Invention, out of the five canons of rhetoric, is to me the most difficult to teach. All of our materials are designed to, in Paul Elbow’s brilliant phrasing, help students play the “doubting game” – finding what’s wrong with the source, the source’s source, the strength of the argument, or the internal connection between the…

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Attention and the Visual in the Classroom

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When I was a graduate student in speech communication rhetoric, we never read any composition rhetoric scholars. I would find people like Steven Mailloux and Jan Swearingen and others back in those days, and I was told that the trouble with such work is that compositionists focus too much on teaching, not the larger picture.…

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Thoughts on Dank Brandon’s talk last night

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What I listened to in January. Last Weeks Tunes I thought I’d start adding my music listening data to the posts to give a bit of context to what’s surrounding me when I’m working. And I have been writing a ton, reading a ton, and making curriculum a ton. It might have been a good…

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Thinking about how Little Thinking Goes into Teaching in Higher Ed

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The utterance and its relation to belief

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A few surprises already have hit me in 2023. One is that the government may not be that incompetent. I sent in my Passport renewal (it expires in March) on December 10th, roughly. I am pretty sure I remember the date because I had a couple of other things to drop in the mail that…

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Hey there audience, hope you are gearing up for a Merry Christmas or happy holiday whatever it is you are into celebrating. I’m deep in reflection on teaching as I often am this time of year so haven’t been publishing much here. But I hope to have some starting points soon. The biggest issue on…

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The mass tournament’s impact on debate’s potential

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