College English

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July 2005

  1. The Lost Island of English Studies: Globalization, Market Logic, and the Rhetorical Work of Department Web Sites
    Abstract

    The author identifies possibilities of a “lost island” rhetoric that situates English department Web sites--and the profession’s defining practices--in an ambivalent relationship to global capital via the online network. The article describes how three department sites variously employ this rhetoric to assert English studies’ own forms of intellectual productivity and cultural value in dialogue with the market logic that dominates the Web.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054092

May 2005

  1. Review: Animated Categories: Genre, Action, and Composition
    Abstract

    Reviewed are: Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition, by Anis Bawarshi; The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre: Strategies for Stability and Change, edited by Richard M. Coe, Lorelei Lingard, and Tatiana Teslenko; and Writing Genres, by Amy J. Devitt.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054087
  2. The Economics of Exposition: Managerialism, Current-Traditional Rhetoric, and Henry Noble Day
    Abstract

    Through an examination of the work of the nineteenth-century American rhetorician Henry Noble Day the author suggests that the causal relationship usually identified between economic formations and genres such as exposition is not a purely one-way process. Day’s rhetorics, he argues, were not only shaped by the economies of Taylorism but also were themselves engaged in a sociohistorical process of class formation, suggesting that such a study of the connections among managerialism, current-traditional rhetoric, and class formation raises important questions for our own work today.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054086

March 2005

  1. "To Elevate I Must First Soften": Rhetoric, Aesthetic, and the Sublime Traditions
    doi:10.2307/30044681
  2. Blind Skepticism versus a Rhetoric of Assent
    Abstract

    Booth and Elbow engage in a dialogue about what has become even more important in recent years, namely how we come to believe what we believe and convince others to believe with us. Booth speculates that one needs to commit oneself to combating both dogmatism and skepticism by embracing the rhetoric of assent, and offers rules to help us “learn how to listen”; Elbow agrees with Booth on a number of points but argues for the special value of dissent, perhaps even “unreasonable” dissent, before going on to offer specific classroom practices that can advance their common goal of critical thinking.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054079
  3. REVIEW: Working Out Our History
    Abstract

    Reviewed are The Selected Essays of Robert J. Connors,edited by Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford; Writing in the Academic Disciplines: A Curricular History, by David R. Russell; Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States, by Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen; and Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866–1910, by Nan Johnson.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054082
  4. Bringing the Rhetoric of Assent and the Believing Game Together—and into the Classroom
    Abstract

    A response to Wayne Booth's essay in the same issue a "rhetoric of assent."

    doi:10.2307/30044680
  5. To Elevate I Must First Soften: Rhetoric, Aesthetic, and the Sublime Traditions
    Abstract

    Rereading the work of Letitia Elizabeth Landon in light of Hugh Blair’s 1783 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, the author suggests that current disciplinary definitions of the sublime that separate its aesthetic heritage from its rhetorical foundations suppress those of its aspects that were the particular province of women writers in the nineteenth century, and limit our current understanding.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054081
  6. Bringing the Rhetoric of Assent and the Believing Game Together--and Into the Classroom
    Abstract

    Booth and Elbow engage in a dialogue about what has become even more important in recent years, namely how we come to believe what we believe and convince others to believe with us. Booth speculates that one needs to commit oneself to combating both dogmatism and skepticism by embracing the rhetoric of assent, and offers rules to help us “learn how to listen“; Elbow agrees with Booth on a number of points but argues for the special value of dissent, perhaps even “unreasonable” dissent, before going on to offer specific classroom practices that can advance their common goal of critical thinking.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054080

January 2005

  1. Where Brains Had a Chance: William Mayo and Rhetorical Instruction at East Texas Normal College, 1889-1917
    Abstract

    The author offers a local, institutional microhistory of the work of William Leonidas Mayo, a figure who both exemplifies and complicates some of our more recent concepts of student-centered pedagogy, both to enrich our understanding of our disciplinary history and to illuminate trends in English studies of continuing interest to contemporary teachers and scholars.

