History of Rhetoric 2

Introduction

Rhetoric evolves in response to both time and place. Indeed, we could go so far as to say that each time and place has its own unique rhetoric(s). The period from the dawn of the Enlightenment to the present, which is the focus of this course, has been no different. Over time and across space, we see rhetorics emerge and evolve, each building from, with, and against those before and around it. Importantly, the history of rhetoric can be read as the accumulation of rhetorics each apart from and a part of the rest.

One might gather, then, that the history of rhetoric is simply a series of annotations, which means “to put a note to.” Each attempt to develop or define a rhetoric necessarily includes all other attempts. It is for this reason that the chief labor of the course will be collaborative annotation. Together as a class, we will annotate each and every reading (all readings being made available online as pdfs). Each week, using hypothes.is, students will contribute annotations that create linkages between and among readings, that engage and build from the annotations of others, and that recontextualize the readings in our contemporary scene.

There will also be written reading responses throughout the semester that mine these annotations for their contents. A student’s final paper works on this same logic of accumulation—building from their annotations and reading responses as well as the reading responses and annotations of others. In exploring the rhetorical tradition this course will necessarily compose its own.

Readings

The Rhetorical Tradition, "Glossary"

Writing Rhetorics

Richard Lanham, "The 'Q' Question" 

John Muckelbauer, "Returns of the Question" 

Michel Foucault, "Self Writing"

Bruno Latour, "Back to basics: a list of notebooks"

Thomas Rickert, "Rhetorical Prehistory and the Paleolithic"

Ursula Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”

The Rhetorical Tradition, "General Introduction"

The Rhetorical Tradition, "Enlightenment Rhetoric"

Posthuman Rhetorics

John Muckelbauer and Debra Hawhee, "Posthuman Rhetorics: 'It’s the Future, Pikul'"

Karen Barad, "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter"

Rosi Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities“

Bernhardt Siegert, selection from Cultural Techniques

John Muckelbauer, "Implicit Paradigms of Rhetoric: Aristotlian, Cultural and Heliotropic"

Enlightenment Rhetorics, Part One

John Locke, From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 

David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste"

Mary Astell, From A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

Giambattista Vico, From On the Study Methods of Our Time

Thomas Sheridan, "A Course of Lectures on Elocution, Lecture IV"

Gilbert Austin, From Chironomia

Enlightenment Rhetorics, Part Two

George Campbell, From The Philosophy of Rhetoric

Hugh Blair, From Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres

Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Part One

The Rhetorical Tradition, "Nineteenth Century Rhetoric"

Richard Whateley, From Elements of Rhetoric

Maria W. Stewart, "Lecture Delivered At The Franklin Hall" and "Mrs. Stewart's Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston"

Sarah Grimké, "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, Letters III, IV, and XIV"

Frederick Douglass, From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, From My Bondage and My Freedom, and From The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass 

Phoebe Palmer, "The Promise of the Father, Chapter I" and "Tongue of Fire on the Daughters of the Lord"

Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Part Two

Frances Willard, From Women in the Pulpit and From Women and Temperance

Herbert Spencer, From The Philosophy of Style

Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" 

William James, “Instinct”

Modern & Postmodern Rhetorics, Part One

The Rhetorical Tradition, "Modern and Postmodern Rhetoric"

Virginia Wolfe, "Professions for Women," "Women and Fiction," "Dorothy Richardson," and From A Room of One's Own

I.A. Richards and C. K. Ogden, From The Meaning of Meaning and I. A. Richards, From The Philosophy of Rhetoric

Kenneth Burke, From A Grammar of Motives, From A Rhetoric of Motives, and From Language as Symbolic Action

Richard Weaver, "Language is Sermonic"

Modern & Postmodern Rhetorics, Part Two

Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, From The New Rhetoric and Chaïm Perelman, From The Realm of Rhetoric and "The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning"

Stephen Toulmin, From The Uses of Argument and From Logic and the Criticism of Arguments

Modern & Postmodern Rhetorics, Part Three

Michel Foucault, From The Archaeology of Knowledge and From The Order of Discourse

Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context"

Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"

Modern & Postmodern Rhetorics, Part Four

Jim Corder, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” 

Stanley Fish, "Rhetoric"

Wayne Booth, From Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent

Modern & Postmodern Rhetorics, Part Five

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning"

Gloria Anzaldúa, From Borderlands/La Frontera

The Rhetorical Situation

Lloyd Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation"

Richard Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation”

Scott Consigny, “Rhetoric and Its Situations”

Barbara A. Biesecker, “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Difference”

Jennifer Edbauer, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies” 

Thomas Rickert, “In the House of Doing: Rhetoric and the Kairos of Ambience”

Casey Boyle, “Writing and Rhetoric and/asPosthuman Practice”