Spring 2008

(All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.)

• Rhetoric 10: Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument - Daniel Coffeen
• Rhetoric 20: On Lying - Ramona Naddaff
• Rhetoric 24, Section 1: Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular "Logic" on TV Judge Shows - Daniel Melia
• Rhetoric 24, Section 2: The Rhetoric of Almost Everything (1 unit, P/NP) - Thomas Sloane
• Rhetoric 24, Section 3: CANCELED - David Cohen
• Rhetoric 30: Rhetorical Theory and Oral Argument - Shannon Jackson
• Rhetoric 41AC: Race & American Identity - Brad Rogers
• Rhetoric 103B: Aesthetics and Politics - Dale Carrico
• Rhetoric 124: Rhetoric Of Poetry - Barbara Claire Freeman
• Rhetoric 132: Scientific Revolutions - Michael Wintroub
• Rhetoric 136: Aesthetic Ecologies - Katherine Young
• Rhetoric 150: Post-liberal Political Philosophy - Rakesh Bhandari
• Rhetoric 157A: American Political Thought and Culture - Matthew Scherer
• Rhetoric 159B: Great Themes in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Political and Legal Theory - Marianne Constable
• Rhetoric 160: Introduction to the Rhetoric of Legal Discourse - Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 162AC: Myth and Culture in American History - Rakesh Bhandari
• Rhetoric 167, Section 1: Authority, Law, Religion - Nancy Weston
• Rhetoric 167, Section 2: Justice and Accountability in Times of War, Genocide, and Terrorism (Cross-listed as International and Area Studies 150) - David Cohen & Eric Stover
• Rhetoric 170: Rhetoric of Social Science - Samera Esmeir
• Rhetoric 177:Language, Truth and Dialogue - Marianne Constable
• Rhetoric 181: Undergraduate Seminar on the Theory and Practice of Reading and Interpretation: The Texts and Bodies of Hermeneutics - Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 189, Section 1: Special Topics: Entertainment Law - Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 189, Section 2: The Rhetoric of Disorientation - Daniel Melia

This course will examine changing historical and rhetorical interpretations of the lie.  Rather than concentrating on the central problem of truth telling in the Western critical tradition, we will aim to study how the definition of the lie has shaped both modern theories of interpretation and the very “art” of rhetoric.  We will ask such questions as:  “Who is the liar?  “What does a person become when they lie?”  “Is lying always intentional?’  “Under what conditions is lying morally permissible or not?” Extensive and focused readings in the history of  Western philosophy will provide the foundation for investigating specific case studies in lying selected from works of psychoanalysis, fiction, journalism, political theory and film.  In each moment of real or imagined lying—be it story-telling, conning, voluntarily and involuntarily omission of   information, acts of self-deception—our discussions will underscore the particular, individual and social perspective at stake. 

Selected Texts (Provisional):  Plato: Hippias Minor; Selections Republic; Augustine:  Lying; Machiavelli:  The Prince ; Diderot: Rameau’s Nephew; Jean-Jacques Rousseau:  Selections The Confessions: Kant:  “On a Supposed Right to Lie”; Nietzsche: “On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense”; Freud:  “Negation” and “Two Lies told to Children”; A. Koyré:  “The Political Function of the Modern Lie”; Oscar Wilde: The Decay of Lying; P. Highsmith:  The Talented Mr. Ripley; Natalie Zemon Davis:  The Return of Martin Guerre.  Selections from essays by Frank Rich, Mark Danner and others. 

Requirements: Two 5-7 page essays; one exam.  Lecture and section attendance mandatory.  Group presentations.  Reader: purchase required.

Only students attending the first three classes will be admitted to the course.  No exceptions granted.

Rhetoric 24, Section 1: Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular "Logic" on TV Judge Shows (1 unit)

TV "Judge" shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years.  A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view  is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly  illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over  and over again. For example, when asked "Did you hit the plaintiff?"  respondents often say, "If I woulda hit him, he'd be dead!" This  reply avoids answering "yes" or "no" by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called "a fortiori" argument ["from the stronger"] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on "Judge Judy" and "The People's Court" and discussing why such strategies are so widespread.  It is NOT a course about law or "legal reasoning." Students who are  interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will  probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT  about the application of law or the operations of the court system in  general.

Required Reading:

Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David Hackett Fischer

Instructor: Thomas Sloane

This seminar will meet the first eight weeks of the semester: January 22, January 29, February 5, February 12, February 19, February 26, March 4 and March 11, 2008.

