Fall 2008

(All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.)

• Rhetoric 10: Dale Carrico
• Rhetoric 20: Michael Wintroub
• Rhetoric 24: Daniel Melia
• Rhetoric 103A: Daniel Melia
• Rhetoric 110: Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 119.001: Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 119.002: Eileen Jones
• Rhetoric 124: Barbara Freeman
• Rhetoric 132: Michael Wintroub
• Rhetoric 133: Eileen Jones
• Rhetoric 140: Daniel Coffeen
• Rhetoric 150: Rakesh Bhandari
• Rhetoric 152AC: Nadesan Permaul
• Rhetoric 157A: David Bates
• Rhetoric 164: Laura Young / Frank Wang
• Rhetoric 167: Nancy Weston
• Rhetoric 172: Rakesh Bhandari
  
  

This course will cover the discursive History of Europe’s relations with its “Others” from the period of the Middle Ages to present (though its prime area of focus will be the early modern period). We will study saints, sinners, Jews, Protestants, witches, lepers, slaves, Aztecs, and explorers. We will examine religious beliefs and religious wars, the most horrific sorts of torture, the Black Death, the "discovery" of new worlds, the trade in slaves and the making (and breaking) of kings and nations. Though the history of the period spanning the Middle Ages to the present is traditionally viewed as a triumphal march of progress from superstition towards Enlightenment, we will see how this "progress" was made possible by the persecution of peoples and cultures considered marginal and/or different. How “Others” were defined, represented and used as a means of constituting Western identities (e.g., in terms of race, class, citizenship, and nation-state) will form the course’s central theme; we will also be concerned with understanding how oppressed and marginalized groups resisted impositions of dominant groups and articulated their own narratives of “otherness”.

Rhetoric 24 Freshman Seminar: Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular 'Logic' on TV Judge Shows.

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 Books:

David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, Harper Perennial (1970)

Instructor: Daniel Melia
MWF: 9:00am - 10:00am
126 Barrows (Lecture Only)

Is there anything about rhetoric that was not discovered by 200 B.C.E.?  Where did Rhetoriccome from, anyway? 

Rhetoric 103A provides an introduction to the ancient Greek and Latin sources of Rhetoric andrhetorical theory.  Special attention will be paid to ancient and modern objections to rhetoric as atheory and a practice.  Readings will cover the period 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. Applications ofancient theory to the present will be investigated.

Reading:

• Selections from P. Matsen (ed.) Readings from Classical Rhetoric
• [Readings will include Herodotus, Gorgias, Alcidamas, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle and others.]
• Plato, *Gorgias, and *Phaedrus
• Aristotle, *Rhetoric and *Poetics
• Aristophanes (ed. Arrowsmith), Three Comedies  [*The Clouds & *The Wasps]
• Cicero, Selected Political Speeches
• St. Augustine, On Christian Teaching, (ed. Green)

[*Books marked with * are to be read in their entirety.]

Written Assignments:

3 Quizzes in class

1 3-hour Final Examination.

1 in-class group report.

NOTE: Submission of ALL required work is a minimum condition for passing the course.

The lectures are intended to supplement, not to repeat, the readings; both are necessaryfor a full understanding of the material.  Also essential to superior performance in the course isthat you develop close familiarity with the texts of the major works studied.

Evaluation:

Each Quiz will count 8% of the final grade.  The in-class report will count 20% of the finalgrade.  The Final Exam will count 50% of the final grade

Syllabus

This is a course of study and practice in advanced techniques of argumentation. It is intended for students with well-developed writing skills; however, we will be reviewing certain basic principles of analysis, writing, and research. The course is discipline based and genre specific. The discipline upon which the course is based is law and the genre upon which we will focus is the legal memorandum in its various forms. Legal writing is often criticized for its tortuous constructions and obscure terminology; however, a well-written legal memorandum, brief, or opinion is both an elegant and a persuasive text. When you have completed this course you will have a better understanding of law and legal argument and, I hope, the ability to make complex legal arguments that are clear and persuasive. This course, however, is not intended simply, or even primarily, for those interested in law or law school. It is intended for anyone interested in developing the ability to quickly master the techniques of advanced argumentation in any discipline or genre.

Required Textbook(s):

Handouts available in class or on class website.

Requirements:

Reading: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. Much of it will involve concepts and a style of argument that are unfamiliar to many of you. Mastery of these concepts and this style of argument will require a careful and thoughtful reading of the material.

