Approaches and Paradigms in the History of Rhetorical Theory II

Three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week. A broad consideration of the historical
relationship between philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, with special emphasis on selected themes
within the early modern and modern periods.

This class focuses on key texts from the late-nineteenth to early-twenty-first centuries that explore
and raise questions about language, knowledge, and society. It puts selected works by Nietzsche,
Freud, Austin, Foucault, and Heidegger, among others, in conversation, so as to introduce some
grand themes of modernity: critiques of reason; the unconscious; truth and power; science, media,
and technology. By attending to contemporary events and phenomena and by interrogating their (or
our) own ways of reading, writing, and thinking, students will gain insights into the ways in which the
issues discussed in the texts of great thinkers relate to their own practices and situations.