The study of rhetoric is traditionally concerned with how messages are crafted to achieve desired effects in audiences. The oldest rhetorical theories were mainly arts of public speech, but rhetoric has also been important as a school subject devoted to eloquence more generally, including arts of written composition. Today, "rhetoric" is probably best known as a term of political abuse; but, in the academy, it survives in a variety of approaches for looking at the suasory function of discourse.

In this course, our primary work will be to trace the development of Native American autobiography, including spiritual autobiographies, collaborative or "as told to" autobiographies, memoirs, and other contemporary personal narratives. Topics of study will include: the concept of authorship, modes of production, questions of authenticity, and the role of the editor and/or translator, in addition to those specific to Native literatures - relationship to place and community, self-determination and sovereignty issues, and preservation of language and culture.

This course is focused on the works of contemporary poets who have revolutionized the epic poem to express socio-political dissent. Through poems, essays, interviews and performance, we'll examine the use of the lyric, fragment, rant and other speech as both formal innovation and interrogations of oppressive structures and systems. Some questions we'll consider are: How might we define and redefine the conventions of the traditional epic? What possible tensions exist between the narrative and the lyric?

A Stay Against Silence. From antiquity to the contemporary epoch, writers have explored the tension between the competing grids of freedom and power. Our human quest for autonomy, self-enlargement and the exercise of free will is often besieged by predatory power. Numerous classical and contemporary texts have dramatized this struggle between subjects who strive to speak their memories and authoritarian figures who essay to suppress and silence them, even to erase their stories.

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