Thomas Rickert
Office: HEAV 303B
Phone: 494-3719
trickert@purdue.edu

Rhetoric and Institutional Discourses: The Contemporary University in Crisis
English 680R

Required Texts:
Defining the Humanities-Robert Proctor *
Rhetoric as Philosophy-Ernesto Grassi
The Principle of Reason-Martin Heidegger
The Closing of the American Mind-Allan Bloom §
The University in Ruins-Bill Readings
The Knowledge Factory-Stanley Aronowitz
Anxious Intellects-John Michael
Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work-Gary Olson, ed.

Course Packet at CopyMat

* Proctor's book has an earlier edition with a different title, Education's Great Amnesia; this edition will work just as well.
§ Get used on amazon.com (cheap!) or elsewhere.

Recommended:
Phaedrus-Plato
The Idea of a University-John Henry Newman*
The Idea of the University-Jaroslav Pelikan*
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Liberal Education-Martha Nussbaum
Cosmopolis-Stephen Toulmin*
A University for the 21st Century-James Duderstadt
What's Left of Enlightenment?-Keith M. Baker and Peter H. Reill, eds.
Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader-Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed.*
Dialectic of Enlightenment-Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
Day Late, Dollar Short: The Next Generation and the New Academy-Peter C. Herman, ed.*
Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the 21st Century-Annette Kolodny
The Condition of Postmodernity-David Harvey
Critique of Cynical Reason-Peter Sloterdijk
The Postmodern Condition-Jean-Francois Lyotard
Empire-Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
The Social Life of Information-John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
Beyond English, Inc.-David Downing, et al, eds.
Beyond the Corporate University-Henry Giroux, et al, eds.
Digital Diploma Mills-David Noble (online)

* Are especially useful and/or relevant.

Objectives:
English departments, and the work that they do--whether writing instruction, literary studies, rhetorical training, visual literacies, textual production, and so on--are traditionally derived from something called The Humanities. This term certainly distinguishes work in English from work in The Sciences, but in the age of the postmodern, corporate university, it is increasingly unclear what the Humanities are anymore, much less whether they still have a place in Empire (our increasingly globalized and administered transnational corporate world). This confusion concerning the Humanities is closely intertwined with the changing nature of the university itself. These uncertainties have lead to feelings of unease, diagnoses of ruination, and predictions of demise. And more. Much more. (According to Stanley Fish, James B. Twitchell, and others, academics in the humanities are suffused with so much guilt concerning job and role that the most popular car of choice for them is the Volvo.)

The Humanities have their origin with Petrarch, who provided their initial impetus and formulation largely as a reaction against the contemporary scholastic university of his day. This will be our initial ground or defining orientation for the course. However, we will actually read Plato's Apology first. Socrates' defense of his critical role in the Athenian public--as the citizenry's necessary gadfly--is perhaps the opening move of what will emerge centuries later, in Kant and other German Idealists, as the idea that there needs to be an institution that fosters and shelters a critical perspective as defined by various disciplines. As you might expect, Petrarch has his contributions to make here as well. In the Apology is also a clear defense of the necessity for critical self-examination, and this, too, will be an idea crucial to both the Humanities and the Enlightenment.

Following our all-too-brief consideration of the Italian Renaissance, we will move to the Enlightenment (and counter-Enlightenment, a movement that will bear fruit two hundred years later with the advent of postmodernism) and the origin of the modern research university in Germany. Kant and other German Idealists supplied much of the conceptual and philosophical underpinning for the social role and mission of the university, and this institutional apparatus was later imported nearly wholesale into other countries, including America. As I mentioned above, integral to the creation of the university and the installation of the critical role of the Humanities (though Kant privileged philosophy) is the Socratic idea that critique is necessary for the health of a society. In looking at these various formulations of the Humanities, then, we will be examining what arguments underpin this "necessity" and how they are used in forming liberal arts curriculums. Because it has been covered elsewhere, I will be skipping over the Scottish Enlightenment and rhetoricians, although obviously this influence on the American university and its curriculum is significant.

Heidegger's Principle of Reason and essays by Hamann, Foucault, Lanham, and others consider in various ways and from a variety of perspectives the insufficiency of reason as it is tied to the Enlightenment project. Like Horkheimer and Adorno (Dialectic of Enlightenment), Heidegger and others argue that the instrumental/calculative application of reason can lead to astonishing forms barbarity, cruelness, and violence. If this is so, the idea that education is bildung, the progressive enculturation of human beings towards the highest and most spiritual goals, is jeopardized. And, indeed, much postmodern theorizing takes exactly this orientation, calling into question all the old values, ideals, and goals that served as centering commonplaces. The flipside is that if education can't deliver on what its humanistic and Enlightenment legacy promises, we are left wondering precisely what it is for. Besides, that is, the production of what Readings calls "the minimally programmed unit."

Today the university is perceived by many to be in crisis. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. What is clear is that the university is in transformation. What this transformation is, what it means for us, and what it means for the Humanities are questions that are far from clear. Certainly we can see corporate business interests at work, but that is not the only factor effecting change in the university. Indeed, business interests have long been a factor in American universities, though today the effects are perhaps more obvious, pervasive, and far-reaching. What there is some consensus on is that the rhetorical/philosophical grounds upon which the university has been based have been challenged. So, we will look at a variety of contemporary diagnoses of the contemporary university, such as Bill Readings and Stanley Aronowitz, and also including Allen Bloom's trend-setting if right-wing indictment of higher education, The Closing of the American Mind. With Anxious Intellects we will consider the changing role of the intellectual, public and institutional. Gary Olson's new edited collection considers the various ways in which rhetoric and composition can be thought of as intellectual work, a question that in its asking is already fraught with implication regarding the work being done. Toward the end of the course we will focus more specifically on the role and future of English studies, with an emphasis on rhetoric. And, as for the future, we will consider Mark C. Taylor, who offers some pointed remarks about the legacy of critical theory, declaring its insights exhausted as he delves into systems theory to propose a total re-organization of the university in relation to business and society. Victor Vitanza will consider the Whatever University. And there's more still!