This seminar is an introduction to the elements of rhetorical analysis: how to analyze anything from politics to poetry and beyond. Most reading materials will be available online. Credit will depend upon regular class participation, short oral reports, and a final two-paragraph written summary. This course was designed for students with varied interests-politics, English literature, history, music, architecture, ad inf. (almost).

Emeritus Professor Thomas O. Sloane has been at Berkeley since 1968.  He has published extensively on rhetoric and humanism, and served as the editor-in-chief of the recent Encyclopedia of Rhetoric for Oxford University Press

Instructor: David Cohen

This seminar will meet the first ten weeks of the semester.

The seminar will examine three of the best-known cases of genocide in the 20th century and the attempts to deal with them through an international justice process. We will begin with the Nazi genocide and the ensuing international and American trials at Nurmenberg. We will then consider the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides and the tribunals set up by the United Nations to provide accountability for those crimes. We will inquire into whether the Genocide Convention of 1948 provides a framework that is adequate for such different kinds of programs of mass violence and into the commonalities and differences between these different cases. An overarching concern will be whether any judicial mechanism can adequately address crimes of this magnitude.

David Cohen is the Director of the Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center. The Center engages in research programs on war crimes and human rights trials from World War II to today. The Center also monitors trials and conducts judicial training programs for war crimes and human rights tribunals in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, East Timor, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Instructor: Shannon Jackson

Introduction to the theory and practice of oral expression as it manifests itself in a variety of rhetorical forms.   What is the function of oral expression in our culture? In human interaction? In the constitution of individual identity?   What is the difference between reading a story and hearing it?  What is the difference between writing an argument and speaking it?  How do we adapt ourselves vocally, gestureally, spatially to the medium of oral performance?  How does our sense of audience change our self-presentation?  How do autobiographical, narrative, and argumentative modes of oral performance use different and similar rhetorical techniques? In this course, we will concentrate on three modes—oral narrative, oral argument, and the adaptation of literature and oral history.  We will compare different theoretical and pragmatic approaches to these forms.  Students will be responsible for creating three oral performances, for one mid-term essay, for a final exam, and for being active and generous audience members to each other.  Rhetoric 10 and 20 are not required for this course.

Rhetoric 41AC: Race & American Identity

The recent epidemic of blackface incidents on college campuses--including blackface parties at Clemson and Auburn, as well as the blackface recreation by students at the University of Louisiana-Monroe of the Jena High School attacks—only reinforces the importance and urgency of studying the role of blackface and other forms of cross-ethnic and cross-racial performance.  This course will historicize the emergence of blackface minstrelsy and trace its persistent presence in American popular culture, focusing on three areas:  stage minstrelsy, early film, and popular music.  We will try to sketch answers to the following questions: How was blackface minstrelsy central to the development of an American popular culture?  How did the minstrel tradition help consolidate categories of "race" as we know them today? What was the nature of Jewish, German, and Irish immigrants' investment in blackface and yellowface performance? How did blackface, redface, and yellowface function in early film?  How and why has blackface been so central to popular music and musicals?  How do these examples of cross-ethnic and cross-racial performance complicate the rhetorical operations (and understandings) of quotation, appropriation, parody, and irony?  How do contemporary manifestations of blackface rework the minstrel tradition?

Instructor: Dale Carrico

Just which objects are art and what are art s objects and how do arts voice objection?  Over the course of the term we will think through the conversation, antagonism, and co-construction of the aesthetic and the political, especially as these have played out in some characteristic Marxist and post Marxist discourses.

Our texts will be collected in a reader, and will include:

• The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

• Selections from the volume Aesthetics and Politics, edited by Jameson, including short exchanges between Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht, and Lukacs

• Selections from the anthology Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg

• Selections from the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

• Selections from the anthology Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, edited by Emily Apter and William Pietz

• Selections from the anthology Things edited by Bill Brown

• Selections from The Politics of Aesthetics by Jacques Ranciere

"The Rhetoric of Poetry" is open to no more than 15 students who want to explore the art, craft, and rhetoric of poetry by learning to write it. To this end, Students will write and "workshop" their poems; read contemporary poetry; read poems aloud; create a class poetry-reading; and attend local poetry readings. No poetry-writing experience is required, but students should welcome the opportunity to explore the craft of writing, revising, (and revising!), and poetry. There will be frequent in-class poetry writing exercises and opportunities to receive feedback. Attendance at all classes is important and required.

