Revised PhD Reading List: February 18, 2014 (Effective Fall 2014)

I. Rhetoric: Key Perspectives

Anzalda, Gloria. Borderlands/LaFrontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd. ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute,
2007.
Aristotle. Rhetoric.
Bakhtin, Mikhail.
Bakhtin, M.M., and Michael Holquist. Discourse in the Novel. The Dialogic
Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Bakhtin, M.M., Michael Holquist, Vern McGee, and Caryl Emerson. The Problem with
Speech Genres. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin:
University of
Texas Press, 1986.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Illuminations:
Essays and Reflections. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken,
1968. 217-51.
Burke, Kenneth.
A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1945 (Part 1)
A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952 (Parts 1 and 2)
Terministic Screens. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
Definition of Man. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
Clark, Gregory, and S. Michael Halloran, ed. Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America:
Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1993.
Foucault, Michel.
The Discourse on Language. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1972. (Appendix to The Archaeology of Knowledge).
The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books 1985. (Parts 1 and 2)
Docile Bodies. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Panopticon. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Haraway, Donna J.
"The Cyborg Manifesto The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003.
"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective. Feminist Studies 14.3 (Autumn 1988): 575-599.
Companion Species Manifesto. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
Logan, Shirley Wilson. We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black
Women. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
Perelman, Chaim. The Realm of Rhetoric. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1990.
Plato

Phaedrus: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html
Gorgias: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html

Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Trinh T. Minh-ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism: Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989.
Cluster: Rhetorical Situation
Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric 1.1 (Jan. 1968):
1-14.
Response: Vatz, Richard E. The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy
and Rhetoric 6.3 (Summer 1973): 154-161.
Consigny, Scott. "Rhetoric and Its Situations. Philosophy and Rhetoric 7.3 (Summer
1974): 175-186.
Cluster: Visual Rhetoric
Birdsell, David S., and Leo Groarke. Toward a Theory of Visual Argument. Argument
and Advocacy 33 (Summer 1996): 1-10.
Hawhee, Debra, and Paul Messaris. "What's Visual about 'Visual Rhetoric?" Quarterly
Journal of Speech 95.2 (May 2009): 210-223.
Hill, Charles A., and Marguerite Helmers. Defining Visual Rhetorics. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence, Erlbaum, 2004.
Cluster: Feminist Rhetorics
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. The Rhetoric of Womens Liberation: An Oxymoron
Communication Studies 50.2 (Summer 1999): 125-137.
Response: Biesecker, Barbara. "Coming to Terms with Recent Attempts to Write Women
into the History of Rhetoric. Philosophy and Rhetoric 25.2
(1992): 140-161.
Reply: Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "Biesecker Cannot Speak for Her Either.
Philosophy and Rhetoric 26.2 (1993): 153-159.
Ede, Lisa, Cheryl Glenn, and Andrea Lunsford. "Border Crossings: Intersections of
Rhetoric and Feminism." Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of
Rhetoric 13.4
(Autumn 1995): 401-441.
Foss, Sonja K, and Cindy L. Griffin, "Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for Invitational
Rhetoric Communication Monographs 62.1 (Mar. 1995): 2-18.
Hamlet, Janice D. "Assessing Womanist Thought: The Rhetoric of Susan L. Taylor."
Communication Quarterly 48.4 (Fall 2000): 420-436.
Cluster: African-American Rhetorics
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g)
Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning.The Signifying
Monkey:
Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism New
York: Oxford
University Press, 1988.
(Chapter 2)
Gilyard, Keith. "Introduction: Aspects of African American Rhetoric as a Field. African
American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Elaine B.
Richardson
and Ronald L. Jackson. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2007.

Smith, Arthur L. (Molefi Kete Assante), "Socio-Historical Perspectives of Black

Oratory. Quarterly Journal of Speech 56.3 (Oct. 1970): 264-269.
McPhail, Mark Lawrence. "The Politics of (In)visiblity in African American Rhetorical
Scholarship: A (Re)quest for an African Worldview Understanding
African
American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations. Ed.
Ronald
L. Jackson II and Elaine B. Richardson. New York: Peter Lang
Publishers,
224-237.
Cluster: Digital Rhetorics
Brooke, Collin Gifford. Lingua Fracta: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media.Cresskill, NJ:
Hampton Press, 2009.
Delagrange, Susan H. Chapter 4: Visual Arrangement as Inquiry. Technologies of
Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in a Digital World. Logan, UT: Utah State
University Press: Computers and Composition Digital Press,
2011.
Banks, Adam J. "Looking Forward to Look Back: Technology Access and
Transformations in African American Rhetoric. African American
Rhetoric(s):
Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Ed. Elaine B. Richardson and
Ronald L. Jackson.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.
Queen, Mary. "Transnational Rhetorics in a Digital World. College English. Special
Topic: Transnational Feminist Rhetorics (May 2008): 522-528.
Porter, James E. "Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric and Human-Computer
Interaction." :
http://kairos.wide.msu.edu/porter/porter_digitaldelivery.pdf
II. Overviews of Theories of Composition:
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 19001985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987
Berlin, James. Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories. College
English 44.8 (Dec. 1982): 765-777.
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Ideology. College English 50.5 (Sept. 1988):477-494.
Faigley, Lester. Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.
College English 48.6 (Oct. 1986): 527-542.
Fulkerson, Richard. Four Philosophies of Composition. CCC 30.4 (Dec. 1979):
343-348.
Fulkerson, Richard. Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus
and Paradigmatic Diversity. CCC 41.4 (Dec. 1990): 409-429.
Fulkerson, Richard. Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. CCC
56.4 (Jun. 2005): 654-687.

