Category Archives: rhetoric

I never thought I would say this, but…

I actually find myself agreeing with Andrew Keen. Today Keen responded to Patricia Cohen’s NYTimes article on how the pending economic crisis will affect the humanities. Keen concludes: What I do know for sure, however, is that academic humanists — … Continue reading

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Lanham definition of rhetoric; the Aim of Education(s)

I need to remember this somewhere, why not the blog. Now you can remember it, too. “Rhetoric” has not always been a dirty word, the opposite of sincerity, truth, and good intentions. For most of its life it meant the … Continue reading

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“It is the opposite which is good for us”

Because a certain someone keeps trying to shove Parmenides down your throat, I thought I’d share some Heraclitus. Thanks to Plato’s misunderstanding, most of us attribute to Heraclitus the trite paradoxical aphorism “you could not step twice into the same … Continue reading

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Hearing what the Presidents Don’t Say

Recently I have become enamored with the feed over at FlowingData, a collection of quality visualization projects. Today has several offerings, but I am most interested in Descry’s project “Their First Words,” which provides a searchable database of all inauguration … Continue reading

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On Thinking and Clarity

The following material is a response to Richard Lanham’s Style: An Anti-Textbook. I shared it with my expository students today. It relies on a ridiculous simplification. My use of the terms “rhetoric” and “composition” are completely idiosyncratic and reductionary. I’ll … Continue reading

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We Might Overcome, Maybe, If We Really Work at It

As I wrote over at Black Masks the other day, all of the Obama love has my deconstructive sense tingling. I think I’ll let Ill Doctrine offer my hesitation: The work is never finished. This theme has been rearing its … Continue reading

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Santos on Fish on Donoghue Take Two

My last post came on little sleep, so I thought I might try again. Actually, I already tried again in an email exchange with an old friend. He wrote to get my thoughts on Fish’s piece. Here’s my (hopefully) more … Continue reading

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Productive Mess Hits the Airwaves

Here’s some shameless self-promotion: the new issue of Kairos includes my article with Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber “Productive Mess: First-Year Composition Takes the University’s Agonism Online.” The article has two main arguments: first, it discusses how to better integrate … Continue reading

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Jack McCoy, Ciceronian Rhetoric, and the art of Pathetic Conclusions

Tomorrow I’m planning a quick, introductory lecture on Ciceronian argument. As such, I’ll be referring to the six-part structure extracted from the Catiline Orations and discussed at length in De Inventione. In brief: Exordium [prepares the hearer… this can be … Continue reading

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Jim Corder as an Ethic for Blogging

Today I presented Jim Corder’s “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” to my expository writing class. I believe Corder’s propositions for “writing with love” serve as particularly apt principles for approaching digital writing. Corder pushes for five core values: The … Continue reading

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