Required Texts:

Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide; Ron Padgett, ed., The Teacher's and Writer's Handbook of Poetic Forms; R. Behn and C. Twichell, eds., The Practice of Poetry

Instructor: Michael Wintroub

The great divide separating we “moderns” from the so-called “primitives”—whether our own ancestors or indigenous groups from other cultures—is based on science. Science appears to us as a way of discovering Truth that is wholly divorced from culture, politics, religion, etc., thus radically distinguishing “us” —its practitioners/possessors— from the ways that pre-modern cultures went about making decisions and understanding the natural world.  In this course, we will explore the rhetorical foundations of what we call science—that is, we will explore the social, political and cultural roots of an activity that defines itself by its opposition to rhetorical practice, history, politics and culture.  Our readings—which will include works on witchcraft, alchemy, astrology, courtly politics, gender and religion—will try to situate the practice of early modern science in these diverse (and seemingly far from scientific) contexts.

Required Text:

• L Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts.

• Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution.

• Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician.

• Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism.

• Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-pump.

• Mary Shelly, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

Rhetoric 136: Aesthetic Ecologies

Ethnographic objects inhabit two discourses: an anthropological or folkloristic discourse that constitutes them cultural artifacts and an aesthetic discourse that constitutes them works of art. At the turn of the nineteenth century in Paris, artifacts that had been housed in ethnological museums were moved to art museums. What ontological shift made Benin sculptures, Kwakiutl masks, or Aboriginal sand paintings into works of art?  How did it change their value in the international market? This course addresses three questions: What is art? What is authenticity? What is the primitive?  in order to inspect the aesthetics of everyday life, the appropriation of traditional culture, and the co modification of difference.

Instructor: Rakesh Bhandari

We shall critically explore the philosophical justifications for liberal and neo-liberal forms of governance, characterized  by a respect for the rights of the individual citizen, a commitment to value and cultural pluralism, and minimal state interference in the market. How does liberalism give expression to social antagonisms? What kinds of ethical commitments does it demand of citizens? What kinds of ethical demands follow from the liberal understanding of the individual as a right-bearings subject? What are the nature and limits of the liberal conceptions of rights and cultural pluralism? Is liberalism compatible with social justice? How are we to understand the consequences of market liberalism? Lectures will also introduce the question of whether neo-liberalism has become  as a novel biopolitical form of governmentality which is not well understood in terms of the liberal ideal of minimal state intervention (Michel Foucault, Aihwa Ong, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri). There will also be some discussion of the actual social consequences of  what has been called the neo-liberal form of governance (David Harvey and Alfredo Saad-Filho). But the reading for this course will be philosophical and political theoretic in nature.

Required texts:

Instructor: Matthew Scherer

This course will explore key themes in American political thought and culture, including the development of normative ideals of freedom and democracy implicit in the idea of America itself.  The idea of America is one of the great and highly contested ideas in modern political thought, but it is not the exclusive property of political theorists or even of Americans.  We will examine a wide variety of texts that pursue the problem of America, and in doing so will reflect both on the rhetoric of political theory and on the rhetoric of American political thought.

Texts may include:

Three hours of lecture per week. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. This course concentrates on aspects of 20th century political, social, and legal theory that are too complex to be treated comprehensively as one section of the courses in modern theory.

“Our Word is Our Bond”

n the first lecture of How to Do Things with Words, J.L. Austin writes “accuracy and morality alike are on the side of the plain saying that our word is our bond” (p. 10). In this course, we will explore this saying, as well as its implications and its presumptions, further. We’ll begin by examining the intuition that breaking one’s word is unjust. We will consider the ways that 20th century philosophers and others have by and large sought to justify this intuition in the context of legal and political institutions of contract and promise. Next, we will turn to both ancient and modern skepticism about the claim and about Austin’s presentation of it. Finally, we will see how the saying “our word is our bond” draws us into difficult questions about who “we” are and how we are “bound” in language. Readings will come from law, philosophy, and literature.

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse

This course will introduce the student to the study of discourse. Our orientation will not be historical but will focus on the basic topics and forms of law and jurisprudence as found in case-law, statutes and scholarship. The course is not pre-law. Students will be encouraged to consider the parallels (or not) between legal issues and rhetorical ones. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED. Students who are enrolled but absent the first day of class will be dropped in favor of students who are present and wish to enroll. A mid-term and a final will be required..

