In nineteen essays illustrating its many aspects, this book offers an argument for what it takes to construct a complete rhetorical education. The editors take an approach that is pragmatic and pluralistic, based as it is on the assumptions that a rhetorical education is not limited to teaching freshman composition (or any specific writing course) and that the contexts in which such an education occurs are not limited to classrooms. This thought-provoking volume stresses that while a rhetorical education results in the growth of writing skills, its larger goal is to foster critical thinking.

Comprised of a study spanning over five years, this text looks at four engineering co-op students as they write at work. Since the contributors have a foot in both worlds -- work and school -- the book should appeal to people who are interested in how students learn to write as well as people who are interested in what writing at work is like. Primarily concerned with whether engineers see their writing as rhetorical or persuasive, the study attempts to describe the students' changing understanding of what it is they do when they write. Two features of engineering practice that have particular impact on the extent to which engineers recognize persuasion are identified: * a reverence for data, and * the hierarchical structure of the organizations in which engineering is most commonly done. Both of these features discourage an open recognition of persuasion. Finally, the study shows that the four co-op students learned most of what they knew about writing at work by engaging in situated practice in the workplace, rather than by attending formal classes.

The editors of WRITING IN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES provide a thoughtful, carefully constructed collection that addresses the vital roles rhetoric and writing play as knowledge-making practices in diverse knowledge-intensive settings. The essays in this book examine the multiple, subtle, yet consequential ways in which writing is epistemic, articulating the central role of writing in creating, shaping, sharing, and contesting knowledge in a range of human activities in workplaces, civic settings, and higher education.

In The Realms of Rhetoric, contributors from a wide range of disciplines explore the challenges and opportunities faced in building a curricular space in the academy for rhetoric. Although rhetoric education has its roots in ancient times, the modern era has seen it fragmented into composition and public speaking, obscuring concepts, theories, and skills. Petraglia and Bahri consider the prospects for rhetoric education outside of narrow disciplinary constraints and, together with leading scholars, examine opportunities that can propel and revitalize rhetoric education at the beginning of the millennium.

The Writing & Rhetoric series method employs fluent reading, careful listening, models for imitation, and progressive steps. It assumes that students learn the best by reading excellent, whole-story examples of litereature and by growing their skills through imitatiion. Each excercise is intended to impart a skill (or tool) that can be employed in all kids of writing and speaking. The excercises are arranged from simple to more complex. What's more, the exercises are cumulative, meaning that later exercises incorporate the skills acquired preceding exercises. This series is a step-by-step apprenticeship in the art of writing and rhetoric. Fable, the first book in the Writing & Rhetoric series, teaches students the practice of close reading and comprehension, summarizing a story aloud and in writing, and amplification of a story through description and dialogue. Students learn how to identify different kinds of stories; determine the beginning, middle, and end of stories; recognize point of view; and see analogous situations, among other essential tools. The Writing & Rhetoric series recovers a proven method of teaching writing, using fables to teach beginning writers the craft of writing well.

"This study incorporates life history interviews along with empirical research to allow the voices of five McNair scholars to be heard. Rich details of attaining "a rhetorical education" through, around, and despite issues of being classed and gendered individuals ring loud and clear through the two collage essays included in this research (included to bring those voices to the surface). Then, these collage essays are embedded in more traditional research methods--a literature review and a detailed methodology. By combining these three forms of research, this study shows that allowing the personal to surface gives the field of Rhet/Comp a much richer, more detailed picture of what a rhetorical education is--with respect to class and gender"--Abstract.

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.