    doi:10.58680/ce20054075
  2. "Where Brains Had a Chance": William Mayo and Rhetorical Instruction at East Texas Normal College, 1889-1917
    doi:10.2307/30044639

November 2004

  1. Redneck and Hillbilly Discourse in the Writing Classroom: Classifying Critical Pedagogies of Whiteness
    Abstract

    Challenging views of working-class white students that either displace all white racism onto them or, at best, see them as having exchanged class consciousness for race privilege, the author argues for a critical race pedagogy that includes a more complex image of poor and working-class whites. She argues for both deconstructive pedagogies that can expose the role of language in maintaining racist and classist structures and reconstructive pedagogies that can provide students with the rhetorical tools for employing language transformatively.

    doi:10.58680/ce20044066

September 2004

  1. Para la Mujer: Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century1
    Abstract

    Focusing on the rhetorical work of definition in the writings of Maria Rentería, Sara Estela Ramírez, and Astrea, contributors in the early years of the twentieth century to the Spanish-language newspaper La Crónica, this essay argues that these writers redefined who the Mexican woman was and what her role in the borderlands of Texas and Mexico could be. Its exploration of their definitional claims historicizes Chicana feminist rhetoric, and examines how their work infuses rhetorics of/from color with concerns of gender and class.

    doi:10.58680/ce20044057
  2. "Para la Mujer": Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century
    Abstract

    n 1910 and 1911, Maria Renteria, Sara Estela Ramirez, and Astrea3 redefined who the woman4 was and what her role in the borderlands of Texas and Mexico could be. As contributors to La Crdnica, a Spanish-language newspaper based in Laredo, Texas, these three women called their female readers to refuse essentialist definitions that described women as second-class, subservient, and apolitical.5 The writings of Renteria, Ramirez, and Astrea stood in contrast to such constructions as they inscribed women as intelligent and honorable-as women who could, and indeed should, engage in and change the world around them. Renteria, Ramirez, and Astrea wrote to shift old and shape new definitions, but even as they shared this goal, each writer composed a different Mexican woman for her readers. Astrea persuaded her readers to reassess their education and their place outside the home in her two articles To the Woman Who

    doi:10.2307/4140723
  3. Shooting Our Last Arrow: Developing a Rhetoric of Identity for Unenrolled American Indians1
    Abstract

    Tracing her own efforts to assert her Cherokee ancestry, the author considers what is at stake for the more than four million mixed-bloods in the United States and suggests that individual nations must find some way to acknowledge those who wish to claim their heritage. She argues that finding a way to accept unenrolled mixed-blood peoples will allow indigenous nations to accrue greater political and cultural power in this country.

    doi:10.58680/ce20044059
  4. Shooting Our Last Arrow: Developing a Rhetoric of Identity for Unenrolled American Indians
    Abstract

    blood American Indians/Alaskan Natives, while just over four million designate their racial identity as mixed-blood.2 In my home state of North Carolina, records indicate that fewer than 100,000 people are full-blood American Indians/Alaskan Natives, while over 130,000 people are mixed-bloods. Russell Thornton suggests that the substantial increase in the Native American population since the turn of the twentieth century is due to several factors, including increased life expectancies, higher fertility and birth rates, and decreased stigmatizing of people of mixed ancestry who admit such status. I am one of the mixed-bloods who comes from a background where people attempted to hide their origins (see Bizzaro). My family's effort to avoid being jailed for evading the evacuation of the Cherokee led them to hide in the mountains of Georgia and deny their heritage in an effort to blend into the dominant culture.

    doi:10.2307/4140725
  5. Down by the River, or How Susan La Flesche Picotte Can Teach Us about Alliance as a Practice
    Abstract

