Critical Book Analysis

Critical Book Analysis + Presentation
In the first week of class, I will ask you to select one full-length theory text from our longer list, through which and against which you will read the rest of our course. Choose pragmatically, but choose according to your interests. The point of this project is for you to be able to test some of our assumptions on a longer, sustained argument. No one else will tell you whether those assumptions are right or wrong; however, we will rely on you to teach us your text throughout the semester—informally, as you invoke the book during our class discussions; and formally, in a critical book analysis at mid-semester. 


In Week 8, you will give a brief presentation (~15 minutes, with handouts, visuals, and/or take-away discussion tools) in which you educate us on how your reading of the book—so far—builds on or away from what you are learning in the course. This will necessarily include a synopsis of the book’s exigence and aim, as well as its overarching argument and the organization that supports it. However, unlike a book report, this project asks you to critically analyze how the book takes up, disregards, disrupts, or invents certain ideas of rhetoric or certain truisms about rhetorical theory. In fact, anything you provide in terms of a summary or synopsis should be in the service of your analysis, not the other way around. It is likely that we will not have read any or all of the work you are presenting, so you may want to provide a critical gloss to help us extract main concepts from your presentation. Here are the choices you have made (and about which I am very pleased):
  • Abraham -- Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936 or 1965 Oxford)
  • Ashley -- Hawhee, Debra. Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language (2009 U South Carolina)
  • Erin -- Flynn, Elizabeth. Feminism beyond Modernism (2002 SIUP)
  • Jason -- Brooke, Collin. Lingua Fracta: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media (2009 Hampton)
  • Jennifer -- Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (2004 Blackwell) 
  • Jess -- Salazar, Philippe-Joseph. An African Athens: Rhetoric and the Shaping of Democracy in South Africa (2002 Lawrence Erlbaum, or 2008 Taylor & Francis)
  • Kendall -- Crosswhite, James. Deep Rhetoric: Philosophy, Reason, Violence, Justice, Wisdom (2013 U Chicago)
  • Kyle -- Ong, Walter. Rhetoric, Romance, Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (1971 Cornell) 
  • Megan K. -- Rickert, Thomas. Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (2013 U Pittsburgh)
  • Megan R. -- Jarratt, Susan. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured (1991 SIUP)
  • Sarah -- Miller, Susan. Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric (2008 SIUP)