• Rhetoric 200: Classical Origins of the Rhetorical Tradition
• Rhetoric 205: Language and Epistemology from Rousseau to A.I.
• Rhetoric 240G: Nuremberg, Tokyo, and their Legacy
• Rhetoric 240G: The Theory and Practice of Literary Censorship
• Rhetoric 240G: Unimaginable Dilemmas: The Horror of the Rwandan Genocide

Readings: Aeschylus, Oresteia (tr. Peter Meineck); Plato, Gorgias (tr. Robin Waterfield); Plato, Phaedrus (tr. Nehamas and Woodruff); Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric (tr. Hugh Lawson-Tancred)

This seminar will trace the development of a modern rhetoric, one defined not by the opposition between discourse and knowledge, but instead by their interdependence. We will be focusing particularly on how modern thinkers have conceptualized the productive and creative dimensions of language in their definitions of human thought and reason. Topics will include, for example, the ambivalent role of metaphor in modern science, analogical thought and epistemological insight, and the link between language and discourses of both social and natural "order." Beginning with Rousseau and moving through Nietzsche to the Frankfurt school, Foucault, and beyond, the class will read works from a variety of disciplines, including the history and philosophy of science, deconstruction, analytic philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence research, all in an effort to formulate a contemporary rhetoric of knowledge. Seminar participants will write (and occasionally present) a series of shorter papers based on the weekly readings.

The seminar will examine the work of the two WWII international tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo as well as their impact upon the ICTY and ICTR. In addition, we will look as some of the most influential cases decided in the "subsequent proceedings" at Nuremberg. After spending about 9-10 weeks on the WWII cases we will turn to an examination of the way in which their legacy is interpreted and used by the contemporary tribunals.

This seminar will examine the theory and practice of literary censorship cases, in nineteenth-and twentieth-century France, England and United States and in late twentieth-century Iran. The primary preoccupation will be to understand how censorship trials of novels produce a series of complicated relations between and discourses about law and literature, lawyer and literary critic; author, editor, and book publisher; authorial intentionality and literary composition; aesthetics and the socio-political. What happens to a literary work when it is interpreted through the lens/charge of "outrage to public morals," "obscenity," "blasphemy," "racism"? What interpretations, during and in the wake of the censorship trials, do authors, literary critics and the "general public" offer concerning the "composition," "meaning," "intention," "rhetoric" of the censored work? One part of the seminar will be devoted to close readings of the novels and censorship trials and/or bannings as well as the targeted authorÕs writings on novel and trial alike. The other part will focus on censorship theory theory of the novel, and theories of authorship and of literary composition. Reading knowledge of French is useful but not required.

When organizers launched genocidal slaughter in Rwanda in 1994, victims, perpetrators, and bystanders faced choices unimaginable in ordinary life. In addition, both inside the country and outside, clergy, journalists, representatives of humanitarian agencies, and international leaders--none of them Rwandan--also confronted decisions without parallel in their lives. These individuals acted within the limits of their view of the Rwandan past as well as under various institutional, social, and cultural pressures. We will examine differing views of the Rwandan past important at the time as well as the different narratives of the genocide now being developed. We will also examine the other kinds of constraints and pressures that formed the context of individual decisions. We will grapple with the problems of establishing "truth" and "justice" after a genocide, including through local and international courts.