Rhetoric at the University of Chicago

“James P. Beasley provides a very close look at the University of Chicago’s famed stable of rhetoric scholars in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: Richard McKeon, Richard Weaver, Wayne Booth, and, from time to time, Kenneth Burke, all of them engaged in reviving or reinventing rhetoric for the modern age. Beasley’s careful archival research has resulted in valuable new perspectives on a major center of rhetorical thinking and practice. This book is an important contribution to our knowledge of a key moment in American higher education.” —John C. Brereton, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Author of The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925: A Documentary History
“As a Chicago undergraduate schooled in Richard McKeon’s Ideas and Methods program in the late 1960s and doctoral student inspired by Norman Maclean and supervised by Wayne Booth in the early 1970s, I was repeatedly enlightened by James P. Beasley’s account of what was at stake in the debates that shaped my mentors and my education. Imagining myself as something of a black sheep leaving neo-Aristotelian rhetoric and poetics for Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogics, I was reminded by this book how much I owe to the Chicago school and how much I still belong to the flock. Beasley shows that the personal and intellectual differences articulated in those debates remain consequential for the field of rhetoric and composition that they helped to inaugurate.” —Don Bialostosky, Professor in Composition: Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh and Author of Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality
“In Rhetoric at the University of Chicago, James P. Beasley adopts an archival lens to investigate the contributions of foundational twentieth-century rhetoricians, including Richard McKeon, Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, and Wayne Booth. This book connects the research and publication of these rhetors’ works to a specific place and cultural moments, modelling novel ways to investigate both the circulation of texts and collation of primary documents. The author illustrates ways to integrate researcher positionality in archival studies through a close reading and spatial analysis of six influential publications integrated with his own experiences of location and memories of Chicago, dating to his early childhood. Demonstrating how local circumstances can give rise to globally influential scholarship, Rhetoric at the University of Chicago will appeal to readers interested in archival research methods, spatial rhetorics, University of Chicago history, twentieth-century rhetoric, and publishing histories.” —Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Professor and Chair of English Department at Georgia State University and Author of Primary Research and Writing:People, Places, and Spaces
“Anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century American rhetoric will find much to appreciate in this critically valuable book. Drawing on primary texts, conference talks, committee minutes, course notes, and personal letters in the archives at the University of Chicago, James P. Beasley skillfully traces diaphanous theoretical strands that were invented and woven into landmark articles on rhetoric. In so doing, he reveals the complicated relationships among University of Chicago faculty—rhetoricians Richard McKeon, Kenneth Burke, Henry Sams, F.C. Ward, R. S. Crane, Richard Weaver, Wayne Booth—and the circulation of their disparate ideas about rhetoric mid-century. Beasley’s book belongs on the shelf of everyone serious about the study of rhetoric.” —Maureen Daly Goggin, Professor of English at Arizona State University and Author of Authoring a Discipline: Scholarly Journals and the Post-World War II Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition
“Wayne Booth, Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, and Richard Weaver loom so large in the twentieth-century rhetorical canon that any engagement with their work often simply reproduces their larger-than-life status. James P. Beasley corrects this view by placing all four in the specific institutional context they shared—the University of Chicago. Taking his cue from James Berlin’s observation that classical rhetoric was introduced into the writing classroom during mid-century at the University of Chicago, Beasley digs deep into the university archives to reveal a history in which the specific contributions made to teaching writing by Booth, Burke, and Weaver emerge out of the context of their day-to-day encounters in committee meetings where competing positions were debated and developed. Rhetoric at the University of Chicago ably demonstrates the value of archival research by documenting the evolution of rhetorical thinking.” —Richard Marback, Professor of English at Wayne State University and Author of Plato's Dream of Sophistry