Course Description & Goals
This is not a course in the history of rhetoric, but a course that focuses (somewhat historically) on rhetorical theory. Consider it a panhistorical* exploration of key critical moments in the development of what we know as 20th- and 21st-century rhetorical theory and practice. Primarily, we will trace configurations of rhetoric and rhetorical theory, looking backwards and forwards from each configuration to better identify its contours and plot their development. Secondarily, we will study the influences of particular rhetoricians and theorists on their own noetic fields†, on the disciplines of language and philosophy, and on each other. Concurrently, our emphasis will be on disrupting the idea of a closed noetic field at all. Put more simply, we’re hoping to learn various ways that rhetoric, composition, and communication studies have utilized, resisted, or negotiated ideas of rhetoric from classical, modern, and postmodern theory.This means that we will read in strands across wide swaths of theoretical activity—for example, taking up Ramus’s critique of scholasticism in order to better consider how Campbell and Bacon might influence the development of genre, or examining Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s “universal audience” to better examine cultural dislocation in the writings of Trinh, Gates, and Mao. Reading in strands helps us read carefully while being critically aware of our own exclusions, since it is impossible to do a close study of all rhetorical theory in one semester. We will also try not to limit ourselves to Western traditions, although we will only have time to sample a much richer body of non-Western scholarship. Here are our goals by the end of the course:
- achieve a comprehensive understanding of key linguistic, philosophical, and critical movements in rhetorical theory, and of how vexing a task it is to chart out a (single) rhetorical tradition;
- develop a vocabulary for theoretical work, including key terms that signal noesis (or intellectual movement) between classical, modern, and postmodern rhetorical traditions;
- discuss rhetorical theory as ontological (invoking questions of being), axiological (invoking questions of nature or value), and epistemic (invoking questions of knowing);
- explore different reading and research methods for tracing germane developments in language, communication, history, and philosophy throughout our course texts;
- become better equipped to pursue an individual topic for further study.
*Panhistorical = Approaching the task from multiple historical stances. In a way, this approach reflects a tension between the desire to establish a beginning point and the desire to know everything all at once.
†Noetic field = What James Berlin has called a “closed system defining what can, and cannot be known,” or the nature of the relationship between knower, known, and audience.
