Welcome to ENG 5028 for the Fall 2016 semester. I look forward to greeting you next week!
Because our seminar was scheduled once weekly on a Thursday, we’ll need to get started with discussion during our first class meeting. Please purchase, rent, or borrow our required course text (Bizzell/Herzberg The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd ed) as soon as you are able, and complete the following assignment for our first meeting (on September 1, 2016):
Of the following three articles (located in our Course Library), I’ll ask you to read two: Bitzer and either Vatz or Biesecker.
- Biesecker, Barbara. “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from within the Thematic of Difference.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 22.2 (1989): 110-130.
- Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (Jan 1968): 1-14
- Vatz, Richard E. “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation” Philosophy & Rhetoric 6.3 (Summer 1973): 154-161.
The two articles you select will present, take up, and begin to disrupt what has become a dominant idea underlying rhetorical theory in the late twentieth century: the rhetorical situation.
As I am sending you into this reading with very little context, you might annotate for the following:
- What do you understand with certainty about the subject(s) being discussed?
- What do you not understand at all?
- If you reflect on the historical conversation represented by your two articles, you will likely notice that—from Bitzer to Biesecker, or from Bitzer to Vatz—much theoretical ground has shifted. Take note of any shifts. From your vantage point as a reader, what has changed between your two articles, according to the claims the writers make? Why do Vatz and Biesecker think “rhetorical situation” is such a worthy topic to revisit, respond to, or interrogate?
In addition to those two articles, please read any 5 pages in Bizzell and Herzberg’s “General Introduction” (pages 1-16 of The Rhetorical Tradition anthology), and be ready to discuss at least 5 things you notice about how Bizzell and Herzberg have organized the anthology, the field, and the topics. You are welcome and encouraged to read the entire introduction, but I think you’ll be able to notice quite a bit based on your 5 selected pages.
Looking forward to our first discussion,
-Dr. Graban
