Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Genre Studies gathers major works that have contributed to the recent rhetorical reconceptualization of genre. A lively and complex field developed over the past 30 years, Rhetorical Genre Studies is central to many current research and teaching agendas. This collection, which is organized both thematically and chronologically, explores genre research across a range of disciplinary interests but with a specific focus on rhetoric and composition. With introductions by the co-editors to frame and extend each section, this volume helps readers understand and contextualize both the foundations of the field and the central themes and insights that have emerged. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on topics related to composition, rhetoric, professional and technical writing, and applied linguistics.

This book is an anthology of landmark essays in rhetorical criticism. In historical usage, a landmark marks a path or a boundary; as a metaphor in social and intellectual history, landmark signifies some act or event that marks a significant achievement or turning point in the progress or decline of human effort. In the history of an academic discipline, the historically established senses of landmark are mixed together, jostling to set out and protect the turfmarkers of academic specialization; aligning footnotes to signify the beacons that have guided thought and, against these "conservative" tendencies, attempting to contribute fresh insights that tempt others along new trails. The editor has chosen essays for this collection that give some sense of the history of rhetorical criticism in this century, especially as it has been practiced in the discipline of speech communication. He also emphasizes materials that may illustrate where the discipline conceives itself to be going -- how it has marked its boundaries; how it has established beacons to invite safety or warn us from the rocks; and how it has sought to preserve a tradition by subjecting it to constant revision and struggle. In the hope of providing some coherence, the scope of this collection is limited to rhetorical criticism as it has been practiced and understood within the discipline of speech communication in North America in this century.

This volume traces the historical evolution of American academic thought concerning public address -- what it is, how it ought to be studied, and what can be learned by engaging rhetorical texts in an analytical fashion. To begin, one must distinguish among three separate but interrelated uses of the term "public address" -- as practice, theory, and criticism. The essays in this volume represent landmarks in the literal sense of that term -- they are marks on the intellectual landscape that indicate where scholars and ideas have passed, and in that passing left a mark for future generations. It is appropriate to revisit the landmarks that have set public address off as a field of study and it allows readers to remember the struggles that have led to the current situation. Most of the authors of the following chapters are deceased, but their ideas live on -- transformed, adapted, modified, rejected, and reborn. The scholarly dialectic continues. What constitutes a study in public address, how best to approach rhetorical texts, which analytical tools are required for the job, how best to balance text with context and what role ought theory to play in the conduct or outcome of critical inquiry -- these questions live on. To answer them at all is to engender debate and that is how it should be if the intellectual vitality of public address is to be maintained. The papers are a prolegomenon to such studies, for they mark where scholars have been and point the way to where they still must go.

Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies gathers significant, oft-cited scholarship about feminism and rhetoric into one convenient volume. Essays examine the formation of the vibrant and growing field of feminist rhetoric; feminist historiographic research methods and methodologies; and women’s distinct sites, genres, and styles of rhetoric. The book’s most innovative and pedagogically useful feature is its presentation of controversies in the form of case studies, each consisting of exchanges between or among scholars about significant questions.

Now in its Second Edition, Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies presents fifteen iconic essays in science studies, rhetorical criticism, and argumentation. Integral to the launch of the Landmark Essays series and renowned for its impact on the then-nascent field of rhetoric of science, this volume returns with a revised introduction and updated contributions to the field, including the work of Leah Ceccarelli, James Wynn, Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher, and Carolyn R. Miller.