Required Texts:

Readings will be available either in a course reader, through the class website, electronic reserve, or online Melvyl article databases

Instructor: Rakesh Bhandari

We will study American understandings of group differences as hard and heritable. Not only will we try to establish why such understandings are best characterized as mythic, we will also study the historical origins and social consequences of these myths. While we will focus on the American system of racial classification, we will also explore our understandings of other types of group difference--the clash between Western and Eastern Civilization, class antagonisms, and the differences between citizens and aliens. This course is focused on two classic problems: how myths come to be believed as true and how myths become real in their consequences.

Attendance is mandatory, and a final examination will be given.

Required books:

Bruce Lincoln Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology and Scholarship
Reginald Horsman Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-
Saxonism
Audrey Smedley Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview
Jonathan Marks What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee? Apes, People and Their Genes
Mark Nathan Cohen Culture of Intolerance
Aviva Chomsky "They Take Our Jobs" and Twenty Other Myths about Immigration
John Hobson Eastern Origins of Western Civilization

Instructor: Nancy Weston
Area of Concentration: History & Theory of Rhetoric and Public Discourse

This course in advanced topics in law and rhetoric proceeds as a philosophical seminar, inquiring, this term, into the nature of authority, and asking after its place in our understandings of law and of religion.

That place has been variously manifested — as ground, as constitutive, as prize or product; and law and religion, as institutions, have in turn historically advanced rival, parallel, or conjoint claims to authority in matters of truth and right conduct.  Questioning the nature and necessity of authority will, accordingly, bring us to reflect not only on what law and religion are and may be, but also upon the understandings of truth and right that have drawn upon authority in such ways.

Prior coursework in philosophy is not required; openness to its challenges is.

Readings: Remi Brague, The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea; Plato, Euthyphro and Crito; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Aquinas, On Politics and Ethics; Hobbes, Leviathan; Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals; Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right; Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise: On the Essence of Human Freedom; Sophocles, Antigone; a course reader of supplementary materials.

Please note:

Enrollment is open only to those students in attendance from the outset.  Accordingly, all students interested in taking this class (whether pre-enrolled, wait-listed, or neither) are to attend the first class meeting.

In planning their schedules, students should be aware that wide-ranging collective discussions, often lasting an hour or more, generally occur after the Thursday class meetings.  In past classes, students have found these informal but intense discussions to be of substantial help in coming to terms with difficult material encountered in the course.  If your schedule prevents you from joining them, you may wish to reconsider taking this class.

Instructor: David Cohen & Eric Stover

In the aftermath of World War II, an era of post-colonial conflicts, civil wars and “Cold War,” transformed our understanding of war as an armed contest between nations states, carried on principally through conventional military campaigns waged by national armies. At the same time, as international lawyers struggled to adapt the norms of the laws of war to the horrors of the Second World War (in the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions) and to new forms of mass violence directed largely against civilian populations. By the 1990s, the international community had turned to mechanisms of international criminal justice to restore peace and order for the first time since the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals. Yet, at the dawn of the 21st Century many of these international norms, especially the Geneva Conventions, are now under threat as the United States and other nations embark on a “war against terrorism.”

This upper division undergraduate course will use an interdisciplinary lens to examine these transformations and our understanding of the violence of modern conflicts and its affects on survivors and communities. The course will use a seminar format (enrollment limit of 20) to ensure full participation in discussions and ample opportunity to engage our guest speakers. Drawing upon a variety of texts, as well as the visual media of film, art, and photography, we will study the ways in which writers, historians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, artists, journalists, jurists, and forensic scientists have contributed to our understanding of wartime atrocities and their affects on society. We will examine war crimes committed in modern conflicts, ranging from WWII in Asia and Europe to Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq. We will discuss the ways in which different academic disciplines and professions have tried to explain and analyze the causes and nature of war crimes (including genocide and crimes against humanity); to document and focus the world’s attention upon them through a variety of methodologies and media; and to locate responsibility for their perpetration within the complex interplay of military, political, and cultural institutions.