    The author challenges the rhetoric of “inclusion” of the voices of people of color, with its implicit reiteration of a hierarchy of center and margin, to suggest instead the more powerful possibilities offered by alliance. The example of Susan La Flesche Picotte, an enrolled member of the Omaha Nation with mixed ancestry and an unconflicted identity, who was able to ally herself with and participate fully in both European American and Indian cultures, illustrates this complex and productive rhetorical approach and its possibilities for what the author terms “survivance.”

    doi:10.58680/ce20044058
  6. Native Claims: Cultural Citizenship, Ethinic Expressions, and the Rhetorics of “Hawaiianness”
    Abstract

    Looking at arguments put forth by courts, the State of Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiian sovereignty activists, as well as constructions of Hawaiianness by Native Hawaiians and Locals on the mainland, the author analyzes a rhetorical shift from celebrations of cultural identity to assertions of nationhood and sovereignty on the part of Native Hawaiians that has at times made nonnative Locals feel displaced in the only “home” they have known. Both groups have had to deal with a legacy of U.S. imperialism and injustice, placing them at times in coalition to confront racism and at times in conflict.

    doi:10.58680/ce20044061
  7. Memoria Is a Friend of Ours: On The Discourse of Color1
    Abstract

    The author takes us back through his own and his family’s stories and histories to suggest that while academic discourse can be cognitively powerful it needs to be supplemented by memory and story, in our classrooms and in our scholarship. Memoria, mother of the muses, complements academic discourse’s strengths in logos and in ethos with pathos, providing an essential element in the rhetorical triangle, and, crucially, validating the experiences of people of color that might otherwise be silenced.

    doi:10.58680/ce20044056

July 2004

  1. OPINION: Mycopedagogy
    Abstract

    Taking the reader on a stroll through the woods to look for the elusive and unclassifiable mushroom, this essay suggests that avant-gardes can present a challenge to our familiar modes of communication in the classroom. The author argues that a truly radical pedagogic practice, corresponding to the theoretical critiques offered by recent trends in the study of rhetoric and teaching, might forestall the real danger represented by teaching the avant-garde, namely that it be domesticated and its radical potential neutralized.

    doi:10.58680/ce20042856

March 2004

  1. Invisible Hands: A Manifesto to Resolve Institutional and Curricular Hierarchy in English Studies
    Abstract

    The authors argue for a structural revolution in English studies that builds on the epistemological ground shared by those in composition and literature. Their confederative “English studies” model integrates work in literature, discourse, language studies, and the larger culture with rhetoric and writing instruction horizontally, not hierarchically.

    doi:10.58680/ce20042844

January 2004

  1. Tlaltelolco: The Grammatical-Rhetorical Indios of Colonial Mexico
    Abstract

    This essay focuses on the grammar–rhetoric–composition program at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco, a sixteenth–century institution of higher education in Mexico, to argue for a more amply conceived set of colonialist beginnings for American composition. As an emergent site for North American composition–rhetoric, Tlaltelolco launched phenomena familiar to contemporary scholarship, for example composition-rhetoric as attractor for public debates about race and class, as sponsor of debased curricula for people of color, and as re–enforcer of linkages among color, class, aptitude, and local discourse practices.

    doi:10.58680/ce20042834

November 2003

  1. The Rhetoric of "Job Market" and the Reality of the Academic Labor System
    Abstract

    Preview this article: The Rhetoric of "Job Market" and the Reality of the Academic Labor System, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/66/2/collegeenglish2830-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce20032830
  2. Nineteenth-Century African American Women's Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs
    Abstract

    College English, Volume 66, Number 2, November 2003 Johnnie M. Stover is associate professor of English at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of instruction and research include American literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with specializations in African American, American Indian, and women’s literatures. Portions of this essay appear in her book, Rhetoric and Resistance in Black Women’s Autobiography (University Press of Florida, 2003). T Nineteenth-Century African American Women’s Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs

    doi:10.2307/3594263

March 2003

  1. Extending Rhetorical–Cultural Analysis: Transformations of Home HIV Testing
    Abstract

    Seeks to extend the work of Rosteck, Bazerman, Condit, and others by further elaborating what a hybrid rhetorical cultural study might look like. Studies the rhetorics surrounding HIV and AIDS, particularly home HIV testing. Focuses on the rhetoric of science and technology because of its cross-disciplinary nature and its potential to contribute to high-stakes enterprises, such as HIV testing.

