Rhetoric at the University of Chicago

By: James P. Beasley

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eBook | 12 September 2018 | Edition Number 1

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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.

Industry Reviews

"Wayne Booth, Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, and Richard Weaver loom so large in the twentieth-century rhetorical canon that any engagement with their work often simply reproduces their larger-than-life status. James P. Beasley corrects this view by placing all four in the specific institutional context they shared-the University of Chicago. Taking his cue from James Berlin's observation that classical rhetoric was introduced into the writing classroom during mid-century at the University of Chicago, Beasley digs deep into the university archives to reveal a history in which the specific contributions made to teaching writing by Booth, Burke, and Weaver emerge out of the context of their day-to-day encounters in committee meetings where competing positions were debated and developed. Rhetoric at the University of Chicago ably demonstrates the value of archival research by documenting the evolution of rhetorical thinking." -Richard Marback, Professor of English at Wayne State University and Author of Plato's Dream of Sophistry