Course Description & Goals
Much of what we understand as “Modern” rhetoric, or rhetorics of the period roughly between Giambattista Vico’s On the Study of the methods of Our Time and Kenneth Burke’s Attitudes Towards History, is evident in two ways in contemporary rhetorical practice: 1) we look back on this period to note landmarks in a moveable history of rhetorical traditions, figures, and texts; and 2) we look to this period for a narrative of how our methods for investigating the past have evolved and can evolve. This course offers an investigation into Modern Rhetoric as both history and methodology, time(s) and tradition(s), synchronic and diachronic. It invites you to consider what it means, or has meant, to write Modern history in rhetoric, towards the goal of understanding coherent competing traditions and methods, rather than formulating a singularly historical tradition.
We will pay attention to texts that have traditionally signaled a shift in women’s rhetorical practices, the transformation from private to civic discourses, and the reframing of rhetoric as a discipline for both rational thought and embodied agency. We will consider the intervention of outside academic movements (e.g., linguistics, philosophy, belletrism, critical theory) onto rhetorical questions. And we will consider some challenges that have emerged for historiographers in balancing their goals of canon expansion with attending to marginalized voices and groups, especially attending to questions of who are the disciplinary agents in the formation of our discipline, and whose accounts invariably get left out of disciplinary formation. Finally, we will observe how digital methodologies can emerge and have emerged from historical study into “Modern” issues and topics. Here are our goals this semester (among other goals you may set for yourselves):
- increase our understanding of the development of “Modern Rhetoric” by critically surveying primary texts and their secondary assessments;
- learn methods for tracing some germane developments in politics, religion, education, criticism, logic, and public discourse through these texts;
- grasp a range of vocabularies for historical work into rhetoric, especially for works produced from and about (roughly) 1600-1900;
- learn to extend the parameters of research projects, identify conflicts, and question modern origin stories for rhetoric and composition;
- develop as (digital) historical scholars by learning new research methodologies and gathering emergent tools, as well as thinking about the principles and motivations for constructing them.
Required Texts
- Assorted readings in BB Course Library (BB) and (web link)
- Bizzell and Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd Edition (Bedford St. Martin’s, 2001) (B/H)
- Brereton, The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925 (Pitt, 1995) (BR)
- Golden and Corbett, eds., The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately (SIUP, 1990) (G/C)
- Ong, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Cornell, 1971) (O)
Feel free to share texts and economize. However, due to the nature of our discussions and collaborative traces, it is imperative that you bring texts to class on dates they are assigned without exception. Readings marked B/H, G/C and BR should be brought to class as whole texts so that we can work between chapters as needed. Readings marked BB and web link should be brought to class in either digital (laptop, e-Reader, etc.) or print format.