    doi:10.58680/ce20031291
  2. Extending Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis: Transformations of Home HIV Testing
    Abstract

    n his 1992 Society of America keynote address titled Rhetoric in the Vortex of Cultural Studies, Walter Beale proposed that rhetoric and cultural engage in a mutually beneficial dialectic. The point of such a dialectic, Beale clarified, would not be to absorb rhetoric into cultural or vice versa, but to invent ways to fruitfully combine the two sets of approaches. A few years later, Thomas Rosteck similarly called on rhetoricians to advance the project of rhetorical by bringing together the rhetorical tradition and contemporary cultural studies (297). With the rising stock of cultural in the disciplines of English and communication studies, rhetoricians have begun to take up these invitations, as Rosteck's collectionAt the Intersection: Cultural Studies and Rhetorical Studies attests. Some rheto-

    doi:10.2307/3594239

November 2002

  1. Bodily Pedagogies: Rhetoric, Athletics, and Sophists’ Three Rs
    Abstract

    Explores a connection that inhered in ancient practices, a connection not as apparently relevant to contemporary pedagogy, but just might be: that between rhetorical training and athletic training. Looks at two considerations that help render more salient the cultural and historical connections. Discusses how the sophists emphasized the materiality of learning, the corporeal acquisition of rhetorical movements through rhythm, repetition, and response.

    doi:10.58680/ce20021282
  2. Bodily Pedagogies: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Sophists' Three Rs
    Abstract

    or rhetoric and composition, the last decade of the twentieth century might be deemed Return of the Ancients. In many ways, contemporary scholars have taken up an earlier resurgence of the ancients, one that began decades earlier with what have since become standard historical treatments of the ancients (Kennedy, Kerferd, and Guthrie), and, perhaps most notably, in 1972, when Rosamond Kent Sprague's volume The Older Sophists made available the sophistic fragments in translation for the first time. But recent work aims to be more connective: rather than writing history for the sake of history, scholars such as Janet Atwill, Richard Enos, Susan Jarratt, John Poulakos, Takis Poulakos, Kathleen Welch, Victor Vitanza, and most recently Jeffrey Walker (Rhetoric) have reclaimed, refigured, and reread Aristotle, Isocrates, and the sophists, delineating ways in which these ancient figures might help us reframe or reconsider contemporary debates about pedagogy. The connections to feminism (arratt), cultural studies (T. Poulakos and Welch), postmodernism (Vitanza and Atwill) and the liberal arts (Atwill and Walker) have been convincing enough to spark renewed and broadened interest in how the ancients conceptualized rhetoric, how they taught, what they did. In many ways what follows is also a return to the ancients, but rather than attempt to connect the ancients to discourse already in circulation-an important task, to be sure-I want to instead explore a connection that inhered in ancient practices, a connection that isn't as apparently relevant to contemporary pedagogy, but as I will suggest just might be: that between rhetorical training and athletic training. It is important to note at the outset, as many writers have pointed out (for

