Professor Kate Ryan
Office Hours: TTH 9:30-10:30 and by appt, Wilson 2-276
Class: TTH 10:50-12:05, Wilson 1124
kathleen.ryan3@msu.montana.edu
“Just for the record, when I use the word rhetoric, I am evoking a shorthand that encompasses thousands of years of intellectual production all over the globe—a set of productions that we have only just begun to understand—and that generally refers to systems of discourse through which meaning was, is, and continues to be made in a given culture.” (Melea Powell)
Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion." (Aristotle)
for more definitions see: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm
Traditionally, the historical study of rhetoric has focused exclusively on western rhetoric, on figures like Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero with Athens and Rome serving as the geographic centers of this tradition. This course reflects more recent scholarship that challenges this exclusive focus on a single dominant tradition and branches out to study rhetorical traditions practiced across other times, places, and cultures – Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, and American Indian rhetorics.
We'll see that rhetoric is not a stable term, but shifts to respond to different interests, exigencies, and contexts. We'll see how rhetoric can be defined not only as persuasion and in terms of the three appeals and five canons, but also in terms of other cultural practices, experiences, and concepts. Rhetorical study isn't only the product of western culture but is a way of studying different systems of discourse used in multiple cultures. The primary goal is to expand your historical and contemporary knowledge of theories of rhetoric to deepen your understanding of what it means to be a rhetor and a rhetorician by learning about these diverse rhetorical legacies and practices.
We'll study questions like these: How do different thinkers and cultures define and practice rhetoric? What does a look across multiple traditions teach us about rhetoric historically, theoretically, and culturally? What research methods, subjects of study, terms of interest, lines of inquiry are of concern to rhetoricians and why? How is rhetoric related to power, politics, history, and narrative? How do a multiplicity of theories and histories of rhetoric help you think about -- complicate, extend, develop -- your beliefs and practices as a rhetor and a rhetorician? Even more broadly, how does our work together speak to your work in the major, your broader identifications as a scholar, citizen, writer, and so on (historical, racial, social, personal, gender identifications)?
Course Goals
By the end of the semester, my hope is that you will have achieved the following goals:
• Expand your knowledge of a range of rhetorical traditions;
• Develop your abilities as a rhetorician, or someone who reads and studies rhetoric;
• Engage the active, ethical, and productive prospects of rhetoric (what rhetorical study helps us know, do, and believe);
• Increase fluency with key concepts in rhetorical studies, including how they change meaning and value across time, place, and cultures;
• Continue to improve your critical writing and communicating skills, your abilities as a rhetor;
• Locate yourself as a writer, citizen, thinker and person in relationship to these rhetorical traditions.
Required Class Texts
Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction by Richard Toye
Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks edited by Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley
American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic edited by Ernest Stromberg
Additional readings: pdfs that you are required to print or bring in electronically on something bigger than a phone for the sake of our close study of texts.
Strategies for Reading
We read difficult texts. Mark up your texts with marginalia to trace your engagement with the text. Read texts more then once, taking time to think about what you are reading (from questions of comprehension to questions of engagement, or what you think about what you read). Ask yourself what the text believes, values, teaches about rhetoric. What in the text makes you think that? How does that text speak to other texts we've read? Take notes on confusing passages, passages that seem important, lines you like, lines that make you mad. These will inform our class discussions and blog discussions.
Additional Resources
Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Ed. Theresa Enos.
3rd floor, reference: PN172.E53 2010
Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed. Thomas Sloane. 3rd. floor, reference: PN172.E53 2010
Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. James L. Jasinski. 2nd. floor, stacks: PN172.J37 2001
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/
The Forest of Rhetoric. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/
Assorted definitions of rhetoric: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm
The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. PN44.5.M86 2009
Major Assignments
All major assignments must be completed for you to pass the course. You'll receive more detailed assignments at the start of each of them.
Ancient Rhetoric Study: Before and Beyond the Greeks. This study asks you to develop an argument about some aspect of ancient rhetoric that interests you based off of our discussions and readings in Lipson and Binkley. You might study one of the traditions we read about in greater detail or from a different angle (i.e, Egyptian rhetoric or Chinese rhetoric), or you might trace a topic across cultures (following Swearingen's or Watts) to examine a genre or move you observe (i.e., the rhetorical use of narrative or women's ancient poetry), or look at a different culture's historical rhetorical practices than those we've studied (i.e., ancient Irish rhetoric or Indian rhetoric, or Mayan rhetoric), or a figure's rhetorical practices (i.e., Gilgamesh or Enheduanna). If you hope to become a teacher, you might do a study of pedagogical approaches to teaching nonwestern ancient rhetorics. In other words, you may take up this a study of ancient rhetorics in a myriad of ways, though you'll need to develop a narrow focus for your study.
Rhetorical Discussion of American Indian Rhetorics. This paper asks you to develop an argument about some aspect of American Indian rhetorics that interested you. You might study a topic in greater detail (i.e., Cherokee removal or boarding school narratives), or explore a concept from a new perspective (i.e., survivance, Indian politics and rhetoric), or offer a rhetorical study of a contemporary or historical American Indian text, treaty, or issue. You might further study the rhetorical practices of a figure of interest that we read about (i.e., Sarah Winnemucca, Zitkala-Sa, Red Jacket, trickster figures). If you hope to become a teacher, you might study pedagogical approaches to teaching American Indian rhetorics. In other words, you'll need to do some substantial research to determine the focus of your rhetorical discussion and compose a clear, thesis-driven discussion.
Final Reflection. (a minimum of 700 words). This reflection at the end of the semester invites you to look back over your work of the semester to talk about what you've learned and achieved as a member of the class, especially as a rhetorician.We'll design prompts to choose from in the last class.
Discussion Questions. For each class meeting, you'll compose 2-3 questions for discussion to a shared google document (You'll add your name, the date of the assignment, the title of the article/s the questions address, and the questions to a single document that we all have access to). We'll use these questions to guide our collective discussions, but you'll also be able to look back at the questions everyone poses over the semester to reflect on the issues, concerns and thinking that informed our work together as well as your development as a thinker in class. Please read the following suggestions for making effective discussion questions:
http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/docs/ta/pdf/Master_effective_questions.pdf. In particular, note that "A good question is both a question that your fellow students can answer and a question that requires analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and critical thinking in order to answer it."
Graduate Students. In addition to composing more sophisticated and lengthier studies, more involved reflections, and discussion questions, graduate students will submit weekly annotated bibliographies of scholarly readings (approx 5 sources) to supplement class discussions. You'll share these with classmates through Google Drive and present on them weekly (5-10 minutes) to help contextualize and extend our class readings. In addition, you'll lead one of the class meetings in order to engage and apply pedagogical approaches to teaching nonwestern rhetorics (Schedule this by the end of the second week of classes).