Rhetorical Memory @ UMassAmherst

The graduate program in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst offers the following course on rhetorical memory. The course description provides a good overview of the history of memory within classical and contemporary scholarship:

The Rhetorical Art of Memory

"Memory, one of the five canons of rhetoric, was once heralded as the custodian of *all* the parts of rhetoric. In the last century, however, modernists reduced memory to mimetic recall and postmodernists treated authorized memory with suspicion. At the same time, memory has experienced a resurgence in rhetorical theory, minority discourse and literatures, and cultural research. This course examines rhetorical memory by grounding the concept in classical, medieval, and modern western rhetorical traditions (Eric Havelock, Francis Yates, Mary Carruthers; considering memory’s demise and consequent need in composition theory and pedagogy (John Frederick Reynolds, Sharon Crowley, Kathleen Welch); and exploring memorial narrative and historiography as vehicles for critical and creative social praxis (Toni Morrison, Victor Villanueva, Andrea Lunsford)."

My dissertation will certainly address the use of memory in minority discourse as well as in minority literatures. I don't think that the "resurgence" in rhetorical theory with regard to memory has been that strong or even "memorable". I will keep digging as to who pronounces this resurgence and how (most likely Villanueva).

Hasta la proxima...