    doi:10.2307/3250760

July 2002

  1. Gleaning in Academe: Personal Decisions for Adjuncts and Graduate Students
    Abstract

    gnes Varda's recent documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse explores the modern parallels to the ancient practice of gleaning leftover produce from the fields in the wake of the harvesters. Among the most fascinating individuals Varda comes upon is a young man rescuing spilled fruit and vegetables after a farmers' market in Paris. The man is extremely knowledgeable about the nutritional content of each item; has, in fact, a master's degree in chemistry; makes his living distributing free papers and advertising flyers outside train stations; and as his avocation teaches French to the Senegalese immigrants who share the housing project he lives in. Varda shows one of his classes. He is in love with teaching, has drawn charts with a vast number of careful illustrations of words, has an enchanting rapport with his students. But he does not get paid for his teaching: he has organized his classes for free. He is a gleaner, a rescuer of those who have nothing wrong with them but have been passed over by the system. Varda admires him. Traveling across France like a migrant agricultural worker, making a documentary with a hand-held digital video camera, she is la glaneuse of the film's title. For all the usefulness of their work and the joy they have in it, undoubtedly these gleaners-Varda, the French teacher, and others in the film-exist at the margins of their professions and their society. But for all the marginality of their financial existence, the film makes clear that they have chosen their paths thoughtfully and are happy doing what they do. Ghosts in the Classroom, a recent book of essays by adjunct instructors, makes clear that there are many college teachers in the United States who glean the developmental and introductory classes, lead a marginal financial existence, and are not at J a me s Pa p p is associate director of MLA English Programs and the Association of Departments of English. Most of his writing focuses on issues of university teaching and administration, but he has also published on literature, folklore, and translation and has an article forthcoming on Hungarian revival architecture in communities inside and outside Hungary. He is currently editing a collection of papers on the research of teaching in language, literature, and rhetoric.

    doi:10.2307/3250772

May 2002

  1. Herm Choppers, the Adonia, and Rhetorical Action in Ancient Greece
    Abstract

    Presents a debate between traditionalist ideas from Xin Lin Gale and postmodern ideas from Cheryl Glenn and Susan Jarratt. Quotes Gale who says that you cannot have it both ways, foundational and antifoundational: using the historical evidence to champion Aspasia while at the same time "reclaiming" her from the biases of those very documents. Notes Jarratt’s response to the contrary.

    doi:10.58680/ce20021265
  2. Review: Material Matters: Bodies and Rhetoric
    Abstract

    quoted her as saying, "I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street.[...] I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other.There was my material" (Watkins).Consider Brooks's last sentence: "There was my material."Such a simple sentence.Such complex resonances.How may we read Brooks's use of the term material?As the ideas that she wrote about?As the physical and spatial matter in her apartment and on the streets of Bronzeville (South Chicago)?As evidence (as in law) important enough to influence the outcome of a case ... or a life ... or a poem?As the language or terms that make up her poetry?As the competing ideologies that informed her life?Or perhaps the term material signifies a combination of all of the above?If we take this combination

    doi:10.58680/ce20021266
  3. Material Matters: Bodies and Rhetoric
    doi:10.2307/3250756

March 2002

  1. Hard Lessons Learned since the First Generation of Critical Pedagogy
    Abstract

    Review of the following books: (1) Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition by Russel K. Durst, (2) Mutuality in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom by David Wallace and Helen Rothschild Ewald, and (3) Teaching Composition as a Social Process by Bruce McComiskey.

    doi:10.2307/3250749

November 2001

  1. Comment: Kostelanetz’s Rhetoric of Isolation: Or, Sometimes I Feel Lonely Too
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Comment: Kostelanetz's Rhetoric of Isolation: Or, Sometimes I Feel Lonely Too, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/64/2/collegeenglish1249-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce20191249
  2. Comment: Kostelanetz's Rhetoric of Isolation: Or, Sometimes I Feel Lonely Too
    Abstract

