Fall 2009 POROI Courses

Introduction to Rhetorics of Inquiry

The rhetoric of inquiry is interested in the connections between discourses-in particular, between discourses that don't seem connected, at least not at first glance, and not in a narrow, disciplinary way.

Like other rhetoricians, rhetoricians of inquiry examine the time-honored devices of narrative, ethos, pathos, eros, logos, topos, mythos, and tropos.  Where we differ, what interests us especially, again, is the nontraditional, the surprising and emergent.  That's where new connections are most likely to spring up, both in the texts we read and in our thinking, speaking, and writing.  And from such novel connections come insightful judgment of cases, better interpretations, more powerful theories.

Writing Dissertations

This is a workshop course designed to provide support and guidance to graduate students who are in the process of writing doctoral dissertations. Students who are substantively engaged in writing their prospectus and in drafting chapters find the course useful. The workshop and discussion-group format gives students opportunities to solicit feedback from their fellow students about their arguments, organization, and style, often from the perspective of neighboring fields and departments. Because of its interdisciplinary focus and its emphasis on clear, engaging writing, the course does not substitute for dissertation direction in the student's own academic department. When appropriate, the class may take up issues about the place of dissertating in one's academic career, strategies about how dissertations become first books, advice about the preparation of the CV, and other such matters.

Writing for Learned Journals

This class is designed to provide students with a set of skills and enabling structures to publish a piece of their work in a scholarly or creative journal. Students will explore questions and themes related to publishing: audience, relevant literature, writing practices, workshopping, and revising. The course is designed to create a community of writers and to equip students-as authors and readers of other people's work-to insert their voices into disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and/or creative fields. Students should have a seminar paper, creative or academic essay, or conference paper that they would like to develop for publication. Over the course of the semester, the student will develop their paper for publication with the aim of submitting it for publication at the semester's end.

Seminar: Intellectual Property

Crossing Borders Seminar

This comparative and transnational course examines the history of gender constructions in Africa and Southwest Asia (the Middle East). We will highlight the diversity and nuances of such conceptions, as well as deconstruct common assumptions of gender identities and relations in these regions. For example, how useful is it to use Islam as a category of analysis for understanding gender relations in Africa and Southwest Asia? To what extent does religion, and particularly “Islam”, define male and female sexuality? Can we thus conclude that “Islam” discriminates against women? We will first explore theories of gender and sexuality, before looking into examples drawn from African and Southwest Asian societies to grasp their historical and cultural diversity. Students will gain a better understanding of changing perceptions of gender and sexuality across time and space, as well as question commonly accepted cultural categories.  This course will use a variety of sources, both secondary and primary, such as scholarly works, literature, and audiovisual materials (films and music).

Proseminar: Contemporary Rhetorical Studies

Seminar in Rhetorical Theory: Aristotle, Arendt, Agamben.

This class will focus on the uptake of Aristotle's History of Animals and Politics into Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition and Between Past and Future and of both into Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, The State of Exception, and The Open. Among the issues raised are: humans and animals; the nature of the political, the social, and civil society; the roles of discourse (logos), rhetoric, and philosophy in constituting the political; barbarism, slavery, commerce, and freedom; community and sovereignty; mere life and statelessness; private and public spheres, including the politics of sexuality and gender; ancients, moderns, and post-moderns; and the possibility or impossibility of new beginnings, especially after the Holocaust.

In addition to these primary texts, seminar members will read, make written reports on, and collectively discuss, some (abridged) texts (on Icon) by writers who mediate between the principal texts: Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, Heidegger, Blanchot, Nancy, Foucault, and Levinas. There will be seminar paper. These will be discussed at the end of the semester.

Readings in Nonfiction

The History of the Essay

We’re going to start from scratch in this course, considering the first few scraps of writing that emerged in Mesopotamia in the 4^th millennium BCE. From there, we’ll move slowly through time, reading and discussing the gradual development of the essay in Sumer, Akkadia and Babylon, trying to figure out what distinguishes those earliest texts that we might call "essay" from those contemporary texts that we would classify as "poetry" or "fiction." So we’ll start off with the fundamental questions What is an essay? What is "essaying"? And how do we distinguish what goes on in this genre from everything else in literature? 

From there: Egypt, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Germany, Ireland, England, France, America, etc.

Readings in Nonfiction

The Literary Magazine and Writing Trends

The Literary Magazine has had a long and important role in American letters, and literary magazines continue to launch careers and announce new directions in the literary landscape. As such, literary magazines are by no means the "Minor Leagues," but are where most young writers will first showcase their talents. For this reason, it's important for any writer to be familiar with the field, not only for the sake of publication, but to be a vital part of the literary discussion going on in literary journals rather than simply playing catch-up by reading Best American Essays or The Pushcart Prizes.

We'll start out the course by discussing the history of the literary magazine in the U.S., at least from the 20th century on. But we'll quickly move to an in-depth discussion of 12 influential contemporary literary magazines in the U.S. Every week, we'll speak live with the editor of various important literary magazines, from Ploughshares to Virginia Quarterly Review to the Missouri Review, New Letters, and our own Iowa Review. We won't spend a lot of time on the nuts and bolts questions, but more on aesthetic considerations, and what editors across the country see in common as well as ways in which each magazine seeks a different literary voice, not only in terms of its essays but also in terms of its fiction and poetry.

Feminist Cultural Studies

This course takes as its central purpose an in-depth exploration of the relationship between meaning and power. Meaning-making is one of the central purposes of story-telling. We tell stories about ourselves and others in order to make sense of the world and (to secure) our place in it. Thus meaning-making and story-telling are explored in this course as sites of struggle in which power relations are negotiated, resisted, and reasserted. So we ask: How do we make meaning within our culture and across cultures? How is meaning constitutive of “culture”? How do the meanings that get privileged serve the interests of some, while disempowering others? To answer these questions, we will explore theories of culture, ideology, and power—from the Birmingham School to contemporary feminist interventions in the field. We will pay particular attention to postcolonial, queer, and intersectional studies of culture. This course welcomes graduate students from both the academic disciplines and the creative fields. If you are (or want to be) a critic of popular culture, literature, or ethnographic inquiry, this is an ideal course for you. If you are a writer who is interested in how your stories might contribute to resistive or transformative notions of culture, identity, or belonging—welcome! The interdisciplinary conversations in which we engage promise to be productive.