Examines the history of the filibuster, particularly the ways in which the discourse surrounding attempts to eliminate the filibuster exemplify certain fundamental contradictions in American political mythology. Concludes that popular democracy and the American form of republican government are as contradictory as they are collaborative. Sees the…

The double entry journal, first suggested by Ann Berthoff in "Forming/thinking/writing," offers a way to break out of the one-way discourse and single-voiced thinking that predominates in traditional rhetoric and academic writing. Typically, double-entry journals are set up so that students quote from a source in the left-hand margin and…

A collaborative faculty project was something of a failure for one instructor. About a year ago, the instructor invited everyone in the department to meet in her office every third week to talk about teaching literature and composition. The immediate concern was the use of writing in three general education literature courses that had been…

In the broadest sense, rhetoric and rhetorical studies are primarily concerned with using language in context and, thus, must focus on the collaborative, negotiated dynamics of discourse and discourse production. These broad principles provided the basis for the "Lyceum Project" (named for the public forum first developed by the Greek…

This paper contends that rhetoric is a force for social change. It also contends that the study of persuasive discourse--how it works, what gives it force--is rhetoric. Pointing out that in the past "persuasive discourse" has meant public discourse of various kinds but that nowadays scholars usually expand the category to include…