BiblioVault - Books by Duffy, John

After Plato

Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

John Duffy

Utah State University Press, 2020

After Plato redefines the relationships of rhetoric for scholars, teachers, and students of rhetoric and writing in the twenty-first century. Featuring essays by some of the most accomplished scholars in the field, the book explores the diversity of ethical perspectives animating contemporary writing studies—including feminist, postmodern, transnational, non-Western, and virtue ethics—and examines the place of ethics in writing classrooms, writing centers, writing across the curriculum programs, prison education classes, and other settings.

When truth is subverted, reason is mocked, racism is promoted, and nationalism takes center stage, teachers and scholars of writing are challenged to articulate the place of rhetorical ethics in the writing classroom and throughout the field more broadly. After Plato demonstrates the integral place of ethics in writing studies and provides a roadmap for future conversations about ethical rhetoric that will play an essential role in the vitality of the field.

Contributors: Fred Antczak, Patrick W. Berry, Vicki Tolar Burton, Rasha Diab, William Duffy, Norbert Elliot, Gesa E. Kirsch, Don J. Kraemer, Paula Mathieu, Robert J. Mislevy, Michael A. Pemberton, James E. Porter, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Xiaoye You, Bo Wang

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From Humors to Medical Science

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN MEDICINE

John Duffy

University of Illinois Press, 1993

      John Duffy's classic history, formerly titled The Healers, has
        been thoroughly revised and updated for this second edition, which includes
        new chapters on women and minorities in medicine and on the challenges
        currently facing the health care field.
      "This remains the only comprehensive history of American medicine.
        The treatment of the emergence of modern medicine and the flowering of
        surgery is especially fresh and well done. As one of the respected scholars
        in our profession, John Duffy has again demonstrated his wide knowledge
        of the subject."
        -- Thomas N. Brunner, author of To the Ends of the Earth: Women's
        Search for Education in Medicine

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History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866

Volume 1

John Duffy

Russell Sage Foundation, 1968

Traces the development of the sanitary and health problems of New York City from earliest Dutch times to the culmination of a nineteenth-century reform movement that produced the Metropolitan Health Act of 1866, the forerunner of the present New York City Department of Health. Professor Duffy shows the city's transition from a clean and healthy colonial settlement to an epidemic-ridden community in the eighteenth century, as the city outgrew its health and sanitation facilities. He describes the slow growth of a demand for adequate health laws in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the establishment of the first permanent health agency in 1866.

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Homilies

Sophronios of Jerusalem

Harvard University Press, 2020

Sophronios, born in Damascus around 560, was a highly educated monk and prolific writer who spent much of his life traveling in the Eastern Roman Empire and promoting the doctrines of the controversial Council of Chalcedon (451). The Homilies—like his poetry, biographies, and miracle accounts—bear eloquent testimony to his tireless struggle on behalf of Orthodoxy and the Christian way of life. The seven sermons collected here were delivered during his short tenure, at his life’s end, as patriarch of Jerusalem (634–638). He saw the Holy City capitulate to the Arab army (638). His Nativity Sermon (634), given while Bethlehem was under siege and his congregation was barred from the annual procession from Jerusalem to the birthplace of Christ, vividly reflects the approach of Islamic forces. Other targets of his venom include pagans, Jews, and despised heretics of all hues. Based on a completely new edition of the Byzantine Greek text, this is the first English translation of the homilies of Sophronios.

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Inventing Ethan Allen

John J. Duffy and H. Nicholas Muller

University Press of New England, 2014

Since 1969, Ethan Allen has been the subject of three biographical studies, all of which indulge in sustaining and revitalizing the image of Allen as a physically imposing Vermont yeoman, a defender of the rights of Americans, an eloquent military hero, and a master of many guises, from rough frontiersman to gentleman philosopher. Seeking the authentic Ethan Allen, the authors of this volume ask: How did that Ethan Allen secure his place in popular culture? As they observe, this spectacular persona leaves little room for a more accurate assessment of Allen as a self-interested land speculator, rebellious mob leader, inexperienced militia officer, and truth-challenged man who would steer Vermont into the British Empire. Drawing extensively from the correspondence in Ethan Allen and his Kin and a wide range of historical, political, and cultural sources, Duffy and Muller analyze the factors that led to Ethan Allen’s two-hundred-year-old status as the most famous figure in Vermont’s past. Placing facts against myths, the authors reveal how Allen acquired and retained his iconic image, how the much-repeated legends composed after his death coincide with his life, why recollections of him are synonymous with the story of Vermont, and why some Vermonters still assign to Allen their own cherished and idealized values.

