Download Indeed, among all else that it was, the twentieth was the Rhetorical

The Rhetorical Century: Rhetoric and American Life, 1914-2001
Special Topics Graduate Seminar
Department of Communication
COMM 6200-2
Fall, 2009
Thursdays, 6:30-9:00 p.m.
Hellems 77
Prof. Peter Simonson
Office: Hellems 96
Office Hours: Tues 2-3:30, Thurs 5-6, and by appt.
Among everything else that it was, the twentieth could be called The Rhetorical Century. It
witnessed a dramatic volumetric expansion of discourse traditionally classified as rhetorical—
addressed to the many, and strategically aimed at persuasion, education, entertainment, and
(somewhat less frequently) spiritual uplift. Powerful technologies and techniques re-shaped and
disseminated rhetoric in its various guises—among them state-sponsored propaganda, public
relations, mass marketing and advertising, public opinion polls, motion pictures, photographic
magazines, sound recordings, radio and television broadcasting, satellites, and the internet. In the
contexts of those developments, rhetoric as an intellectual topic was revived and refigured—both
explicitly, by a series of thinkers who resuscitated a discredited subject; and implicitly, in the
guises of propaganda, public opinion, and mass communications research; media and cultural
studies; and a range of other subfields.
This seminar will explore intellectual, social, and technological currents of the Rhetorical Century
as it played itself out, primarily in the United States, from the beginning of World War I into the
1990s. After gaining contextual knowledge about media technologies and audiences in the
centuries leading into the twentieth, we will explore thinking about rhetoric and traditionally
rhetorical topics ranging from debates about publics and propaganda in the 1920s and „30s
through critical and postmodernist theories in the 1980s and „90s. We will aim to put differing
perspectives into conversation, and place texts in broader contexts of thinking about
communication, media, and rhetoric. The course is intended to both to familiarize students with
intellectual topics, debates, and schools of thought; and to stoke their thinking about theoretical
and empirical areas of inquiry they are already interested in.
Required Texts:
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet.
2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
Richard Butsch, The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals. New York:
Routledge, 2008.
John Durham Peters and Peter Simonson, eds., Mass Communication and American Social
Thought: Key Texts, 1919-1968. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. [MCAST]
Other readings will be available through the CULearn website.
Course Requirements: You may choose one of two options:
1. Seminar Paper Option: A 25-30 page research paper on a topic related to the course,
which goes through the following three stages:
a. Proposal, worked out in dialogue with Simonson (250-words, due 9/24)
b. Rough draft of the paper, submitted to Simonson by Tuesday 11/10 (before he
leaves for the NCA convention) or, at the latest, by 11/19
c. Final paper, and 10-minute oral presentation of it (during our final class, 12/10)
2. Annotated Bibliography and Final Exam Option, which involves the following
requirements:
a. An annotated bibliography, on a topic of interest to you and of potential use to
other students in the class, covering recent work in some area broadly related to
the course (e.g. theories of news, women and media, Continental rhetorical
thought, psychoanalytic approaches to media/rhetoric, public sphere theory,
media and religion, etc). The bibliography should include 20-25 articles and
books, each with a 3-5 sentence annotation that indicates their focus, scope, and
main argument (due 11/19)
b. A final exam, consisting of two questions—one submitted by the student (in
conversation with Simonson), the other from a short list of questions provided.
The exam questions will be distributed in class on 11/19, and be due at 5:00 p.m
on Monday, 12/7. Students should expect to write 8-12 pages per question.
c. An oral defense of the exam with Simonson (12/9 or 12/10), and a 5-minute
presentation of it to the group (during our final class, 12/10)
Grades will break down this way:
Seminar Paper: 2/3, Participation: 1/3
or
Annotated Bib 1/3, Final Exam 1/3, Participation 1/3
:
Course Schedule
August 27: Introduction to the Course
Reading for Today:
Richard McKeon, “The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive
Art” (1971)
September 3: Historical Horizons I: Print, Public Spheres, and Industrial Power before the
Twentieth Century
Readings for Today:
Burke and Briggs, Social History of Media, 1-150
September 10: Historical Horizons II: Information, Education, Entertainment, and Audiences in
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Readings for Today:
Burke and Briggs, Social History of Media, 151-215
Butsch, Citizen Audience, 1-144
September 17: Propaganda and Publics in the Interwar Years
Readings for Today:
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922), 3-20; “The Disenchanted Man” (1925), in
MCAST, 36-41
John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927), 110-84 (chs. 4-5)
Harold Lasswell, “The Results of Propaganda” (1927), MCAST, 47-50
Edward Bernays, “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How” (1928), MCAST,
51-57
Foreward to the first issue of Public Opinion Quarterly (1937), MCAST, 116-117.
Albert McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee, selections from The Fine Art of
Propaganda (1937), MCAST 124-27
George Gallup and Saul Rae, “A Powerful, Bold, and Unmeasurable Party?” (1940),
MCAST, 128-33.
