[ecrea] Rhetoric as Equipment for Living. Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education. (Extended deadline)

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Rhetoric as Equipment for Living. Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education.


Ghent University

22nd to 25th May 2013

Ghent, Belgium


Enquiries: (kbconference /at/ ugent.be)<mailto:(kbconference /at/ ugent.be)>

Web address: http://www.cultureeducation.ugent.be/kennethburke

Extended deadline (!) for proposal submissions: February 1st 2013


Confirmed keynote speakers


Barry Brummett (University of Texas at Austin - USA)

Steven Mailloux (Loyola Marymount University, Irvine - USA)

Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University - UK)


Theme


The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed a number of 
different but related turns in the humanities and social sciences: 
linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ ethnographic, interpretive, 
semiotic, narrative... All these turns recognise the importance of signs 
and symbols in our interpretations of reality and more specifically the 
cultural construction of meaning through both language and narrative. 
The aim of this conference is to introduce rhetoric as a major term for 
synthesizing all the above-mentioned turns by exploring how rhetoric can 
make us self-aware about language and culture. We will specifically 
focus on ?new rhetoric?, a body of work that sets rhetoric free from its 
confinement within the traditional fields of education, politics and 
literature, not by abandoning these fields but by refiguring them.


Guiding source of inspiration in all this will be the international 
legacy of Kenneth Burke, one of the founders of this new rhetoric 
tradition together with scholars such as Wayne Booth, Richard McKeon, 
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. As a rhetorician and literary 
critic interested in how we use symbols, Burke described the human being 
as the symbol-making, symbol-using and symbol-misusing animal. He argued 
that our interpretations, perceptions, judgements and attitudes are all 
influenced and ?deflected? by the symbols that we make, use and misuse, 
and that we are at the same time used by these symbols. This implies 
that we can approach the world either symbol-wise or symbol-foolish. 
This conference wants to explore how rhetorical concepts can be used as 
tools - equipment - to make students, teachers, scholars and citizens 
symbol-wise: to understand the way linguistic, cultural, narrative 
symbols work, and to develop critical engagement with, as well as on 
behalf of, those symbols. It furthermore wants to explore if and how 
rhetoric can still be relevant in a world that is becoming ever more 
complex and paradoxical by political, economic and cultural differences 
on a global scale.


In what will be the first major conference devoted to Kenneth Burke 
outside the United States, we aspire to introduce the ideas of this 
seminal thinker to disciplines that might benefit from them. We 
therefore welcome both paper abstracts as panel proposals that broadly 
explore the topic of Rhetoric as Equipment for Living from the 
perspective of education, citizenship, literature, literacy, technology, 
games, (new) media and from the perspective of disciplines such as 
pedagogy, social work, psychology, cultural studies, management and 
communication. The committee especially welcomes contributions that 
examine the possible use of rhetoric for education or educators, as well 
as contributions that explore affinities between Burke and European 
scholars or scholarship, or that apply new rhetoric to political, 
economic or social issues.


Kenneth Burke Society


The conference is organized in close cooperation with the Kenneth Burke 
Society who will delegate a number of prominent US Burke scholars and 
rhetoricians: David Blakesley (Clemson University); Michael Feehan 
(Arkansas Legislative Council); Ann George (Texas Christian University); 
Mark Huglen (University of Minnesota); Clarke Rountree (University of 
Alabama in Huntsville); Herbert W. Simons (Temple University); Richard 
Thames (Duquesne University); Elizabeth Weiser (The Ohio State 
University); Robert Wess (Oregon State University); David Cratis 
Williams (Florida Atlantic University); James P. Zappen (Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute). From the International Rhetoric Culture Project 
participation is confirmed by Ivo Strecker (Johannes 
Gutenberg-University Mainz).


Details:

Conference dates: May 22-25th 2013

Deadline for submissions - February 1st 2013

Decision about submissions: by February 15th 2013

Registration starts: February 15th 2013



All the best,

__________________________________________

Geert Vandermeersche

PhD Researcher/Assistent, Department of Educational Studies

Faculty of Psychology en Educational Sciences

Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent (Belgium)

Tel: +32 (0)9 264 62 57

Website: http://www.cultureeducation.ugent.be/




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