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The Life of Patriarch Ignatius

Nicetas David

Harvard University Press, 2013

This is the vivid and partisan account of two tremendous ecclesiastical struggles of the ninth century. One was between opposing patriarchs of Constantinople—the learned Photius (858–867, 877–886) and the monk Ignatius (847–858, 867–877)—and gave rise to long periods of schism, intrigue, and scandal in the Greek Orthodox world. The other was between Patriarch Photius and the papacy, which at its low point saw Photius and Nicholas I trade formal condemnations of each other and adversely affected East-West relations for generations afterwards. The author of The Life of Patriarch Ignatius, Nicetas David Paphlagon, was a prolific and versatile writer, but also a fierce conservative in ecclesiastical politics, whose passion and venom show through on every page. As much a frontal attack on Photius as a record of the author’s hero Ignatius, The Life of Patriarch Ignatius offers a fascinating, if biased, look into the complex world of the interplay between competing church factions, the imperial powers, and the papacy in the ninth century. This important historical document is here critically edited and translated into English for the first time. The annotations, maps, and indexes help the reader to place the work in context.

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Literacy, Economy, and Power

Writing and Research after "Literacy in American Lives"

Edited by John Duffy, Julie Nelson Christoph, Eli Goldblatt, Nelson Graff, Rebecca S. Nowacek, Bryan Trabold

Southern Illinois University Press, 2014

Following on the groundbreaking contributions of Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives—a literacy ethnography exploring how ordinary Americans have been affected by changes in literacy, public education, and structures of power—Literacy, Economy, and Power expands Brandt’s vision, exploring the relevance of her theoretical framework as it relates to literacy practices in a variety of current and historical contexts, as well as in literacy’s expanding and global future. Bringing together scholars from rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies, the book offers thirteen engrossing essays that extend and challenge Brandt’s commentary on the dynamics between literacy and power.

The essays cover many topics, including the editor of the first Native American newspaper, the role of a native Hawaiian in bringing literacy to his home islands, the influence of convents and academies on nineteenth-century literacy, and the future of globalized digital literacies. Contributors include Julie Nelson Christoph, Ellen Cushman, Kim Donehower, Anne Ruggles Gere, Eli Goldblatt, Harvey J. Graff, Gail E. Hawisher, Bruce Horner, David A. Jolliffe, Rhea Estelle Lathan, Min-Zhan Lu, Robyn Lyons-Robinson, Carol Mattingly, Beverly J. Moss, Paul Prior, Cynthia L. Selfe, Michael W. Smith, and Morris Young. Literacy, Economy, and Power also features an introduction exploring the scholarly impact of Brandt’s work, written by editors John Duffy, Julie Nelson Christoph, Eli Goldblatt, Nelson Graff, Rebecca Nowacek, and Bryan Trabold. An invaluable tool for literacy studies at the graduate or professional level, Literacy, Economy, and Power provides readers with a wide-ranging view of the work being done in literacy studies today and points to ways researchers might approach the study of literacy in the future.

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Provocations of Virtue

Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

John Duffy

Utah State University Press, 2018

In Provocations of Virtue, John Duffy explores the indispensable role of writing teachers and scholars in counteracting the polarized, venomous “post-truth” character of contemporary public argument. Teachers of writing are uniquely positioned to address the crisis of public discourse because their work in the writing classroom is tied to the teaching of ethical language practices that are known to moral philosophers as “the virtues”—truthfulness, accountability, open-mindedness, generosity, and intellectual courage.

Drawing upon Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the branch of philosophical inquiry known as “virtue ethics,” Provocations of Virtue calls for the reclamation of “rhetorical virtues” as a core function in the writing classroom. Duffy considers what these virtues actually are, how they might be taught, and whether they can prepare students to begin repairing the broken state of public argument. In the discourse of the virtues, teachers and scholars of writing are offered a common language and a shared narrative—a story that speaks to the inherent purpose of the writing class and to what is at stake in teaching writing in the twenty-first century.

This book is a timely and historically significant contribution to the field and will be of major interest to scholars and administrators in writing studies, rhetoric, composition, and linguistics as well as philosophers and those exploring ethics.

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