1999 Triennial Burke Conference

The Society also invites self-nominations for topical seminars engaging the work of Kenneth Burke. The immediate goal of each seminar is to allow a group of participants to explore a specific topic of pivotal common interest in multiple sessions spread throughout the conference; however, the ultimate goal is to enable participants to develop research questions and scholarly agenda that guide further work on the seminar topic. Seminar particpants will prepare and present position papers, although formats may vary among the seminars. Paper and program submittors are also encouraged to participate in the seminar series. In order to self-nominate for seminar inclusion, please send your name, contact information, and a rank order for your preferred three (3) seminars selections to David Cratis Williams, Burke Conference Planner, Department of English, University of Puerto Rico, PO Box 23356, San Juan, PR 00931-3356. Email: davidcratiswilliams@worldnet.att.net Home telephone: 787-722-4667. The number of the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico is 787-764-0000 ext. 2553. Every effort will be made to honor seminar preferences. The deadline for self-nominations has been extended to allow more time for conference participants to register. Space in particular seminars may be limited, so it is important to communicate your preferences to David Cratis Williams as soon as possible. Initial seminar placement will be announced by February 15, after which seminar participants will be contacted by the coordinators of their seminars with information concerning specific procedures for each seminar. Participants who place in a seminar after February 15 will be notified once their participation has been confirmed. Questions concerning each seminar can be directed to the coordinator of that seminar. In indicating seminar preferences, please clearly identify the seminars by both title and coordinator. The seminars and coordinators are as follows:	Self- Nominations for Topical Seminars
1.) Back to Basics: Applying Burkean Thought in the Undergraduate Classroom Seminar Coordinator: Dennis Ciesielski, University of Wisconsin--Platteville Overview: Based on the presumption that scholarship informs pedagogy and pedagogy drives scholarship, this seminar proposes that we introduce Burke’s ideas and theoretical approaches into the undergraduate classroom with an emphasis on general education or core courses. Approaching "entry-level" college thinking from Burke’s rhetorical perspective might open new venues for learning and interdisciplinary collaboration, and compel incoming students to become participants in their education rather than buying into the competitive aspect Burke sees as exclusive and socially counterproductive. Contact Information: Dennis Ciesielski, Department of Humanities, University of Wisconsin – Platteville, 1 University Plaza, Platteville, WI 53818. Email: ciesielski@uwplatt.edu. Office Phone: (608) 342-1908.	Back to Basics: Applying Burkean Thought in the Undergraduate Classroom
2.) Kenneth Burke and American Poetry Seminar Coordinator: Miriam Marty Clark, Auburn University Overview: This seminar explores Burke’s profoundly important and generative relationship to American poets and poetry from the 1920s to the 1990s, from Pound and Williams to Ammons and Nemerov. The seminar comprises three overlapping areas of study: 1) Burke’s poetics, beginning with Counter-Statement, particularly as those are (or can be) addressed to lyric texts; 2) his analytical and critical writings on poets and poetry together with his engagements (through essays, reviews, talks, and letters) of other critical movements, particularly the New Criticism and Deconstruction, which focus significant energies on lyric poetry; 3) and his influence, which is established through friendships with American poets (Williams, Moore, Ransom, Roethke, Nemerov) and associations with critics and theorists (Cowley, Ransom, Tate, Blackmur, Bloom, Donoghue, DeMan) of poetry. The primary purpose of the seminar is to develop a fuller understanding of Burke’s contributions to poetry, poetry criticism, and literary theory in the twentieth century and so to expand our knowledge of his complex contributions to American intellectual life. Contact Information: Miriam Marty Clark, Department of English, 9030 Haley Center, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5203. Email: clarkmm@mail.auburn.edu	Kenneth Burke and American Poetry