September 24: Reviving Rhetoric in the 1930s
Readings for Today:
I.A. Richards, selections from Interpretations in Teaching (1938) and The Philosophy of
Rhetoric (1936), 84-117 in Ann E. Berthoff, ed., Richards on Rhetoric
Kenneth Burke, selections from Counter-Statement (1931): “Status of Art,” “Program,”
“Ideology,” and “Eloquence,” (63-91, 107-24, 162-3, 165-6); and selections from
Permanence and Change (1935): “Motives are Shorthand Terms for Situations” [as rpt.
in Burke, On Symbols and Society (Joseph Gusfield, ed.), 126-31], and “Causality and
Communication” (169-178)
C. Wright Mills, “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological
Review, Vol 5, no. 6 (1940), 904-13
October 1: The Sociology of Mass Communication at Columbia, 1940s-„50s
Readings for Today (prioritize in this order if you are pressed for time):
Paul Lazarsfeld, “Administrative and Critical Communications Research” (1941), in
MCAST, 166-73
Herta Herzog, “On Borrowed Experience: An Analysis of Daytime Listening Sketches”
(1941), in MCAST, 139-56
Robert K. Merton, with Marjorie Fiske and Alberta Curtis, selections from Mass
Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive (1946), 1-19, 142-74
Lazarsfeld and Merton, “Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social
Action” (1948), in MCAST, 230-41
Bernard Berelson, “What „Missing the Newspaper‟ Means,” (1949), in MCAST, 254-62
Leila A. Sussmann, “FDR and the White House Mail,” Public Opinion Quarterly 20:1
(1956), 5-16.
October 8: The Sociology of Mass Communication at Chicago, 1930s-1950s
Readings for Today:
Helen MacGill Hughes, “Human Interest Stories and Democracy” (1937), in MCAST, 11823
Louis Wirth, “Consensus and Mass Communication” (1948), in MCAST, 249-53
David Riesman, with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer, excerpts from The Lonely Crowd
(1950), in MCAST, 293-308
Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang, “The Unique Perspective of Television and Its Effect: A
Pilot Study” (1952), in MCAST, 328-37
Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction:
Observations on Intimacy at a Distance” (1956), in MCAST, 373-86
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, selections from Language and Literature in Society (1953), 103-140
October 15: Rhetoric‟s Revival in the 1940s and „50s
Readings for Today:
Richard Weaver, “The Great Stereopticon” (1948), and “The Cultural Role of Rhetoric”
(1961)
Kenneth Burke, “Identification,” excerpted from The Rhetoric of Motives (1950), and
reprinted in Gusfield, ed., On Symbols and Society, 179-91
Richard McKeon, “Communication, Truth, and Society” (1957)
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, selections from A Treatise on Argumentation
(published in French in 1958, and translated in English in 1969), 1-13, 155-78
October 22: The Question of Publics Revisited (in a Mass Society)
Readings for Today:
Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, selections from Personal Influence: The Part Played by
People in the Flow of Mass Communications (1955), 1-42
C. Wright Mills, selections from The Power Elite (1956), “The Mass Society” in MCAST,
387-400
Daniel Bell, “The Theory of Mass Society: A Critique” (1956), in MCAST, 364-73
Hannah Arendt, selections from The Human Condition (1958), 1-13, 155-78
Jürgen Habermas, selections from Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(published in German in 1962, and translated English in 1989), 1-5, 244-250; and “The
Public Sphere: An Encylopedia Article” (1973)
October 29: Media and Modernity in the 1950s and „60s
Readings for Today:
Harold Innis, “Critical Review” (1948) and “Industrialism and Cultural Values” (1950), the
latter in MCAST, 275-79
Marshall McLuhan, editor‟s Introduction to The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas
Nashe in the Learning of His Time (1943 doctoral thesis at Cambridge); selections from
The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), Preface-4, 21-22, 41-45, 5659, 93-101, 113-15; “Technology and Political Change”(1952) and “Sight, Sound, and
Fury” (1954), both in MCAST, 338-42, 353-57; and selections from Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), 3-21, 56-61.
Daniel Lerner, selections from The Passing of Traditional Society (1958), “Modernizing
Styles of Life: A Theory,” in MCAST, 426-33.
Betty Friedan, selections from The Feminine Mystique (1963), “The Happy Housewife
Heroine” (33-68)
Burke and Briggs, “Convergence,” in Social History of Media, 216-53
November 5: Discourse and Deconstructions Post-1968
Readings for Today:
Michel Foucault, excerpts from The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), rpt in Bizzell and
Herzberg, 1130-38
Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context” (1971), reprinted in Patricia Bizzell and Bruce
Herzberg, eds., The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the
Present, 1165-84
Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding” (1973)
Sally Miller Gearhardt, “The Womanization of Rhetoric” (1979)
November 12: No Class. National Communication Association Convention
November 19: Reconstructions and Other Revivals, Post-1968
Richard McKeon, “Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive
Arts” (1971) [re-read]
John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, “Rhetoric of Inquiry” (1987)
Michael Leff, “Modern Sophistic and the Unity of Rhetoric” (1987)
John Bender and David E. Wellbury, “Rhetoricality,” in The Ends of Rhetoric (1990), 3-42
Richard Buchanan, “Rhetoric, Humanism, and Design” (1995)
Iris Marion Young, “Inclusive Political Communication,” in Inclusion and Democracy
(2000), 52-80
November 26: Thanksgiving Break
December 3: No Class. Writing Week
December 10: Paper and Exam Presentations