Writing: There is writing.  There will be lots of writing. There will be short written exercises on a weekly basis interspersed with several longer essays. These essays and exercises must be done in a timely and professional manner.       

Class attendance: Class attendance is required. I will be taking attendance. Arriving late for class will be considered as an absence. Absences can affect your grade significantly.

Special Topics in Film Genre/Genre in Film and Literature: Films of the Fantastic

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: Narrative and Image
TuTh: 2:00pm - 3:30pm
188 Dwinelle Hall (Lecture Only)

Cinema’s power to represent animate life, and produce a profound impression of reality, warrants and supports its other fascinating capacity, namely, to fabricate frank yet appealing illusions. In certain instances, audiences may respond to the fantastic creations as if to a new reality.

Jeffrey Spence, “Cinema of the Sublime: Theorizing the Ineffable”

In this course, we will examine the genre of the fantastic film. The fantastic is not a commonly referenced film genre. The more common references are to genres such as the science fiction film, the horror film, and the fantasy-adventure film. As a literary genre, however, the fantastic has a significant history, one that includes the work of Tzvetan Todorov. For Todorov, the "fantastic" exists between the "uncanny" and the "marvelous".  The marvelous focuses on intrusion of the supernatural or spiritual realm into our everyday world. The uncanny focuses on the mind as a force capable of producing seemingly inexplicable events.  The fantastic occupies a place between the two, a realm of “hesitation” of what might or might not be. J. P. Telotte uses Todorov’s work on the fantastic in his study of the science fiction film, relying on the categories of the fantastic, the uncanny, and the marvelous in his attempt to account for the complex character of the sf film genre. We will use the work of Todorov, Telotte, and a number of other theorists working in the domain of the film and the fantastic in order to consider the relationship between film’s powers of representation and fabrication. However, our focus will not be on films as illustrations of theoretical approaches but on film as a medium that continually comments on its own powers. The kinds of films that we will view include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Paprika, The Lord of the Rings, The Thief of Bagdad, Blade Runner, Harvey, Curse of the Cat People, Night of the Hunter, Millennium Actress, Forbidden Planet, The Bride With White Hair, A Chinese Ghost Story, Alice in Wonderland, Alphaville, The Last Wave, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Carnival of Souls, Curse of the Demon, The Wizard of Oz, and A Touch of Zen.

Required Textbook(s):

Class reader

 (Additional readings will be handed out in class, in class reader or available only on the website.)

Requirements:

Reading and Screenings: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. There are also weekly screenings.  Attendance at the weekly screenings is required.    

Written Assignments: There will be a midterm and a final.  Both will have take-home and in-class components. There will also be required short postings to the class website.        

Class attendance: Class attendance is required. I will be taking attendance. Arriving late for class will be considered as an absence. Absences can affect your grade significantly.

Instructor: Eileen Jones
Area of Concentration: Narrative and Image
TuTh 11-1230P
188 Dwinelle Hall

"The term 'screwball' first appeared in the mid-1930s and referred to an eccentric person. The word probably has ties to such late-nineteenth century colloquial expressions as having a 'screw loose' (being crazy) and becoming 'screwy' (drunk). Since the mid-1930s 'screwball' also has been used in baseball to describe both an eccentric player and 'any pitched ball that moves in an unusual or unexpected way.' All these characteristics describe performers in screwball comedy films..." (Wes D. Gehring, Introduction, Screwball Comedy: A Genre of Madcap Romance)

This course will explore the development of the screwball comedy genre in terms of its inheritance from both popular and high culture forms of expression that include literary, theatrical, and film comedy traditions. Among other things we will examine its relationship to other forms of American film comedy such as slapstick comedy, romantic comedy, “sex comedy,” and black comedy. These forms can be seen as addressing the risk as well as the excitement of revolutionary change wrought by modernity. Screwball comedy is generally examined in light of its specific, often frenzied, renegotiation of gender and class roles. But roles and role-playing are central to screwball in a variety of contexts that are less frequently discussed,  such as the pressures of moving swiftly between urban, rural, and regional cultures in an increasingly mobile society.

We’ll be watching a lot of films, reading a lot, and talking a lot. There will also be a fair amount of assigned writing.

Required Texts:
Course Reader

Rhetoric 124: Rhetoric of Poetry

"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. Any student who misses a class during the first two weeks will be dropped from the class.

