Yeah, yeah, all of us in academia have a rather odd relationship to the future: we don't really have time to think much about it until we are forced to by associations' deadlines for grants or paper proposals or departmental deadlines for things like course descriptions and book orders. And since those deadlines are often so unfathomably early, most of us quite frequently find ourselves in the state of panicked deferral during which we commit ourselves to ideas, topics, and lines of inquiry for months, even years down the line.
In English our course descriptions for spring are due tomorrow, so I wrote mine moments ago. My collaborator, Ralph Cintron (UIC) hasn't exactly seen it just yet, so I figured I'd just toss it up (this will only appear in the UIUC catalogue unless Ralph wants it for his). Ralph and I did consult with each other on the title and the divisions at some previous, inspired moment, when Spring 07 seemed a faraway fairy tale.
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Rhetoric and Interdisciplinary Inquiry over the Last Decade
This seminar will examine rhetoric as an affinity discipline, which is to say its capacity to function as a fruitful and flexible locus of interdisciplinary inquiry. This point, of course, emerges from more than two millennia of handwringing over rhetoric's disciplinary "contentlessness," dating back at least to Plato. And yet in the context of the contemporary university where interdisciplinarity has received more attention of late, what Plato deems rhetoric's limitation starts to look more like a strength. In order to learn about rhetoric these days, we would do well to study it in its "natural habitat"--i.e. as it joins with other disciplines. Following an introductory unit on "disciplining rhetoric," then, the class will be divided into six two-week sessions, each of which will focus on recent disciplinary couplings newly formed or re-formed in the last 10 years. Those include: rhetoric and philosophy; rhetoric and sensual studies; rhetoric and religion; rhetoric and space; rhetoric and political theory; and rhetoric and culture (Rhetoric Culture Project). This seminar will be linked with a graduate seminar taught by Ralph Cintron at U of I Chicago.
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Also, I have no idea what we are reading. I think Ralph wants to read some Michel Meyer in the rhet and philosophy section, and since he came up with the title "Rhetoric Culture Project" for the last unit (a title that ultimately got parenthesized out of my commitment to parallel structure), I figure he has some good ideas. I guess we'll hash out the rest when the book orders come due. Suggestions, of course, are WAY welcome.
