Contingency, Immanence, and the Subject of Rhetoric considers rhetoric as the historical counterpoint of philosophical and religious discourses via its correspondences with antique rabbinic exegetical practices and contemporary psychoanalytic insights into causation. Timothy Richardson takes up the rabbinic position to demonstrate how traditional Greco-Christian rhetoric might be insufficient to account for what we now mean by rhetoric as a discipline.
While rhetoric as a discipline is firmly planted in humanism and anthropology, posthumanism seeks to leave the human behind. This highly original examination of Kenneth Burke’s thought grapples with these ostensibly contradictory concepts as opportunities for invention, revision, and, importantly, transdisciplinary knowledge making. Rather than simply mapping posthumanist rhetorics onto Burke’s scholarship, Kenneth Burke + The Posthuman focuses on the multiplicity of ideas found both in his work and in the idea of posthumanism. Taking varied approaches organized within a framework of boundaries and futures, the contributors show that studying the humanist theories of Burke in this way creates a satisfyingly chaotic web of interconnections. The essays look at how Burke’s writing on the human mind and technology, from his earliest works to his very latest revisions, interrelates with current concepts such as new materiality and coevolution. Throughout, the contributors pay close attention to the fluidity, concerns, and contradictions inherent in language, symbolism, and subjectivity. A unique, illuminating exploration of the contested relationship between bodies and language, this inherently transdisciplinary book will propel important future inquiry by scholars of rhetoric, Burke, and posthumanism. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Casey Boyle, Kristie Fleckenstein, Nathan Gale, Julie Jung, Steven B. Katz, Steven LeMieux, Jodie Nicotra, Jeff Pruchnic, Timothy Richardson, Thomas Rickert, and Robert Wess.
GLOBAL RHETORICAL TRADITIONS is unique in design and scope. It presents, as accessibly as possible, translated primary sources on global rhetorical instruction and practices of Asia, Africa, the Near East, the Middle East, Polynesia, and precolonial Europe. Each of the book’s chapters represents a different rhetorical region and includes a prefatory introduction, critical commentary, translated primary sources, a glossary of rhetorical terms, and a comprehensive bibliography. The general introduction helps contextualize the project, justify its organization and coverage, and draw attention to the various features, characteristics, and/or philosophies of the rhetorics included in the book. The book’s significance lies in its contributions to both studying and teaching global rhetorical traditions by offering representative research methods and primary sources in a single volume. It can be read as scholarship, as reference, and as textbook. BRIEF CONTENTS: Foreword by Patricia Bizzell Renewing Comparative Methodologies by Tarez Samra Graban 1 Arabic and Islamic Rhetorics: Early Islamic, Medieval Islamic, Arabic-Islamic 2 Chinese Rhetorics; Spring-Autumn and Warring States Period (Classical), Han Dynasty, Six Dynasties (Early Medieval), Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty, and Ming Dynasty, The Modern Period (20th Century) 3 East African Rhetorics: Nilotic 4 Indian and Nepali Rhetorics: Indian-Poetic, Indian-Logical, Hindu 5 Indonesian Rhetorics: Post-National 6 Irish Rhetorics: Medieval Irish-Gaelic (Non-European) 7 Mediterranean Rhetorics: Byzantine, Hebraic Mediterranean 8 Polynesian-Hawaiian Rhetorics: Post-Colonial Hawaiian (Non-European) 9 Russian Rhetorics: Kievan Rus’ Traditions 10 Turkish Rhetorics: Middle Turkish (Central Asia)
The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics offers a broad and comprehensive understanding of comparative or world rhetoric, from ancient times to the modern day. Bringing together an international team of established and emergent scholars, this Handbook looks beyond Greco-Roman traditions in the study of rhetoric to provide an international, cross-cultural study of communication practices around the globe. With dedicated sections covering theory and practice, history, pedagogy, hybrids and the modern context, this extensive collection will provide the reader with a solid understanding of: how comparative rhetoric evolved how it re-defines and expands the field of rhetorical studies what it contributes to our understanding of human communication its implications for the advancement of related fields, such as composition, technology, language studies, and literacy. In a world where understanding how people communicate, argue, and persuade is as important as understanding their languages, The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics is an essential resource for scholars and students of communication, composition, rhetoric, cultural studies, cultural rhetoric, cross-cultural studies, transnational studies, translingual studies, and languages.