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
Area of Concentration: History & Theory of Rhetoric
TuTh: 3:30pm - 5:00pm
109 Dwinelle Hall

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 Books:

• Francis Bacon, New Atlantis and the Great Instauration
• René Descartes, Discourse on Method
• Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

Instructor: Eileen Jones
Area of Concentration: Narrative and Image
TuTh: 2:00pm - 3:30pm
142 Dwinelle Hall

In this course we will examine the films of writer-director-producer team Joel and Ethan Coen in terms of the ways in which these films confirm, challenge, and provide insight into existing theories of film authorship and film genre. The Coens are useful “trouble cases” when it comes to genre and auteur theory, having positioned themselves and their work in an ambiguous relationship to the often-opposed categories that typically inform these theories: Hollywood studio and independent film practices, classic and postmodern filmmaking techniques, art film and mass entertainment aesthetics, and American and European critical sensibilities. We will screen and analyze most of the Coens’ films including Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn’t There, O Brother Where Art Thou? and No Country For Old Men.

Required Texts:

• R. Barton Palmer, Joel and Ethan Coen
• Course Reader

You may think you know how to see, but do you?  Vision—and hearing and touching and tasting and smelling—is not natural.  You've been taught, trained, to see a certain way.  This class will train you to see differently.

Henri Bergson claims that everything’s an image—your brain, your body, a billboard, a painting, these words.  Images are not representations of matter; matter is image, and vice-versa.  Seeing, then, becomes an encounter between, and of, images.  The line between viewer and viewed gives way to the event of seeing and being seen.

If this is so—if everything's an image-event—, what happens when we see?  How will we look at art, at the world, at each other, at ourselves? 

In this class, we will read some theoretical texts.  But the goal here is to learn to see differently.  So we will look at images, watch a film or three, and we will ask: What is an image?  How does it behave?  How does it go?  How do we interact with them?

Please note: There will be a required weekly writing assignment on this or that image that everyone will have to post on a blog.  There will be some papers, too.

Required Reading:

Instructor: Rakesh Bhandari
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse
TuTh: 9:30am - 11:00am
209 Dwinelle Hall

This course is aimed at preparing students to speak to some of the pivotal developments in politics today: the changing nature of the state form;  the effects of the rise of Eastern nations on the world balance of power;  the hidden and rising costs of war;   the economic controversies over immigration, outsourcing, and globalization;  and the depths of the environmental crisis. Students will be expected to survey major newspapers and newsmagazines as current events will be discussed in the class, and special attention will be paid to the presidential election. Attendance and participation are mandatory. A five page paper on each book will be required.

Required texts:

• Charlie Savage Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
• Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
• Steven Greenhouse Squeezed: Tough Times for the American Worker
• Kishore Mahbubani The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East
• Jeffrey Sachs Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

Instructor: Nadesan Permaul
Areas of Concentration: History & Theory and Narrative & Image
TuTh: 3:30pm - 5:00pm
106 Wheeler Hall

This course will explore the connection of the issue of race to the cultural character and identity of citizens in the new American republic during the ante-bellum, and how it has subsequently affected our contemporary social and political culture and discourse.  We will start with the question of what is American culture, and whether there is a discernable culture in our society.  If so, what was the origin that culture?

Reading will begin with James Fennimore Cooper's The Pioneers. By using the structure of this romance novel as a model, the class will view the founding of the United States as a formal problem, (not unlike the underlying problem posed in novel), in which the three principal racial groups in North America (i.e., the Native Americans, the European-Americans, and the African-Americans) sought to be included into the social and political order of the new republic. All subsequent readings will be viewed in the context of addressing that formal problem, with an emphasis on what the language and symbolism of fiction reveal about the actual historical events of the period. This is a seminar focused around class discussion of the reading materials.

Reading includes original texts in American literature and letters (e.g. My Bondage, My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens, and readings from D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Willliams, the New York Review of Books, etc.), history and criticism. Supplementary reading, in a course reader, will analyze the eras from which the literary works emerged, and the problems that shaped the course of the American founding. Contemporary news articles and film clips (ranging from Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" to Sixty Minutes, to “The American Experience”) will supplement formal reading material. There will be a take-home midterm, a paper/project making use of course materials and theme, and a take-home final exam.