Cluster: Research Methodologies

Johanek, Cindy. Composing Research. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press,
2000.
North, Stephen. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an
Emerging Field. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boyton/Cook Publishers, 1987.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S., Clay Spinuzzi, Rebecca J. Rickly, and Carole Clark
Papper. The Importance of Harmony: An Ecological Metaphor for
Writing Research CCC 60.2 (Dec 2008): 388-419.
Cluster: Genre
Devitt, Amy. Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.
CCC 44.4 (Dec. 1993): 573-586.
Green, Bill, and Alison Lee. "Writing Geography: Literacy, Identity, and Schooling."
Learning and Teaching Genre. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. 207-24.
Research in the Teaching of English 27.3 (1993): full issue.
Miller, Carolyn. Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70.2 (1984):
151-167.
Miller, Carolyn and Dawn Shepherd. Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of
the Weblog. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of
Weblogs.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_a_genre_analysi
s_of_the_weblog.html
Cluster: Process
Britton, James. Writing to Learn and Learning to Write. Prospect and Retrospect:
Selected Essays of James Britton. Boynton Cook Publishers, 1982.
Elbow, Peter. About Voice and Writing. Landmark Essays on Voice and Writing. Ed.
Peter Elbow. Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras Press, 1994. xi-xlvii.
Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. CCC 32.4
(Dec. 1981): 365-387.
Hairston, Maxine. The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the
Teaching of Writing. CCC 33.1 (Feb. 1982): 76-88.
Hairston, Maxine. Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing. Responses: College
Composition Communication 44 (1993): 248-56.
Haas, Christine, and Linda Flower. Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction
of Meaning. CCC 39.2 (May 1988): 167-183.
Cluster: Post-Process (The Social Turn)
Bazerman, Charles, and David R. Russell. Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research
from Activity Perspectives. (see http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/

Bruffee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind

College English 46.7 (Nov. 1984): 635-652.

Cooper, Marilyn. The Ecology of Writing. College English 48.4 (Apr. 1986): 364-375.
Cooper, Marilyn. Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted. CCC 62.3 (Feb 2011):
420-449.
Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Post Modernity and the Subject of
Composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.
Harris, Joseph. The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing CCC 40.1 (Feb. 1989):
11-22.
Johnson-Eilola, Johnson, and Stuart Selber. Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage
Computers and Composition 24.4 (2007): 375-403.
Trimbur, John. Composition and the Circulation of Writing. CCC 52.2 (2000): 188219.
Cluster: Visual-Material Literacies
Dobrin, Sidney I. and Christian R. Weisser. Breaking Ground in Ecocomposition:
Exploring Relationships between Discourse and Environment College English
64.5 (May 2005): 566-589.
Faigley, Lester Material Literacy and Visual Design. Rhetorical Bodies. Ed. Jack Selzer
and Sharon Crowley. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1999. 171-201.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S. Words Made Flesh: Fusing Imagery and Language in a
Polymorphic Literacy. College English 66.6 (2004): 612-630.
Kress, Gunther. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London: Routledge, 2010.
Shipka, Jody. Toward a Composition Made Whole. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011.
(Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780822977780
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key. CCC
56.2 (Dec. 2004): 297-328.
Cluster: Alterity
Alexander, Jonathan, and Jacqueline Rhodes. Flattening Effects: Compositions
Multicultural Imperative and the Problem of Narrative Coherence. CCC 65.3
(2014): 430-54.
Flynn, Elizabeth A. Composing as a Woman. CCC 39.4 (1988): 423-435.
Gilyard, Keith. Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence Wayne State UP,
1991.
Lyons, Scott Richard. Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from
Writing? CCC 51.3 (2000): 447-468.

