Course Description

Mondays, 4:30 - 7:15 pm, HBC 020 This course is a survey of rhetoric as a discipline in the 20th century. Although we will be partly concerned with coverage of the major thinkers, this course will be organized according to three broad questions, questions we will address and explore by means of our readings this semester: Why and how did rhetoric re-emerge as a viable subject in the 20th century? How have various thinkers conceptualized the scope of rhetoric? How does rhetoric function as a method, theme, and/or theory in conjunction with more concrete cultural topoi (such as gender, ethnicity, and technology)? Our goal in this course is not to arrive at final answers for these questions, of course. The tentative answers for these questions will affect each other, and raise yet more questions, all of which will give us some sense of the complex histories and theories that surround rhetoric as a discipline.

Course Materials

[The following books are now available at the campus bookstore.] Renato Barilli, Rhetoric [Recommended] Sharon Crowley, The Methodical Memory Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric of Motives Wayne Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (2nd ed.) Foss, Foss, & Griffin, Feminist Rhetorical Theories Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey + a course packet, eventually available at Campus Copy Center

Course Requirements

In addition to active, regular class participation, I will ask you to attend to the following three requirements: Each of you should subscribe to our course listserv (details forthcoming). In addition to providing a space for announcements, this list will be a place where each of us raises questions about the weekly readings. This is not intended to be formal writing; rather, I would like each of us to raise 3-5 questions per week that we will address in our class discussion. Each of you will assemble an annotated bibliography on a topic of your choosing, due during the 10th week of the course. Ideally, this bibliography will serve an inventional function for the final requirement. Each of you will be writing a 20-25 page seminar paper for this course, and I will post and distribute an assignment sheet with more details about this requirement in the first couple weeks of the semester.

Reading Schedule

[Note: CR = course reader] Week 1 (8/26) introduction to course [recommended: Barilli] Week 2 (9/2) no class - Labor Day Week 3 (9/9) Crowley Week 4 (9/16) Arnold, Said, Richards, Nietzsche (CR) Week 5 (9/23) Burke, Lyon, Weaver (CR) Week 6 (9/30) Burke Week 7 (10/7) Burke (+Lazare in CR) Week 8 (10/14) Bryant, Scott, Ehninger, McKeon (CR) Week 9 (10/21) Booth Week 10 (10/28) Derrida Week 11 (11/4) Derrida Week 12 (11/11) Foss, Foss, Griffin Week 13 (11/18) Gates Week 14 (11/25) McLuhan, Haraway, Lanham (CR) Week 15 (12/2) Final Project Workshop

Course Links and Bibliographies

Online Bibliographies iBiblio, home of the CCCC Bibliography CompPile, Rich Haswell's online rhet/comp database A handful of rhetoric sites The E-Server site, once at CMU, now at UWash. Matthew Levy's rhetcomp.com, a developing portal site Victor Vitanza's VVinks remains one of the best compilations of rhetoric links Silva Rhetoricae is perhaps the best glossary, online or off, for rhetorical terminology