Classes begin with film clips and often involve student presentation of reading materials before we break into a full discussion.  We will be open to all perspectives, no matter how controversial or widely shared.  But we will be respectful of one another, and speak in language not aimed at individuals or personalities, but at issues.

Required Texts:

• James Fennimore Cooper, The Pioneers
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Donald Jackson, ed., Autobiography of Blackhawk
• Frederick Douglas, My Bondage, My Freedom
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Instructor: David Bates
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse
MWF: 11:00am - 12:00pm

This course will examine the emergence of democratic, liberal thought through the lens of war and violence. Modern democratic thought is associated with the constitutional limitation of state power, in the name of legal rights. The American and French Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century affirmed the power of such constitutional forms. However, we can see that the problem of war and civil violence played an important role in the development of democratic thinking in the Enlightenment. Here, we will study the nature of “constitution” by looking at it from two perspectives – as the foundational constitution of a state, and as the constitutional legal frame of the state. We will start with an overview of the problem of the state in the early modern period. We will then go on to discuss the origins of modern political theory in new natural law texts of the seventeenth century: Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf. The main part of the class will cover the major canonical texts of this period: Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant. Throughout we will pay special attention to the role of European colonial possessions in the development of a democratic, constitutional state in this period.

Required texts:

• Schmitt, Concept of the Political
• Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace
• Hobbes, Leviathan
• Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen
• Locke, Second Treatise
• Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws and Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline
• Rousseau, Discourses; Social Contract and Fragments on War
• Diderot, Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville
• Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society
• Sieyes, What is the Third Estate?
• Kant, Perpetual Peace
• Tuck, Rights of War and Peace

Instructor: Laura Young / Frank Wang
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse & History and Theory
TuTh: 3:30am - 5:00pm
130 Wheeler Hall

This course compares the cultural contexts of developing adjudication in the West and in China.  The course also examines the influence of past traditions and values on modern legal behavior and the resulting effects on international expectations.  Starting from modern day conflicts, the course examines themes including the value of hierarchy and social order vs. the desirability of individual agency and freedom of action, with particular emphasis on conceptions of the Rule of Law and Human Rights.  Readings will include Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Confucius, Mencius, Hsun-Zi, and many others.  There will be a reader.  Classroom participation is expected. There will be one or two papers and a final exam.

Required Books:

• Ballantine (Division of Random House), Roger Ames, et al., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, 1998.
• Penguin Classics, Aristotle, The Politics, 1981
• Penguin Classics, Plato, The Laws, 1975
• Penguin Classics, Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, 1996
• Penguin Classics, Cicero, Murder Trials, 1990
• Penguin Classics, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1972
• Course Reader

Instructor: Nancy Weston
Areas of Concentration: Public Discourse and History & Theory
TuTh: 2:00pm - 3:30pm
243 Dwinelle Hall

This course in advanced topics in law and rhetoric proceeds as a philosophical seminar, inquiring, this term, into the nature of thinking in its relation to law. We shall attend to this relation not only by way of devoting thought to what law is, but also, and principally, by inquiring into what thinking is, such that law does, or may be thought to, govern it. Exploring the history of philosophical efforts to describe or delineate the rules, method, or law that governs thinking, we shall be brought to ask after the manner, necessity, and possibility of such governance. We shall thereby be drawn to think anew on the nature of law and governance, as well as on that of thinking, and on our relation to and involvement in each.

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

Readings from Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger.

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, on Thursday, August 28, at 2 p.m., in 243 Dwinelle.

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.

Rhetoric 172: The Social Theory of Capital and Biopower

Once the debate over the nature and meaning of capitalist power faded with the development of the Keynesian welfare state after World War II, critical theorists became interested in the exercise of another kind of power, the power over life itself, even before the revolutionary implications of biotechnology had come into view. This course will explore these two kinds of power, the power of capital as dissimulated in the voluntary exchanges of commodities and money and biopower as expressed in biopolitics. Capital will be studied as an organization of time, and biopower will be analyzed in terms of the distinctions which it traverses, if not collapses—the distinctions between the private and the public, the biological and the social, society and the state, and  science and politics. This will be a course based on close readings of demanding texts; attendance is mandatory, and students are expected to come to class with questions about and challenges to the assigned readings.  A five page paper will be assigned for each book.

Required texts:

• Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy
• Moishe Postone, Time, Labor and Social Domination: a reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory
• Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power and Subjectivity in the Twenty First Century
• Charis Thompson, Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies
• Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture and Health