About "Global Rhetorics"

This course examines primarily nonwestern rhetorical traditions, exploring foundational and contemporary phases in studying rhetorics associated with (though not limited to) Classical, Indian, African, Asian, Arabic, and early American worlds, calling into question the viability of a single, static “rhetorical tradition.” The premise underlying this course is that we look to the rhetorical practices of the past—including the ways that cultural traditions argue, teach, debate, and historicize their concepts, myths, and philosophies—in order to formulate more robust theories about global rhetorical practices of the present. Moreover, we will be constructing a history and theory of “global/intercultural” rhetoric that you can use as a tool to further explore an ethnic, rhetorical, or textual phenomenon of your choosing. Finally, we will pay attention to the questions and dilemmas that are raised when we attempt to study any tradition or community “interculturally.” 

As we navigate these worlds and traditions, we might consider presences and absences—whose narratives are included, and whose are left out—as well as particular challenges of doing this kind of work. We will take our cues from comparative rhetoricians who encourage us to analyze texts without relying exclusively on western logics; from composition theorists who encourage us to revise our beliefs about discourse based on a proliferation of translingual practices; and from communication scholars who understand a “text” to be an intricate fabric of material locations, cultural memories, political assumptions, learned ideologies, and social practices. 

Much of our work will be conceptual or methodological, rather than purely historical. That is, while we will read some historical scholarship to help us interact with these “nonwestern traditions,” we will spend more of our time learning to read, interpret, and diffuse more recent recirculations of these traditions without falling into representational traps (as best we can, anyway). We will certainly learn more about the arts of wisdom, logic, and discourse in these various traditions, but we will also consider contemporary discussions of indigeneity, literacy, gender, transnational identity, and pedagogy, among other things.  


Here are some specific goals for us to achieve:

• become familiar with different modes of inquiry into global rhetorics;
• develop a critical vocabulary for studying issues in global rhetorics;
• develop a textured understanding of how those modes and terms reflect or bear on contemporary phenomena, in and beyond the university;
• become more equipped to do meta-criticism in rhetoric and composition studies;
• identify and complete a final project that shows your expert attention to all of the above. 

 

image captions (top to bottom): (1) Cut-out from "Seven Liberal Arts" by Francesco Pesellino (c. 1450). (Wikimedia, 2014). (2) Socrates and students. Page from a 12th-century copy of the Arabic original, the Mukhtar al-Hikam ("Beautiful Sayings"). Mentioned in Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and Some of His Lost Works, Vol. 2 (Routledge, 1973); and Coldiron, Printers without Borders (Oxford, 2015).  (3) Writing the vāda-vidya (Hindu science of discussion).