Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften Rhetoric at the University of Chicago

From the early 1940s through the 1960s, some of the most important articles in rhetoric and composition were written by University of Chicago faculty, and it was these articles that became the touchstones of rhetorical education in the institutional return to rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century. Despite the immense rhetorical output of these University of Chicago professors, there has not been, to date, a book-length treatment of why these writers focused their attention on the importance of rhetoric in the writing class. Not only that, but there has not been a revisionist account of how these articles were constructed or how the teaching of rhetoric and composition has often been misguided as a result of an uncritical acceptance of these articles in the rhetorical tradition. By organizing these articles based on their University of Chicago context, Rhetoric at the University of Chicago sheds new light on the beginnings of rhetoric and composition and demonstrates the significance of historical context in avoiding the misuse of these articles as foundationalist rhetorical history. Review "Anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century American rhetoric will find much to appreciate in this critically valuable book. Drawing on primary texts, conference talks, committee minutes, course notes, and personal letters in the archives at the University of Chicago, James P. Beasley skillfully traces diaphanous theoretical strands that were invented and woven into landmark articles on rhetoric. In so doing, he reveals the complicated relationships among University of Chicago faculty--rhetoricians Richard McKeon, Kenneth Burke, Henry Sams, F.C. Ward, R. S. Crane, Richard Weaver, Wayne Booth--and the circulation of their disparate ideas about rhetoric mid-century. Beasley's book belongs on the shelf of everyone serious about the study of rhetoric." --Maureen Daly Goggin, Professor of English at Arizona State University and Author of Authoring a Discipline: Scholarly Journals and the Post-World War II Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition "As a Chicago undergraduate schooled in Richard McKeon's Ideas and Methods program in the late 1960s and doctoral student inspired by Norman Maclean and supervised by Wayne Booth in the early 1970s, I was repeatedly enlightened by James P. Beasley's account of what was at stake in the debates that shaped my mentors and my education. Imagining myself as something of a black sheep leaving neo-Aristotelian rhetoric and poetics for Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogics, I was reminded by this book how much I owe to the Chicago school and how much I still belong to the flock. Beasley shows that the personal and intellectual differences articulated in those debates remain consequential for the field of rhetoric and composition that they helped to inaugurate." --Don Bialostosky, Professor in Composition: Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh and Author of Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality "In Rhetoric at the University of Chicago, James P. Beasley adopts an archival lens to investigate the contributions of foundational twentieth-century rhetoricians, including Richard McKeon, Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, and Wayne Booth. This book connects the research and publication of these rhetors' works to a specific place and cultural moments, modelling novel ways to investigate both the circulation of texts and collation of primary documents. The author illustrates ways to integrate researcher positionality in archival studies through a close reading and spatial analysis of six influential publications integrated with his own experiences of location and memories of Chicago, dating to his early childhood. Demonstrating how local circumstances can give rise to globally influential scholarship, Rhetoric at the University of Chicago will appeal to readers interested in archival research methods, spatial rhetorics, Univ