This volume's purpose is to provide students and scholars of classical rhetoric with a set of exemplary works in the area of Greek rhetorical theory. Many of the articles included here are not easily accessible and have been selected with the intent of providing graduate and undergraduate students with a useful collection of secondary source materials. This book is also envisioned as a useful text for scholars who will benefit from having these sources more readily available. Scholarship in classical Greek rhetorical theory typically is aimed at one of these two goals: * Historical reconstruction is work that attempts to understand the contributions of past theorists or practitioners. Scholars involved in the historical reconstruction of Greek rhetorical theories attempt to understand the cultural context in which these theories originally appear. * Contemporary appropriation is work that attempts to utilize the insights of past theorists or practitioners in order to inform current theory or criticism. Rather than describe rhetorical theory as it evolved through the contingencies of the past, scholars who attempt the contemporary appropriation of classical texts do so in order to shed insight on rhetorical concerns as they are manifested in today's environment. As can be seen in the following articles, historical reconstruction and contemporary appropriation differ in terms of goals and methods. Because the goal of historical reconstruction is to capture the past -- insofar as possible -- on its own terms, the methods of the historian and, in classical work, the philologist, are appropriate. As a result, many of the papers draw heavily on the original Greek terminology to describe a given theorist's contributions. All Greek words have been transliterated in this edition in order to improve readability. In addition, the meanings of Greek words which are not explicitly discussed include a bracketed translation to make the text more accessible for non-Greek reading audiences.

Alan Gross applies the principles of rhetoric to the interpretation of classical and contemporary scientific texts to show how they persuade both author and audience. This invigorating consideration of the ways in which scientists--from Copernicus to Darwin to Newton to James Watson--establish authority and convince one another and us of the truth they describe may very well lead to a remodeling of our understanding of science and its place in society.

In Writing Genres, Amy J. Devitt examines genre from rhetorical, social, linguistic, professional, and historical perspectives and explores genre's educational uses, making this volume the most comprehensive view of genre theory today. Writing Genres does not limit itself to literary genres or to ideas of genres as formal conventions but additionally provides a theoretical definition of genre as rhetorical, dynamic, and flexible, which allows scholars to examine the role of genres in academic, professional, and social communities. Writing Genres demonstrates how genres function within their communities rhetorically and socially, how they develop out of their contexts historically, how genres relate to other types of norms and standards in language, and how genres nonetheless enable creativity. Devitt also advocates a critical genre pedagogy based on these ideas and provides a rationale for first-year writing classes grounded in teaching antecedent genres.

Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Issues and Methods compiles the essential readings of the vibrant field of rhetoric of science, tracing the growth and core concerns of the field since its development in the 1970s. A companion to Randy Allen Harris’s foundational Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies, this volume includes essays by such luminaries as Carolyn R. Miller, Jeanne Fahnestock, and Alan G. Gross, along with an early prophetic article by Charles Sanders Pierce. Harris’s detailed introduction puts the field into its social and intellectual context, and frames the important contributions of each essay, which range from reimagining classical concepts like rhetorical figures and topical invention to Modal Materialism and the Neomodern hybridization of Actor Network Theory with Genre Studies. Race, revolution, and Daoism come up along the way, and the empirical recalcitrance of the moon. This collection serves as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in science studies, and is an invaluable resource for researchers concerned with science not as a special, autonomous, sacrosanct enterprise, but as a set of value-saturated, profoundly influential rhetorical practices.

Laura Wilder fills a gap in the scholarship on writing in the disciplines and writing across the curriculum with this thorough study of the intersections between scholarly literary criticism and undergraduate writing in introductory literature courses. Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies is the first examination of rhetorical practice in the research and teaching of literary study and a detailed assessment of the ethics and efficacy of explicit instruction in the rhetorical strategies and genre conventions of the discipline. Using rhetorical analysis, ethnographic observation, and individual interviews, Wilder demonstrates how rhetorical conventions play a central, although largely tacit, role in the teaching of literature and the evaluation of student writing. Wilder follows a group of literature majors and details their experiences. Some students received experimental, explicit instruction in the special topoi, while others received more traditional, implicit instruction. Arguing explicit instruction in disciplinary conventions has the potential to help underprepared students, Wilder explores how this kind of instruction may be incorporated into literature courses without being overly reductive. Taking into consideration student perspectives, Wilder makes a bold case for expanding the focus of research in writing in the disciplines and writing across the curriculum in order to grasp the full complexity of disciplinary discourse.