    eaching and the 'Alternative' Writer by Richard Kostelanetz is about Richard Kostelanetz: whether Richard wants to take a university teaching position if one is offered; what he might teach if he does take such a position; and how he might avoid becoming an academic of the sort he describes, having so easily divided the universe of writers in this country into independents and academics. First, let me say that I have long known and admired Richard's work (though I have never met him) and that I hope his artistic productivity continues long into the future, perhaps untainted by the university work he contemplates doing. Second, let me say for the time being that I will not attack this essay for its obvious use of easy binaries (e.g., the independent writer/academic writer split); it is unnecessary to do so. What I would like to do is offer a reading of Richard's essay by placing it in the context of both the isolation voiced by others in the profession as well as the loneliness I have expressed unconsciously in three pieces I have written at different times during my career. My point is that some of the feelings Richard expresses evoke certain strong feelings in me. Not what Richard says, but how he says it, brings to mind for me a session I attended last year at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a session that introduced me to what for lack of a better phrase we might call rhetorics of emotion. I believe Richard has written such a piece. Unknowingly over the past twenty years, I believe I have too.

    doi:10.2307/1350120

September 2001

  1. Making Writing Matter: Using "The Personal" to Recover[y] an Essential[ist] Tension in Academic Discourse
    Abstract

    Considers how constructing a hopeful professional discourse requires substantial revision of current professional discursive practices. Notes that the search for local knowledge and a shared, more hopeful discourse has rekindled interest in the rhetorical as well as material authority of ideologies, in various forms of writing collected under the overdetermined rubric "the personal." (SG)

    doi:10.2307/1350111
  2. Making Writing Matter: Using “the Personal” to Recover[y] and Essential[ist] Tension in Academic Discourse
    Abstract

    In three voices - one as a scholar, one as a writer, and one as an alcoholic - Hindman considers the question: in what ways can our own personal writing illuminate the theory and practice of teaching composition? Demonstrating the process of composing the self within the professional, she responds both passionately and personally to literary criticisms about recovery discourse. Her purpose is to “make writing matter” and, in doing so, to attempt to dispel the tension between competing versions of how the self is constructed. She also considers how, in and for recovery, she learned to write, and how it has affected her professional writing. This type of writing, which she has called “embodied rhetoric,” offers lessons for composing a better life.

    doi:10.58680/ce20011241
  3. Argument and Evidence in the Case of the Personal
    Abstract

    Opponents of expressivist writing pedagogy claim that encouraging the personal narrative in first-year rhetoric classis is a great disservice to students. Supporters of personal writing responded by making personal writing activities supplemental to traditional academic writings. Spigelman posits that personal narratives can actually serve the same purpose as academic writing and can accomplish serious scholarly work.

    doi:10.58680/ce20011240

January 2001

  1. WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition
    Abstract

    Kath leen Blak e Ya nce y is Pearce Professor of English at Clemson University, where she directs the Roy and Marnie Pearce Center for Professional Communication and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, rhetoric, and professional communication. Editor or author of six books and numerous articles and chapters, she chairs the College Section of NCTE and is vice-president of WPA. Her current interests include reflection as a means of enhancing learning; the design and uses of electronic portfolios; and ways of assessing digital texts.

    doi:10.2307/378996

November 2000

  1. REVIEW: Structure and Possibility: New Scholarship about Students-Called-Basic-Writers
    Abstract

    Questions the rhetoric of reproof and asserts the authors’ belief that the practice of scholarly critique is generally salutary. Hopes to stand as a testimony to the firm belief in the importance of critique in the ongoing scholarly conversation. Considers ethical problems with (and use of) the rhetoric of reproof, and ethical awareness and the scholarly conversation.

    doi:10.58680/ce20001206
  2. Opinion: The Rhetoric of Reproof
    Abstract

    Questions the rhetoric of reproof and asserts the authors’ belief that the practice of scholarly critique is generally salutary. Hopes to stand as a testimony to the firm belief in the importance of critique in the ongoing scholarly conversation. Considers ethical problems with (and use of) the rhetoric of reproof, and ethical awareness and the scholarly conversation.

    doi:10.58680/ce20001205
  3. The Rhetoric of Reproof
    doi:10.2307/379041

July 2000

  1. Integrating Rhetorical and Literary Theories of Genre
    Abstract

    Claims scholars in English, as a field of study, share a common object of study, specifically the study of discourse. Compares and attempts to integrate the scholarship on one part of discourse--genre--from two subdisciplines of English, literary and composition study.

