Daniel Smith

This course will survey major concepts and figures in the history of rhetoric in Western culture, with an emphasis on its classical and “modern” eras. We will orient ourselves to the history of rhetoric by examining its dis/connections to philosophy and their respective ideas and ideals. In so doing, we will explore the question of whether the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is intrinsically oppositional—as it has been traditionally understood—or socio-historically constituted as such. Some of the other questions we’ll engage together include: How do the status, meaning, and operations of concepts such as truth, belief, knowledge, education, identity, and communication (among others) “work” to shape how we live as individuals and communities? What relationships are there, if any, between language and other modes of communication and knowledge, thought, emotion, and experience? What are the differences between ancient and contemporary conceptions and practices of rhetorical education? And do those differences matter in any significant way in the domains of our personal, professional, and civic lives? What would it mean to say that a person is rhetorically capable and responsible?

Assignments and Grading

10 Short Response Papers (250 words) -  25%

1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper - 25%

1 Research Paper and Brief Oral Summary - 30%

Preparedness, Participation, and Attendance - 20%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Course Packet, which will include readings by ancient and contemporary authors such as Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Cicero, John Quincy Adams, Debra Hawhee, Barry Schwartz, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Edwin Black, and Thomas Farrell (among others).

Other Media – textual, visual, and oral compositions via the internet.

The study and practice of rhetoric often focuses on the dynamics of argument as a mode of influence.  That is, practices of communication that attempt to demonstrate why one should think, feel, act, or live in specific ways.   There’s no doubt that demonstrative rhetoric is a prominent part of our personal, professional, and civic lives.  However, argument—modes of demonstrative communication that can influence people in specific ways—is not the only way that rhetoric operates and circulates among us.  In other words, there are “non-demonstrative” modes of communication whose influence upon how we think, feel, act, and live is just as significant as argument, if not more so.  Among these non-demonstrative forms of rhetoric, narrative is probably the most common and, perhaps, the most influential of all. 

This course will challenge students—through readings, discussion, research, and writing—to explore and examine the pervasiveness of narrative and its rhetorical dynamics.  Some of the questions students will engage include: What is narrative?  What forms do narratives take?  Aren’t narratives ‘just stories’? How are narratives rhetorical?  How do narratives ‘in-form’ human communities, identities, institutions, and practices?  What role do narratives play in culture, politics and other domains, such as work and citizenship?  Are we hard-wired for narrative?  Is narrativity more fundamental than rationality for understanding how we think, feel, act, and live?  How can we examine and analyze the rhetorical dimensions of narrative?  And what can we learn from and do with such analyses?

Assignments and Grading

Mid-Term Exam - 30%

Research Paper - 30%

Multimedia Rhetorical Analysis of Narrative (composed via Storify) - 20%

Reading Quizzes, Brief Response Papers, Class Participation - 20%

Learning Outcomes

Students who successfully complete this course will develop and be capable of demonstrating:

• an elementary understanding of narrative modes and their rhetorical dynamics

• an ability to engage and discuss the rhetorical dynamics of narrative critically and analytically

• competence in researching, assessing, and using relevant information and multimedia re/sources

• proficiency in exploratory, expository, and argumentative writing

Required Texts and Course Readings

Bruner, Jerome. “The Narrative Creation of Self.” In Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life (Harvard UP 2003).

Card, Orson Scott. “Stories.”

Fisher, Walter. “The Narrative Paradigm.”

 ___________. “The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration.”

Horsdal, Marianne. “Learning from Vicarious Experience: The Role of Mirror Neurons and Narrative.”

Kreiswirth, Martin. “Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences.”

McClure, Kevin. “Resurrecting the Narrative Paradigm: Identification and the Case of Young Earth Creationism.”

Miller, Frank (author) and Klaus Janson (illustrator). Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (DC Comics, 10th anniversary ed., 1997).

Naugle, David. “Narrative and Life: The Central Role of Stories in Human Experience.”

Scholes, Robert and James Phelan. “Narrative Theory, 1966 – 2006: A Narrative.” In The Nature of Narrative (Oxford UP, 2006).

