IllinoisStateUniversity
English and History Departments
Rhetoric and the Historical Imagination
English 389.72; History 389.72
Spring 1996
Tuesdays, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Schroeder Hall 317
Anne Rosenthal
Stevenson 323-F
438-3740

/ Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
Schroeder 332-C
438-8580 or 438-5641

Required Texts:

  • Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originsand Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, 1991.
  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and theAmerican Historical Profession. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,1988.
  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: AnIntroduction. New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
  • Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and SocialistStrategy.London: Verso, 1985.
  • Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
  • Course Packet, Rhetoric and the Historical Imagination (markedby *): packet is organized by weekly reading assignments; packetpagination is in bold.

Recommended Text:

  • Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse onLanguage (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).

Reading and Discussion Schedule

Week 1: History and Rhetorics of Inquiry
Tuesday, Jan. 16

Week 2: Rhetoric and History
Tuesday, Jan. 23

  • *Hayden White, "Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination,"in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, (Baltimore:John Hopkins University Press, 1985), 101-120. 1-11.
  • *Allan Megill and Donald N. McCloskey, "The Rhetoric of History," inThe Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarshipand Public Affairs, ed. by John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and DonaldMcCloskey. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 221-238.12-21.
  • *George L. Dillon, "Dialogues with the Dead: The Rhetorics ofHistory," Contending Rhetorics: Writing in Academic Disciplines(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 113-125. 22-28.
  • *James A. Berlin, Rhetoric and Reality (Carbondale: SouthernIllinois University Press, 1987), 1-31. 29-45.

Weeks 3: Perspectives on Objectivity
Tuesday, Jan. 30

  • *Allan Megill, "Introduction: Four Senses of Objectivity," inRethinking Objectivity, ed. Allan Megill (Durham: Duke UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 1-20. 46-56.
  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and theAmerican Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1988), 1-205.

Week 4: Objectivity and Disciplining History
Tuesday, February 6

  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and theAmerican Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1988),206-411.

Week 5: Objectivity in Crisis
Tuesday, Feb. 13

  • Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and theAmerican Historical Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1988),415-629.
  • *Allan Megill, "Fragmentation and the Future of Historiography,"American Historical Review 96: 3 (June 1991), 693-698.57-62.

Week 6: Nation and Narration
Tuesday, Feb. 20

  • Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originsand Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, 1991.
  • *Homi Bhabha, "Dissemination: time, narrative, and the margins of themodern nation," in Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1991),291-322. 63-79.

Week 7: Narrativity
Tuesday, Feb. 27

  • *Allan Megill, "Recounting the Past: Description, Explanation, andNarrative in Historiography." The American Historical Review 94.3(1989): 627-653. 80-93.
  • *Hayden White, "Introduction: The Poetics of History," inMetahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe.(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), 1-42. 94-135.
  • *Critical Art Ensemble, "Fragments on the Problem of Time," in TheElectronic Disturbance (Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia, 1994),111-125. 136-143

Week 8: Conference Preview
Tuesday, March 05
Proposal and Working Bibliography Due

Week 9: Spring Break!

Week 10: Engendering History
Tuesday, March 19

  • *Judith Butler, "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of'Postmodernism,'" in Feminist Contentions (New York: Routledge, 1995),35-57. Also in Feminists Theorize the Political. ed. Judith Butler andJoan W. Scott. (New York: Routledge, 1992). 144-156.
  • *Teresa Ebert. "The 'Difference' of Postmodern Feminism." CollegeEnglish 53.8 (1991): 886-904. 157-175.
  • *Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, "Introduction: Transnational=46eminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity," in ScatteredHegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, ed.Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1994), 1-33. (not in packet; more information later).
  • *Rosemary Hennessey. "Women's Lives/Feminist Knowledge: FeministStandpoint as Ideology Critique." Hypatia 8.1 (1990): 17-23.176-186.
  • *Joan Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," inComing to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics, ed. Elizabeth Weed.(New York: Routledge, 1989), 81-100. Also in Gender and the Politics ofHistory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).187-197.

Week 11: Time and History
Tuesday, March 26

  • *N. J. Dawood, trans., "The Historic Fart," in Tales from Thousandand One Nights (New York: Penguin, 1973). 163-164. 198
  • *Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, "The Errors of ClassicalEconomics: Outline of a Concept of Historical Time" in ReadingCapital (London: Verso, 1986). 91-118. 199-213.
  • *Fernand Braudel, "History and the Social Sciences: The LongueDur=E9ée," in On History, trans. by Sarah Mathews (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1980). 25-54. 214-230.

Week 12: Historical Time and Periodization
Tuesday, April 2

  • *Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse onLanguage (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 3-17; 21-30.231-244.
  • Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: AnIntroduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 3-159.

Week 13: Hegemony and Rhetorical Strategies
Tuesday, April 9

  • Ernesto Laclau, "The Controversy over Materialism," in Rethinking Marx, ed. Sakari H=E4nninen and Leena Pald=E1n (New York: Argument-Sonderband, 1984), 39-43. 245-247.
  • Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985), 47-148.
  • Week 14: Memory and Cultural Amnesia
  • Tuesday, April 16
  • *Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), xi-85. 248-289.
  • *Joan Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," in Questions of Evidence, 363-387. 290-302.
  • *Richard Terdiman, "Historicizing Memory," Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3-32. 303-318.

Week 15: Conference Preparation
Tuesday, April 23

Rhetoric and the Historical Imagination, 7th Biannual Conference
Saturday, April 27

Week 16: Re-Orient-ation
Tuesday, April 30

  • Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 1-1=10.
    Writing Portfolio Due