Instructor: Samera Esmeir

Our course examines the historical rise of the social sciences as well as a number of their diverse epistemologies, modes of explanation, methods of inquiry and operations. We trace the forms of knowledge that distinguish the social sciences from the humanities and other natural or technological sciences. We also investigate how some social science disciplines contribute to the constitution of the "social" as a domain concerned mainly with "human" action and institutions defined in opposition to “non-humans," "nature," "technology" and the "divine." In examining these issues, we hope to gain a critical understanding of the power that the social sciences exert over our understanding of the world. 

There will be a course reader for the class, in addition to the following three books:

G. Vico, On the Study Methods of Our Time

D. Huff, How to lie with Statistics

James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Rhetoric 177: Language, Truth and Dialogue

In this 3-hour weekly seminar, we will read and discuss dialogical works of three great philosophers on language and truth: Plato, Rousseau, and Kant. Through close readings of quite difficult texts and hokey in-class exercises and exchanges, we will consider what makes a dialogue something other than a monologue or a monograph, what sorts of interactions and participations occur in dialogue, and how these sorts of interactions and participations relate to thinking, speaking, and knowing.

REQUIRED TEXTS will include the following:

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: History & Theory of Rhetoric

This course offers an examination of the interpretation theory, its historical development, and contemporary applications. We will start with the ancient Greek philosophy and rhetoric. Our discussion of the subsequent historical development of hermeneutics will include such topics as biblical exegesis, the Romantic hermeneutical tradition, hermeneutics as a foundation of human sciences, hermeneutics as an exercise in suspicion, ontological hermeneutics, deconstructive hermeneutics, structural hermeneutics, and critical hermeneutics. We will conclude with the pragmatist hermeneutics and its shift from hermeneutics traditional preoccupation with texts to a focus on embodied forms of signification. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED. Students who are enrolled but absent the first day will be dropped in favor of students who are present and wish to enroll. A class presentation, mid-term exam, and final paper will be required.

Required Texts:

Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern

John J. Stuhr, Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy of Hermeneutics

Additional Readings available either online or in course reader

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: History & Theory of Rhetoric, Public Discourse, & Image and The Narrative

This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the context, issues, documents, and arguments of entertainment law. It will cover the legal issues arising in the entertainment industry, including motion pictures, television, theater, publishing and multi-media. It surveys the various areas of the law that impact the entertainment industry such as contract, copyright, the First Amendment, trademark and the right of privacy/publicity. There is a substantial amount of reading in the course. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED.  Students who are enrolled but absent the first day will be dropped in favor of students who are present and wish to enroll. There will be two midterms and a final.

Required Texts:

Paul C. Weiler, Entertainment, Media, and the Law, 2nd Ed.

Additional Readings available either online or in course reader

Rhetoric 189, Section 2: The Rhetoric of Disorientation

Novels and other narratives are generally constructed in such a way as to allow (or even impel) the reader to find a coherent structure within them.  Even (or perhaps especially) narratives which revel in strangeness of setting or structure (Gulliver's Travels or 2001, for example) rely on the reader's ability to find a "place to stand" with reference to the narrative.  There are novels, however, which seem to be intended to fool or to confuse the reader by presenting conflicting clues about the shape and nature of the narrative.  Interestingly, many of these novels seem otherwise to have very little in common.  Can we find common ground between Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy?  Do these novels all use the same techniques to disorient their audience?  And who cares?  Are these all just exercises for professors of literature? Or not?

Requirements:  There will be a final exam and a final paper (10-12 pp.);  other requirements will depend on enrollment: if fewer than 15 students, the course will be run like a seminar, with two required seminar reports; if more than 15, there will be two mid-term quizzes.  All required written work must be completed in order to earn a passing grade for the course.

Quizzes or Reports, 15% each; paper 35%; exam 30%; participation 5%.

Office Hours:  My office hours are TBA.  Appointments for other hours can be arranged.  Phone numbers: 6404 Dwinelle 643-7631; Rhetoric Office, 642-1415; Scandinavian/Celtic Department, 642-4484.  My e-mail address [probably the best way to reach me] is dmelia@berkeley.edu.  My home number is (510) 540-1941; use your head about what hours to call me at home.  Messages may be left in my mailboxes in 7104 Dwinelle or 3335 Dwinelle.

Required Text (Listed in order of reading for course):

Story and Discourse by Seymour Chatman
Turn of the Screw by Henry James (ed. A. Lloyd-Smith)
The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (ed. B. Dobree)
Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, etc. by Jane Austen (ed. John Davie)
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Esq. by Laurence Sterne (ed. Ian Ross)
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (Pseud. of Brian O'Nolan)