Do Like Carson

Hey - check out Carson's introduction over at Blog Cabin. Of course that's what you all need to do, and I'm glad Carson assigned it. So please: introduce yourself.  You can do it over the weekend, but before Wednesday.

Here's me: I'm in my 11th year, now, as a professor at MSU. Before that, I taught for four years at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. I did my graduate work at the University of Washington in Seattle, where I lived for ten years. As of a few months ago, I've lived in Montana longer than anywhere else in my adult life (which would never work as a slogan if I were running for public office here).  I've ended up teaching since I was a freshman at Marquette University, where I tutored students at the Milwaukee Urban Day School - since then, I've taught at MSU, KU, UW, I've taught adult literacy at the Goodwill Community Literacy Center in Seattle, Adult Basic Education at a vocational school, I ran a writing workshop in a county jail in Lawrence, Kansas for two years, and I taught for a year at a Christian university (Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana) in the center of Java in the most Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, as a Fulbright Scholar, two years ago. I like teaching, and my scholarship has mostly been about teaching, focused in large part on literacy studies - I'm especially interested in the ways the idea of literacy works rhetorically (it's always good, for the most part; put the word 'literacy' in front of something, and everyone thinks it is wonderful. You can get away with a lot if you use the right words...) One thing I've had to learn from teaching in so many places is that you better have a back-up plan, because what works in one setting never works quite the same way in another.

You met one of my heckling children, Graham. His older brother Seamus would have heckled me too. My wife Laura has also been known to heckle me. The point is, I can take it, so heckle away...

My scholarship now is on the history of the literacy test as an obstacle to vote (another place where the idea of literacy managed to prop up a deeply racist method of disfranchisement). I also write about the history of the Highlander Folk School (which is now the Highlander Research and Education Center) and I've been trying to write about my year in Indonesia - that's been harder, though.

I've always loved teaching about rhetorical theory. Rhetoric provides a unique window on language as a tool of action, as a way of getting things done. As soon as you let go of the idea that language can ever be an accurate representation of reality, every single thing that gets put into words ends up getting slippery. Rhetoric provides a magnificent way of engaging the paradoxes language lives in. I'm almost certain to enjoy myself this semester - I'll try to make it as pleasant as possible for you too.

I look forward to reading your introductions!

Gorgias and Plato

For Friday's class, I'd like you to go into the blogs of your classmates and find their questions about Encomium of Helen by Gorgias - pick three of these and respond to them in the comments of the individual blogs. The point isn't that you "answer" them - you may be as unclear about the issue as the blog writer is; rather, I want you to engage and explore them, suggesting possible approaches or even validating the complexity of the question by spinning off with other questions.

On Friday, we'll come at some of those questions directly, and we'll talk a bit about the larger questions about rhetoric and truth that the Sophists raised. As you read and think about Gorgias, you should also think directly about how you understand the relationship between language and truth, between language and reality, and what sort of expectations you have for discourse and argument to reflect what is "real" or "true."

The Sophists also were teachers - as I mentioned, this text represents a kind of argument for students to hire Gorgias for a rhetorical education.  Already this made them suspect in some people's eyes - you know how shady teachers are, of course - and add to that the fact that what they taught were ways of persuading people, ways to use language that could sway an audience, and you can see the problem, perhaps. It's like advertising to teach people about advertising, for money, at least from one perspective.

Also, for next Wednesday, I want you to read Plato's Gorgias, and you might want to start early because it is fairly long. It opens just after Gorgias has given a display of oratory in the house of Callicles, when Socrates shows up, late. Gorgias has a follower of his with him (Polus) and Socrates has one of his students (Chaerephon). This is a dialogue about the value of rhetoric, with Socrates working through the several participants one by one, beginning with Gorgias.  At the heart of this dialogue are several critical questions about rhetoric, such as:

• What is its use? Is it "good" to exercise rhetoric? What does it mean to teach people to be more convincing than experts on a subject?
• What sorts of things can rhetoric convey? Truth? Knowledge? Belief?
• Is rhetoric a moral enterprise?

This is, in effect, an attack on rhetoric, and you'll see in the basic formula giving rhetoric the bad name we noticed it had in class on Monday. 

I'll follow up with a more specific assignment around Gorgias following our discussion on Friday.

Welcome and first assignment

Hi everyone. Welcome to English 450. I'll use this blog to update and post assignments and reflections, and I'll link from it to the blogs I'm requiring you to keep this semester as well. That's your first assignment, in fact - go to the upper corner of this web page and click on "create blog." There, you'll get a set of instructions about how to set up a blog. (If you are more comfortable with another blogging service, please use that instead.) Give it a title, at least. Then, do the next part:

 I'd like your first entry to be about about the things your writing teachers have recommended you do before you start writing - pre-writing, some teachers call it. What kinds of exercises and activities did they recommend? What did they call it? What were the goals of pre-writing activities?

UPDATE: I forgot that there is a version of the Encomium of Helen in our course text (On Rhetoric by Aristotle) - that appears on page 283 - please use this instead, if you get this notice in time! - that overrides the link in the next paragraph!

(****Also, I want you to read Encomium of Helen by Gorgias, a text by an early Sophist.)

 Please write down at least one question about something you did not understand, and include that question in your first entry as well.

After you've posted your first entry to the blog, send me the link and the title. Please have this finished  before midnight on Tuesday. I will use your entries in class on Wednesday.