3.) Burke and Ethics Seminar Coordinator: Timothy W. Crusius, Southern Methodist University Overview: The purpose of the seminar is to explore the intriguing problem of ethics, after Nietzsche, in the "postmodern condition," and to do this in the context of Burke's career-long preoccupation with the ethical. As we know, for Burke ethics is not simply arbitrary or an example of the will to power, but ontological, rooted especially in the being of language, in the negative and the tendency to be "rotten with perfection." Thus, for him, there is no route "beyond good and evil." But there is also no urge on his part to return to classical ethics, whether "after Aristotle" or "after Kant." So there are many unanswered questions, among them the following we shall address: How should we characterize Burke’s own ethics? How did Burke pose and approach the question? What happened to the Ethics of Motives? Compared to other philosophers of his time, how well did Burke cope with the question of ethics? What can Burke contribute to the postmodern conversation about ethics? Contact Information: Timothy W. Crusius, Department of English, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; office phone: (214) 768-4363; Email: tcrusius@mail.smu.edu	Burke and Ethics
4.) Kenneth Burke and the American Philosophical Tradition Seminar Coordinator: David Hildebrand, University of Texas at Austin Overview: At the present time, Burke's work is rarely invoked by philosophy at all, not even by American philosophers. This is surprising, given the abundance of important parallels between Burke's views and American philosophy, especially pragmatism. Participants in this seminar would (1) investigate points of identification and division between Burke and American philosophical traditions; (2) discuss what it means to categorize Burke as a philosopher, and thus how doing so can transform our understanding of Burke's critical project(s), as well as philosophy's; (3) discuss the practical and ameliorative implications of these works for contemporary American life. Contact Information: David L. Hildebrand, 2300 Enfield Road, Apt. D, Austin, Texas 78703 phone: (512) 469-0628; Email: hilde@uts.cc.utexas.edu	Kenneth Burke and the American Philosophical Tradition
5.) Burke, Phenomenology, and Existentialism: Can They Dance? Seminar Coordinator: Wade Kenny, University of Dayton Overview: Burke's relationship to phenomenology and existentialism is checkered. On the one hand he is at times quite critical of writers such as Heidegger and Sartre; on the other he explicitly employs writers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in developing some of his fundamental ideas, and ironically produces ways of thinking that are very similar to the existentialist arguments that have been put forth in this century by Sartre and Heidegger for example. In this seminar, we will explore some of the key ideas in both existentialism and Burkology with a view toward mergers and divisions. Discussions may revolve around connections with specific scholars, like Levinas, Sartre, Unamuno, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, or around specific issues such as the relationship between Heidegger's argument that things come into being through a dialectic between hiddeness and unhiddeness and Burke's notion of the terministic screen. Contact Information: Wade Kenny, Communication Department, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469-1419; Email: Kenny@riker.stjoe.udayton.edu	Burke, Phenomenology, and Existentialism: Can They Dance?
6.) The Enthymeme as the Body of Proof in Burke’s Rhetoric? Seminar Coordinator: Tilly Warnock, University of Arizona Overview: This seminar builds on Don M. Burks’s insight in "Dramatic Irony, Collaboration, and Kenneth Burke’s Theory of Form" that Burke is "preoccupied" with "what may loosely be called a theory of enthymatic collaboration." We will generate a definition of "enthymeme," from Burke’s two explicit uses of the term, Burks’s article, and works on a suggested reading list, to track the development of "qualitative progression" in Counter-Statement and Burke’s juxtaposition of this term with "syllogistic progression" in "Lexicon Rhetoricae." We will finally assess the gains and losses of the claim that the enthymeme is the body of proof in Burke’s rhetoric. Contact Information: Tilly Warnock, Department of English, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; office phone: (520) 621-3553; fax: (520) 621-7397; Email: warnocks@u.arizona.edu	The Enthymeme as the Body of Proof in Burke’s Rhetoric?