    doi:10.58680/ce20001189

January 2000

  1. Rhetoric and Feminism: Together Again
    doi:10.2307/378938
  2. Comment: Rhetoric and Feminism: Together Again
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Comment: Rhetoric and Feminism: Together Again, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/62/3/collegeenglish1172-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce20001172
  3. Historical Studies and Postmodernism: Rereading Aspasia of Miletus
    Abstract

    Presents a critical review of the three historical studies of Aspasia written by feminist historians. Asks how historians and scholars can write radically alternative histories of rhetoric without compromising their credibility.

    doi:10.58680/ce20001171

November 1999

  1. Comment & Response: A Comment on “Rhetoric as a Course of Study”
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Comment & Response: A Comment on "Rhetoric as a Course of Study", Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/62/2/collegeenglish1168-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19991168
  2. From Formalism to Inquiry: A Model of Argument in Antigone
    Abstract

    exercise that they see as merely academic. If anything governs this work, it is the attention to the requirements of a particular form. Students dutifully present claims, back the claims with evidence and reasons, which they warrant as needed. They consider alternative positions to show that they have canvased all or most reasonable points of view and, further, that they have qualified their position in light of these other viewpoints. The result is a well-formed essay that, I suspect, has little if any impact on anybody. I suspect further that the students at some level sense this. And if they do, then the composition of an argument becomes primarily a formal exercise, and, more important, it inadvertently teaches a cynical lesson: the production of arguments is a charade, no one actually attends to them, and at best they are a mask for how real power operates-those who have power pretty much do what they want. There is a Creon-like commitment to the rhetoric of public reason because one knows in advance that this reason will have little impact on anyone or involve little risk to the one who argues. This is the dark vision that has haunted the rhetorical tradition. If students need confirmation of this view, all they have to do is look to the way that Congress and large corporations work. Serious argument is often impotent when it encounters the power of well-entrenched and well-financed interest groups. Reason and argument become the cover for the operation of powerful lobbying groups indifferent to the consequences of their actions for others. If the operation of such power is the reality, what then are the consequences for teaching argument? This is an especially important question for a democracy and an even more important question for a democracy in which there is only limited citizen participation. Unlike fifth century BCE Athens, we do not have a face-to-face democracy, so our courses in argument cannot pretend to be a straightforward preparation for a commonly available political life. Most of us are not leisured gentlemen free to attend to the direct business of governing our cities and states. Instead, we occupy a complex position toward current discourses of power, be they civic or corporate, and what we need is a rich and complex sense of the opportunities and limits of argument. What we need to explore is the value of argument given the way that power is held in the contemporary world. Texts like Antigone offer an alternative to the current teaching of argument, for they see argument as problematic. They offer no easy or mechanical solutions but pose argument as a problem and offer it for serious reflection. Other scholars have argued for the value of teaching literature as argument (Fisher and Filloy), but I am advocating something else. What I am proposing is that literary texts such as Antigone be taught as theoretical works in argument. These works would allow us to teach argument as a philosophical or political problem and not as a mode of presenting evidence for purposes of justifying claims. Instead, they would raise questions as to why arguments so often fail, and they would open students to questions of why, given the unlikeliness of success, someone might argue. And a course based on such texts This content downloaded from 157.55.39.116 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 06:21:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

    doi:10.2307/379019
  3. A Comment on "Rhetoric as a Course of Study
    doi:10.2307/379023
  4. Opinion: Hiding It from the Kids
    Abstract

    Confronts the problem of applicants for admittance to graduate programs in the Humanities failing to have been told what would be wanted on their applications. Discusses helping students learn to explain their specialties to nonspecialists. Assumes that learning to summarize and “enter the conversations around one” is excellent rhetorical training regardless of the student’s profession.

    doi:10.58680/ce19991165