in engaging students in the cognitive and affective processes necessary for critical classroom engagement. The non-privileging normative approach, with respect to the choices created in the critical process, leaves room for students' own cultural, sociopolitical, and historically-located analyses and applications. In other words, critical rhetoric employed by a teacher need not prescribe what students should believe or do. Instead, critical rhetoric employed in McKerrow's sense challenges students to examine the taken-for-granteds that may preclude their own critical reflection on and evaluation of those beliefs or (in)action. It is the process--the critical rhythm of permanent criticism--not necessarily the content of the critique that students might begin to approximate when a teacher employs critical rhetoric. This state of permanent criticism as it relates to Dr. Wolf's teaching strategies and her students' responses, constitutes the bulk of the following analysis. The study demonstrates, through a specific embodied example of pedagogy, how critical rhetoric performed by a particular pedagogue can foster critical consciousness on the part of a large number of students when student-centered dialogue is an impractical option. Case Study Overview My observations of Dr. Wolf's teaching strategies in BECA 422 took place during the Fall 1999 semester and consisted of approximately 15 total hours of logged, in-class observations. During the course of those observations, I came to realize that facilitating discussion with this large group of students was an impractical approach. The setting--a large auditorium-like classroom with fixed, theatre seating—contributed to the difficulties in that the students were focused on the front of the room and the physical environment was less than conducive to discussion and more so to a lecture or performance approach. More than that, the number of students in this class significantly limited her ability to manage a critical discussion that would allow for interaction among students, a key element of student-centered dialogue. Although some limited discussion was accomplished, Dr. Wolf primarily focused on employing other strategies to critically engage her students. My observations and analyses, then, shifted in order to discern how it was possible that, without the benefit of student-centered critical dialogue, her students were able to critically engage with the material performed in lectures and how that engagement facilitated the process of critical consciousness. In general, I observed that the level of critical engagement that would usually be reserved for smaller, more dialogically-centered classes was attained in this large student population. Those means--as illustrated by the categories in the following section-- offered the students in Dr. Wolf's class an opportunity to critically connect to the material presented in BECA 422 without having to frequently vocalize their thoughts in class. Finally, the population of students in this study reflected a diversity commonly found at SFSU. The ages of students ranged from 18 to 39; the class standings ranged from freshones6 to seniors; 46% of students claimed Caucasian ethnicity, while 54% claimed diverse ethnicities7 ; and, the gender breakdown was 52% female, 48% male. It should be noted that the original study from which this essay grew employed an ethnographically oriented methodology. Specifically, al