7.) Burke and the Rhetoric of the Seen Seminar Coordinator: Bruce E. Gronbeck, The University of Iowa Overview: Burke's fondness for words about words is legendary, yet it must be remembered that he likewise appreciated visualization and face-to-face performance as dimensions of symbolic action. Yet, Burke left no systematic legacy on the analysis of visual, especially mass-mediated, discourse. This seminar asks its participants to think about specific ways in which Burkean thought, criticism, and/or vocabulary are useful in studying especially electronic--radio, television, film, the digitized world of the Internet--but also other forms (e.g., theatre, demonstration, spectacle) of publicly shared, seen, and performed discourse. There is a purposive ambiguity in this call: ways of studying either "visual discourse" or "public performance" are acceptable, for both are variations on the problem of understanding how The Seen works rhetorically. Participants may work in either or both vocabularies when approaching their position papers. Participants in this seminar will share, not common readings, but common screenings, which will be sent out as soon as seminarians are selected: a shortened version of "Triumph of the Will" (with English subtitles) a 1950s anti-Communist documentary the joint appearance of Bill and Hilary Clinton on "60 Minutes" in January 1992 scenes from the funeral of Princess Diana selected political advertisements Contact Information: Bruce E. Gronbeck, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, N134 OH, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242; phone: (319) 335-4034; messages: (319) 628-4033; fax: (319) 335-2930); Email: bruce-gronbeck@uiowa.edu	Burke and the Rhetoric of the Seen
8.) Burke and the Rhetorical Tradition Seminar Coordinator: Michael Leff, Northwestern University Overview: The prominence of Burke's writings have encouraged, if not forced, efforts to place Burke in relation to the rhetorical tradition. The earliest of these efforts judged Burke in relation to the Aristotelian tradition, either as completely compatible with it (Holland) or as completely subversive to it (W.S. Howell). Burke has now been placed in relation to Ciceronianism, to deconstruction, to medieval allegorical hermeneutics, and to post-modernism. At this point, it seems that a new assessment is needed, taking into account the variety and diversity of perspectives that already have appeared. Is there, perhaps, a Burkean way of understanding how Burke may be interpreted? If so, what would it be and how could we use it productively? This seminar will give special attention to the section entitled "Traditional Principles of Rhetoric" in A Rhetoric of Motives, since this text offers a concrete ground for beginning discussion, but all of Burke's corpus is open for consideration. Some topics that might arise include: the unconscious in Burke and whether it distinguishes his rhetoric from earlier traditions; Burke's notions of substance, ambiguity, perspective, and irony; theory and practice as conceived by Burke; style (tropics) and invention (topics) as Burke understands them in the tradition and in relation to his own project; concepts of agency and the self in Burke and comparision to traditional and post-modern concepts; Burke's view of his own placement in history and the role of eloquence in his "counter-statement" to the prevailing attitude toward language and knowledge. Contact Information: Michael Leff, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-1340; phone: (847) 831-4932; fax (708) 467-1036; e-mail: m-leff@nwu.edu.	Burke and the Rhetorical Tradition
9.) Art, Politics and Social Change: Will the Real K.B. Please Stand Up? Seminar Coordinator: Kathleen Farrell, University of Iowa Overview: Literary and rhetorical scholars have paid little attention to Kenneth Burke's political activities and his struggle to theorize the relationship between aesthetics, rhetoric, and political action. This is surprising given the Greenwich Village milieu of intellectuals and artists. This seminar aims to focus on this aspect of Burke's work and life, taking advantage of the recent work by Jack Selzer and primary historical materials from the Burke archives at Penn State, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the James T. Farrell collection at the University of Pennsylvania, the letters between Malcolm Cowley and Burke, and selected essays from the "Little Magazines" including the Dial, Contact, Seven Arts, the Masses, and the American Mercury. Contact Information: Kathleen Farrell, Department of Communication Studies University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242; phone: (319) 353-2253; email: kathleen-farrell@uiowa.edu Top	Art, Politics and Social Change: Will the Real K.B. Please Stand Up?

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