Creole Composition is a collection featuring essays by scholars and teachers-researchers working with students in/from the Anglophone Caribbean. Arising from a need to define what writing instruction in the Caribbean means, Creole Composition expands the existing body of research literature about the teaching of writing at the postsecondary level in the Caribbean region. To this end, it speaks to critical disciplinary conversations of rhetoric and composition and academic literacies while addressing specific issues with teaching academic writing to Anglophone Caribbean students. It features chapters addressing language, approaches to teaching, assessing writing, administration, and research in postsecondary education as well as professionalization of writing instructors in the region. Some chapters reflect traditional Caribbean attitudes to postsecondary writing instruction; other chapters seek to reform these traditional practices. Some chapters’ interventions emerge from discussions in writing studies while other chapters reflect their authors’ primary training in other fields, such as applied linguistics, education, and literary studies. Additionally, the chapters use a variety of styles and methods, ranging from highly personal reflective essays to theoretical pieces and empirical studies following IMRaD format. Creole Composition, the first of its kind in the region, provides much-needed knowledge to the community of teacher-researchers in the Anglophone Caribbean and elsewhere in the fields of rhetoric and composition, writing studies, and academic literacies. In suggesting frameworks around which to build and further institutionalize and professionalize writing studies in the region, the collection advances the broader field of writing studies beyond national boundaries. Contributors include Tyrone Ali, Annife Campbell, Tresecka Campbell-Dawes, Valerie Combie, Jacob Dyer Spiegel, Brianne Jaquette, Carmeneta Jones, Clover Jones McKenzie, Beverley Josephs, Christine E. Kozikowski, Vivette Milson-Whyte, Kendra L. Mitchell, Raymond Oenbring, Heather M. Robinson, Daidrah Smith, and Michelle Stewart-McKoy.
The scholars in FEMINIST CIRCULATIONS: RHETORICAL EXPLORATIONS ACROSS SPACE AND TIME work at the nexus of gender, power, and movement to explore the rhetorical nature of circulation, especially considering how women from varying backgrounds and their rhetorics have moved and have been constrained across both space and time. Among the central characters studied in this collection are early modern laborers, letter writers, petitioners, and embroiderers; African American elocutionists, freedom singers, and bloggers; Muslim religious leaders; Quaker suffragists; South African filmmakers; nineteenth-century conduct book writers; and twenty-first-century pop stars. To generate their claims, contributors draw from and make use of a breadth of archival and primary documents: music videos, tweets, petitions, letters, embroidery work, speeches, memoirs, diaries, and made-for-television movies. Authors read these “texts” with scrutiny and imagination, adding distinction to their chapters’ arguments about circulation by zeroing in on specific rhetorical concepts that span from rhetorical agency, cultivation of ethos, and development of rhetorical education to capacities for social networking, collective and collaborative authorship, and kairotic interventions. Contributors include Jane Donawerth, Jessica Enoch, Danielle Griffin, Nabila Hijazi, Shirley Logan, Elizabeth Ellis Miller, Karen Nelson, Michele Osherow, Ruth Osorio, Erin Sadlack, Adele Seeff, and Lisa Zimmerelli.