Suzanne Keen, “A Theory of Narrative Empathy.”

Thiele, Leslie Paul. The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative (Cambridge UP, 2006).

Weber, Samuel. “Networks, Net-War, and Narratives.”

This course will survey major concepts and figures in the history of rhetoric in Western culture, with an emphasis on its classical and “modern” eras. We will orient ourselves to the history of rhetoric by examining its dis/connections to philosophy and their respective ideas and ideals. In so doing, we will explore the question of whether the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is intrinsically oppositional—as it has been traditionally understood—or socio-historically constituted as such. Some of the other questions we’ll engage together include: How do the status, meaning, and operations of concepts such as truth, belief, knowledge, education, identity, and communication (among others) “work” to shape how we live as individuals and communities? What relationships are there, if any, between language and other modes of communication and knowledge, thought, emotion, and experience? What are the differences between ancient and contemporary conceptions and practices of rhetorical education? And do those differences matter in any significant way in the domains of our personal, professional, and civic lives? What would it mean to say that a person is rhetorically capable and responsible?

Assignments and Grading

10 Short Response Papers (250 words) - 25%

1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper - 25%

1 Research Paper and Brief Oral Summary - 30%

Preparedness, Participation, and Attendance - 20%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Course Packet, which will include readings by ancient and contemporary authors such as Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Cicero, John Quincy Adams, Debra Hawhee, Barry Schwartz, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Edwin Black, and Thomas Farrell (among others).

Other Media – textual, visual, and oral compositions via the internet.

Cyborgs, or cybernetic organisms, are beings whose mode of existence involves a synthesis of biology and technology.  Fictional cyborgs have been part of popular culture for at least a half-century.  Consider, for example: Tony Stark (Iron Man,1962); Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man, 1975); Darth Vader (Star Wars, 1977); T-800 (The Terminator, 1984); Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell, 1989); the Borg (Star Trek TNG, 1990); Jack (Tekken, 1993); Del Spooner (I, Robot, 2004); Adam Jensen (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 2011)—to name only a few.

There are those, however, who contend that actual cyborgs currently outnumber their fictional counterparts.  At the heart of this claim is the controversial view that bio-technical synthesis is not definitive of a cyborg existence, but rather that it is a matter of degrees of bio-technical connectivity and co-evolution.  Among the implications of this view is the idea that we can better understand ourselves and the communities in which we live if human beings, especially those living in technologically-saturated cultures, are seen primarily as networked cybernetic organisms rather than anthropocentrically conceived Homo sapiens.

Using the lens of rhetoric, students in this course will explore, examine, and assess—via reading, discussion, research, and writing—a variety of cultural texts and contexts that inform this provocative idea, which might otherwise be called the “cyborg hypothesis.”  The course’s aim is not to determine whether or not we are actually cyborgs, though questions about the truth of this notion may be engaged as part of class discussions.  Rather, we will focus on this controversial topic as a way of understanding and questioning doxa—or common beliefs—about human being(s) and, in so doing, develop abilities that characterize rhetorically attuned and “response-able” individuals.  That is, skills of inquiry, evaluation, interpretation, invention and communication operating in concert with and expressing thinking that is informed, logical, critical, analytical, and ethical.

Assignments and Grading

Response Papers and Reading Quizzes - 20%

Survey Essay 1.1 - 15%

Survey Essay 1.2 (substantive revision and extension) - 20%

Rhetorical Analysis 1.1 - 15%

Rhetorical Analysis 1.2 (substantive revision and extension) - 20%

Class Participation - 10%

Required Texts

Course Packet, which will include excerpted readings from the works of:

Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech (aka Le Geste et la Parole, Vol. 1: Technique et Langage; Vol. 2: La Mémoire et les Rythmes)

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”

David Gunkel, “Ecce Cyborg”

Marge Piercy, He, She and It

Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio, Robo-Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species

Chris Gray, The Cyborg Handbook

Arne De Boever et al (eds.) Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology

Adrian Mackenzie, Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed

Amber Case, An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology: A Field Guide to Interface Culture