Ritchie, Joy and Kathleen Boardman. Feminism in Composition: Inclusion, Metonymy,

and Disruption. CCC 50.4 (1999): 585-606.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones. When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own. CCC 47.1
(1996): 29-40.
Villanueva, Victor. On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism. CCC 50.4 (1999): 645661.
Cluster: Digitality
Borrowman, Shane (Ed). On the Blunt Edge: Technology in Composition's History and
Pedagogy. Parlor Press, 2011.
XXXJournet, Debra, Cheryl Ball, and Ryan Trauman (Eds) The New Work of Composing.
Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012.
Porter, James E. Why Technology Matters to Writing: A CyberWriter's
Tale. Computers & Composition 20 (2004): 375-394.
Selfe, Cynthia L. The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and
Multimodal Composing. CCC 60 (2009): 616-63.
Selfe and Selfe. Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact
Zones CCC 45.4 (Dec. 1994): 480-504.
III. Minor Area (list to be determined by yourselves and your minor professors)
IV. Specialty Area (list to be determined by yourselves and your major professors)
[No duplication among lists; this can get especially tricky on Days One and Two.]
Basic Exam Structure
Day One (4 hours): 3 questions from Rhet list, 1 question from your specialty area list
Day Two (4 hours): 3 questions from Comp list, 1 question from your specialty area list
Day Three (4 hours): 3 questions from your Minor list, 1 question from your specialty
area list

Preparation Strategies
Intertextual Conversations
Matrix of Concerns (issues, key terms, pedagogies, standpoints, etc.)
Prep Sheets (for, with, and among one another)
Traces
Question Types (in terms of Methodology) These are not hard and fast differences, given that
many questions involve some of each methodology
Definitional (involves application and example, often in response to a situation)
Historical (involves comparing and contrasting, usually on one or two topics or landmarks)
Synthesis (involves demonstration of how one or more issues evolves across one or more
texts)
Challenges
Scope: achieving breadth + depth, writing a meaningful but distilled response
Introductions: how could you provide synthesis and context right away (without just
parroting the prompt, but without a vague promise or vague offering)? Try delivering
your argument in a synthesis statement as early as possible.
Organization: rather than a march through 3 texts or theorists, how could you organize you
responses as a series of ideas or claims?
Specificity: especially in this format
Prototypes for Qs that might appear on major lists These are deliberately challenging and
vague. Lets identify them according to question type (methodology) and discuss preparation
strategies and challenges.
1. You have been asked to talk about some current perspectives on what we might (today) identify
as major differences between classical and modern approaches to rhetoric or writing instruction.
Select one or two writers from your list whom you would call neo-classical and one or two you
whom you would characterize as post-modern in their views about rhetoric, and discuss where
their views converge or diverge on one of the concepts below:
Rhetorical Reasoning
Genre and Style
Education of Rhetor
Rhetoric as an Art
Rhetor
Audience
Contexts and the Initiation of Discourse
Topics and Places of Reasoning
2. You have been asked to talk about the major differences between expressivist and social
constructivist approaches to teaching composition in the 21st centuryincluding whether that
division even holds in a 21st century contextwith a group of instructors who is concerned with
the changing nature of authority in todays composition classroom. Select 2-3 theorists and
discuss how new instructors might contend with their ideas in order to formulate an appropriate
understanding of student and teacher authority for the 21st century classroom.
3. You have been asked to provide a nuanced explanation of what it means to conduct research in
rhetoric and composition, paying special attention to how the fields research designs have tended
to evolve through its resolution of epistemological binaries. You decide that the best way to do

this is to describe rhet/comps approach to ethnographic research as a repositioning of concepts

or, as a relationship formed by separating and joining concepts over time. Select one of the binary
relationships below and discuss how two theorists from your list have helped you understand
what it means to do ethnographic research in rhetoric and composition:
participant and observer
subject and object
material and immaterial
science and humanism
language and meaning
4. Divisions, or categories, can be useful in the formation of any field for how they reduce
ambiguity and allow us to notice an evolution of ideas, although Sharon Crowley, Ann Berthoff,
and James Berlin have argued that they can also be dangerous for how they cause practitioners to
mistake logical categories for social reality. Select two theorists from your list who claim to lay
out the field in terms of intellectual landscapes, or who attempt to categorize composition studies
according to logics and epistemologies. Explain what you see as the benefits and drawbacks of
each of their landscapes, and discuss what a practitioner might do to prevent that landscape or
its categorization from becoming too dangerous.
5. What is all the fuss about the postmodern subject in composition studies, about subjectivity,
and about the related question of identity? Using the positions of at least three of our theorists,
identify the issue of subjectivity (i.e., what is it and why is it important?) and explain its
significance to rhetoric and composition. What practical difference does/should this discussion
make, strategically, for writers? Further, how does/should/could it impact the theorizing of
writing pedagogy?
6. In Composition in the University, Sharon Crowley makes the argument that first-year
composition should be abolished. Rather than examining Crowley directly, discuss and evaluate
her argument from the perspective of theorists who argue for the importance of teaching writing
in the face of concrete, changing contextswhether those contexts are social or institutional.
Pick at least two (2) composition theorists of your choice.
7. Identify a focal issue in composition studies over the past forty (or so) years that you think
should be put to rest, either because it has been (at least temporarily) resolved or because the
discussions of it are no longer productive. Cite relevant discussions of the issue and then explain
(1) why you believe it is time to leave this issue alone and (2) under what conditions (if any) this
issue would become important again. Here are some possibilities, but you may identify an issue
of your own:
Collaboration
Process vs. product
Students right to their own language
Discourse communities
Response to writing