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3 books match the query 'Miller, Thomas P.'
Rescuing the Subject, 2nd Edition
A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the WriterSusan Miller. Foreword by Thomas P. Miller
Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
When it was first published in 1989, Susan Miller’s Rescuing the Subject: A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the Writer established a landmark pedagogical approach to composition based on the importance of the writer and the act of writing in the history of rhetoric. Widely used as an introduction to rhetoric and composition theory for graduate students, the volume was the first winner of the W. Ross Winterowd Award from JAC and is still one of the most frequently cited books in the field.
This first paperback edition includes a new introductory chapter in which Miller addresses changes in the field since the first edition, outlines new research, and surveys positions she no longer supports. A new foreword by Thomas P. Miller assesses the proven impact of Rescuing the Subject on the field of rhetoric and composition.
Situating modern composition theory in the historical context of rhetoric, Miller notes that throughout the eighteenth century, rhetoric referred to oral, not written, discourse. By contrast, her history of rhetoric contends oral and written discourse were related from the beginning. Taking a thematic rather than chronological approach, she shows how actual acts of writing comment on both rhetoric and composition.
Miller also asserts that contemporary composition study is the necessary cultural outcome of changing conditions for producing discourse, describing the history of rhetoric as the gradual and unstable relocation of discourse in conventions that only written language can create. She maintains teachers and historians of rhetoric must recognize that the contemporary writing they analyze and teach demands their attention to a “textual rhetoric” that allows theorizing the writer as always symbolically a student of situated meanings.
Rhetorical Education In America
Cheryl Jean Glenn
University of Alabama Press, 2009
A timely collection of essays by prominent scholars in the field—on the past, present, and future of rhetoric instruction.
From Isocrates and Aristotle to the present, rhetorical education has consistently been regarded as the linchpin of a participatory democracy, a tool to foster civic action and social responsibility. Yet, questions of who should receive rhetorical education, in what form, and for what purpose, continue to vex teachers and scholars.
The essays in this volume converge to explore the purposes, problems, and possibilities of rhetorical education in America on both the undergraduate and graduate levels and inside and outside the academy. William Denman examines the ancient model of the "citizen-orator" and its value to democratic life. Thomas Miller argues that English departments have embraced a literary-research paradigm and sacrificed the teaching of rhetorical skills for public participation. Susan Kates explores how rhetoric is taught at nontraditional institutions, such as Berea College in Kentucky, where Appalachian dialect is espoused. Nan Johnson looks outside the academy at the parlor movement among women in antebellum America. Michael Halloran examines the rhetorical education provided by historical landmarks, where visitors are encouraged to share a common public discourse. Laura Gurak presents the challenges posed to traditional notions of literacy by the computer, the promises and dangers of internet technology, and the necessity of a critical cyber-literacy for future rhetorical curricula.
Collectively, the essays coalesce around timely political and cross-disciplinary issues. Rhetorical Education in America serves to orient scholars and teachers in rhetoric, regardless of their disciplinary home, and help to set an agenda for future classroom practice and curriculum design.
The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon
Edited by Thomas P. Miller
Southern Illinois University Press, 1990