(Available for Digital Download: http://cyborganthropology.com/store/)

Watch Amber Case’s TED talk, “We are All Cyborgs Now,” here: http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html

Lunsford, Andrea. Easy Writer (4th edition)

This course will survey major concepts and figures in the history of rhetoric in Western culture, with an emphasis on its classical and “modern” eras. We will orient ourselves to the history of rhetoric by examining its dis/connections to philosophy and their respective ideas and ideals. In so doing, we will explore the question of whether the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is intrinsically oppositional—as it has been traditionally understood—or socio-historically constituted as such. Some of the other questions we’ll engage together include: How do the status, meaning, and operations of concepts such as truth, belief, knowledge, education, identity, and communication (among others) “work” to shape how we live as individuals and communities? What relationships are there, if any, between language and other modes of communication and knowledge, thought, emotion, and experience? What are the differences between ancient and contemporary conceptions and practices of rhetorical education? And do those differences matter in any significant way in the domains of our personal, professional, and civic lives? What would it mean to say that a person is rhetorically capable and responsible?

Assignments and Grading

10 Short Response Papers (250 words) - 25%

1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper - 25%

1 Research Paper and Brief Oral Summary - 30%

Preparedness, Participation, and Attendance - 20%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Course Packet, which will include readings by ancient and contemporary authors such as Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Cicero, John Quincy Adams, Debra Hawhee, Barry Schwartz, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Edwin Black, and Thomas Farrell (among others).

Other Media – textual, visual, and oral compositions via the internet.

This course will survey major concepts and figures in the history of rhetoric in Western culture, with an emphasis on its classical and “modern” eras. We will orient ourselves to this history by exploring the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge. Underlying most conceptions of rhetoric is the idea that language and other modes of communication (can) work to shape people’s beliefs, attitudes, values, goals, and actions. But how, if at all, does this “shaping” affect or perhaps even constitute knowledge? Is knowledge distinct from our beliefs, attitudes, values, goals, and actions? What is knowledge anyway? Is knowledge restricted to ideas, concepts, or what’s “in our heads”? Is it correct belief? Can we separate knowledge from how we live, and thus the cultures and communities in which we live? This course invites students to engage these and other questions while developing a basic understanding of the history of rhetoric.

Assignments and Grading

10 Short Response Papers (250 words) - 25%

1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper - 25%

1 Research Paper and Brief Oral Summary - 30%

Preparedness, Participation, and Attendance - 20%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Course Packet, which will include readings by classical and contemporary authors such as Gorgias, Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Cicero, Peter Ramus, Friedrich Nietzsche, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (among others).

Other Media – textual, visual, and oral compositions via the internet

This course will survey major concepts and figures in the history of rhetoric in Western culture, with an emphasis on its classical and “modern” eras. We will orient ourselves to the history of rhetoric by examining its dis/connections to philosophy and their respective ideas and ideals. In so doing, we will explore the question of whether the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is intrinsically oppositional—as it has been traditionally understood—or socio-historically constituted as such. Some of the other questions we’ll engage together include: How do the status, meaning, and operations of concepts such as truth, belief, knowledge, education, identity, and communication (among others) “work” to shape how we live as individuals and communities? What relationships are there, if any, between language and other modes of communication and knowledge, thought, emotion, and experience? What are the differences between ancient and contemporary conceptions and practices of rhetorical education? And do those differences matter in any significant way in the domains of our personal, professional, and civic lives? What would it mean to say that a person is rhetorically capable and responsible?

Assignments and Grading

10 Short Response Papers (250 words) - 25%

1 Rhetorical Analysis Paper - 25%

1 Research Paper and Brief Oral Summary - 30%

Preparedness, Participation, and Attendance - 20%

Required Texts and Course Readings

Course Packet, which will include readings by ancient and contemporary authors such as Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Cicero, John Quincy Adams, Debra Hawhee, Barry Schwartz, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Edwin Black, and Thomas Farrell (among others).

Other Media – textual, visual, and oral compositions via the internet.