One key operative question throughout the course will be: What's left of the Humanities and the Enlightenment in the postmodern university? Since these movements inspired the creation of the modern research university and largely defined the role of the liberal arts within it, it is not so easy to jettison them as archaic relics of the past. Today it is as difficult as ever to argue that rhetoric and composition is more than a service course in skills training for other disciplines, over and against the drive to make education more vocation- and profit-oriented. And yet, at least at its outset, the Humanities were also concerned with a richer conception of what it means to be human. Petrarch genuinely believed that studying the classics (the Greeks and Romans) made one wiser; if we pomo cynics sneer at that sentiment as dangerously naïve, we still leave entirely untouched the liberal arts tradition in which we live and work, a tradition that at some level continues to believe Petrarch's sentiment for us, like a prayer wheel that prays for us (or a laugh track that laughs for us…). That it is difficult to hear this tradition above the din of the demand for job skills and profits does not mean that it doesn't still function to preserve the shape and trajectory of much that we do. At another level, however, a level that seems to disturb many people across the political spectrum, the tradition of the Humanities is being evacuated of any import: pragmatics, professionalism, and market interests have come to dominate higher education to a degree that makes Petrarch and his legacy a vanishing anecdote, a myth that no longer speaks to the contemporary experience.

Assignments:
In-Class Papers: Four one-page papers (legal size, single-spaced), to be read aloud in class on the due date.

Final Paper: This course requires a final summation paper; it asks you to give a recap of the dominant themes of the course, plus your assessment of the future role of the humanities and the university.

Late Work: Papers to be read aloud will not be excused. If you miss the due date, you will be docked a letter grade (unless I excuse your absence beforehand) and required to read your work the following week. All assignments are required to complete the course.

All assignments are required to complete the course.

Assessment:
Your grade will be determined on a 100-point scale. The percentages break down like this:

Papers (4) 17.5% x 4 = 70%
Final Paper 30%

Attendance:
This class is not a lecture course; accordingly, your attendance and participation is crucial not only for you personally, but for everyone in the class. Days on which we share papers are especially crucial as this will serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas and understandings concerning the material. I will expect you not to miss class. However, if a problem does arise that requires your absence, please discuss the matter with me beforehand to make arrangements.

Disability:
If you have a disability that requires special accommodations, please see me privately within the first week of class to arrange such accommodations

Tentative Schedule of Event-Scenes and Schoolyard Squabbles:
Week 1 (8/19): Endtroducing!
Plato, The Apology
Nussbaum, "Socratic Self-Examination"; "Citizens of the World"

Week 2 (8/26): "Oh, the humanity!"
Proctor, Defining the Humanities (aka Education's Great Amnesia)
Petrarch, "Letters" (2)

Week 3 (9/2): Human, all too human… [Labor Day!]
Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy
Vico, excerpts
Atwill, "Rhetoric, Humanism, and the Liberal Arts"
Ruegg, "The Rise of Humanism"

Week 4 (9/9): Paper #1

Week 5 (9/16): The Calm, Cool Calculus of Reason: The Enlightenment
Mendelssohn, "What is Enlightenment?"
Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"; The Conflict of the Faculties (excerpts)
Hamann, "Letter"; "Metacritique"
Reim, "On Enlightenment"
Humboldt, excerpts
Green, "Modern Culture Comes of Age"
Hammerstein, "The Enlightenment"
Richard, "Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment: Conclusion"

Week 6 (9/23): Blinded by the Light: A Modernist Look at Reason and Enlightenment
Heidegger, The Principle of Reason
Sluga, "Heidegger and the Critique of Reason"

Week 7 (9/30): Paper #2

Week 8 (10/7): Enlightenment Three: Coelecanth! [October Break!]
Lanham, "The Q Question"
Derrida, "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils"; "Mochlos"
Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?"
Gray, "Enlightenment's Wake"
Schott, "The Gender of Enlightenment"
Eze, "Hume, Race, and Human Nature"

Week 9 (10/14): Diagnosing the University I
Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
Ashby, "The Future of the 19th Century Idea of the University"

Week 10 (10/21): Paper #3

Week 11 (10/28): Diagnosing the University II
Readings, The University in Ruins
Graham, Birmingham, et al, "A New Way of Doing Business"
Fleming, "The End of Composition Rhetoric"
Simon, "The University: A Place to Think?"

Week 12 (11/4): Diagnosing the University III
Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory
Giroux, "Beyond the Corporate University"
Hubbard, "Democratizing the Academy: The Black Professoriate in the 21st Century"
Ebert (online--parts 1-3) (optional)

Week 13 (11/11): Paper #4

Week 14 (11/18): The Role of the Intellectual?
Michael, Anxious Intellects
Tal, "It's a Beastly Rough Crowd I Run With"
O'Dair, "Stars, Tenure, and the Death of Ambition"
Essays by Berube, Wolfe (online) (optional)

Week 15 (11/25): Composition and the University
Olson, Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work
Crowley, Composition in the University (excerpts)
Miller, "Let's Do the Numbers"

Week 16 (12/2): Where do we go from here?
Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (excerpts)
Derrida, "The Future of the Profession or the University Without Reserve"
Miller, "The Stories That Teach Us"
Vitanza, "Objects and Whatever Beings: The Coming (Educational) Community" (online)
Landow, "Newman and the Idea of an Electronic University"
Grassi, "Why Rhetoric is Philosophy"