Retellings: Opportunities for Feminist Research in Rhetoric and Composition Studies In Retellings: Opportunities for Feminist Research in Rhetoric and Composition Studies, the contributors use the anniversary of the publication of Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, the first book to examine women’s contributions to rhetoric across history, as an opportune moment to assess feminist rhetorical research and test out new possibilities. Together, the essays ask, what does it or should it mean to engage rhetoric from a feminist perspective? Each chapter addresses one of four aspects of this question, including the place of feminist rhetoric in contemporary (real-world and transnational) politics; the relationship between feminist rhetorical studies and identity studies; the prospects for feminist research methods and methodologies; or the feminist rhetorical commitment to “paying it forward” through teaching and mentoring. Collectively, the essays push scholars to expand the national boundaries of rhetorical inquiry to include women’s roles in global politics. Contributors also engage in intersectional analyses of gender and other vectors of power (including, here, religious affiliation and sexuality), considering identities as epistemic resources for rhetors. To develop richer methods and methodologies, contributors highlight the ethical challenges of research practices ranging from IRB submissions to archival research, critically interrogating the positionality of the researcher with relation to her subjects and materials. Finally, contributors address the needs and interests of diverse readers when they highlight how feminist perspectives challenge traditional models of teaching and mentorship. Contributors include Heather Brook Adams, Jean Bessette, Michelle F. Eble, Jessica Enoch, Rosalyn Collings Eves, Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Cheryl Glenn, Anita Helle, Jordynn Jack, A. Abby Knoblauch, Shirley Wilson Logan, Briggite Mral, Krista Ratcliffe, Cristina D. Ramírez, Elaine Richardson, Wendy B. Sharer, and Berit von der Lippe.
Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing addresses a scholarly audience in writing studies, specifically scholars and teachers of writing, writing program administrators, and writing center scholars and administrators. Chapters focus on the place of cognition in threshold concepts, teaching for transfer, rhetorical theory, trauma theory, genre, writing centers, community writing, and applications of the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. The 1980s witnessed a growing interest in writing studies on cognitive approaches to studying and teaching college-level writing. While some would argue this interest was simply of a moment, we argue that cognitive theories still have great influence in writing studies and have substantial potential to continue reinvigorating what we know about writing and writers. By grounding this collection in ongoing interest in writing-related transfer, the role of metacognition in supporting successful transfer, and the habits of mind within the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing highlights the robust but also problematic potential cognitive theories of writing hold for how we research writing, how we teach and tutor writers, and how we work with community writers. Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing includes a foreword by Susan Miller-Cochran and an afterword by Asao Inoue. Additional contributors include Melvin E. Beavers, Subrina Bogan, Harold Brown, Christine Cucciarre, Barbara J. D’Angelo, Gita DasBender, Tonya Eick, Gregg Fields, Morgan Gross, Jessica Harnisch, David Hyman, Caleb James, Peter H. Khost, William J. Macauley, Jr., Heather MacDonald, Barry M. Maid, Courtney Patrick-Weber, Patricia Portanova, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, J. Michael Rifenburg, Duane Roen, Airlie Rose, Wendy Ryden, Thomas Skeen, Michelle Stuckey, Sean Tingle, James Toweill, Martha A. Townsend, Kelsie Walker, and Bronwyn T. Williams.
Political fights are not waged over who is speaking the truth but over whether any given claim seems to be authentic. Expel the Pretender: Rhetoric Renounced and the Politics of Style examines how rhetorical style influences judgments about how to communicate integrity and good will. Eve Wiederhold argues that attitudes about style’s significance to judgment are both undertheorized and over-determined, especially when style is regarded as an embellishment rather than as a constitutive aspect of language use. Examining news reports covering controversial speakers including President Bill Clinton, Linda Tripp, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she demonstrates how rhetorical style is both belittled and yet remains a focal point for assessing public figures who have been publicly rebuked and discredited. Expel the Pretender claims style as a conflicted site of materiality, critiquing contemporary rhetorical theories that configure style as a dependable resource for democratic inquiry. Wiederhold argues that conceptions of style’s significance to judgment must be reframed to understand how we make decisions about who and what to believe.
Through extensive interviews, correspondence, and close analysis of their public and personal writing, Roy F. Fox details why and how writing helped people make sense out of their physical and emotional upheavals, trauma caused by the loss of loved ones and terminal illness, exploring such issues as their motivation, fluency, awareness of audience, rhetorical decision-making, focused collaborations, and uses of secondary source material.
