Richard Graff on Field Study and Rhetoric

Yesterday I attended a talk by Richard Graff*, part of a series of monthly "Rhetoric Parlor" talks given by faculty and graduate students in our department. It's an opportunity for us to find out more about the work our colleagues are doing and, for the presenters, an opportunity to present work in progress for feedback in a supportive environment. Richard's talk was titled "Field Study as Propaedeutic to Scholarship in Rhetoric: A Guided Tour of Greece," and most of it consisted of a laid-back presentation of photographs from his leave last fall, part of which he spent in Greece. He showed us photographs of the agora, the Acropolis, and the Pnyx from several different angles, and he showed an .avi file of a friend of his reading an excerpt of On the Crown on the platform at the Pnyx.

As he spoke, he pointed out the remarkable constraints imposed on the speakers by the space. The Pnyx is, he said, just a rocky hill where thousands of Athenians assembled to deliberate on matters of state: taxes, wars, etc. While anyone with the privileges necessary for citizenship was allowed to speak there, the acoustics of the space were such that the speaker would have been required to have a booming voice and powerful lungs. He suggested, too, that the speaker would have had to be well prepared with confident carriage. Such physical aspects of speaking were sometimes points of critique; he cited an example of someone who was criticized by (I think) Isocrates, who pointed out that the speaker had been trained as an actor and suggested that the speaker's ethos was questionable as a result: Maybe he's playing a part right now! Maybe he's in somebody's pocket. I appreciated hearing him connect the texts to his experience in the physical space. Oh, I should say here too that he's not only studying speech, but other literate practices as well. He showed us some photographs of ostraca and of tablets with inscriptions.

I'm usually one of those people whose hand shoots up as soon as the floor is opened for questions, though I try to wait a few seconds so as to be polite. I shouldn't bother at the Rhetoric Parlors, actually; these people know how I am. :-) So several pairs of eyes turned to me when the Q&A started, and of course I had a question. I asked Richard to speak a little to the title of his presentation. I asked if he was willing to make the claim that all scholars of Classical rhetoric ought to do this kind of field work; in other words, is field work a necessary propadeutic to scholarship in rhetoric? He replied that in his case, for what he's interested in, doing the field work enriched his research. I agree. I expected a smashing presentation from Richard, and it was. I'm not representing his work very well here, but as he was talking about it, it seemed to me that he was doing some exciting multidisciplinary work** combining rhetoric, philosophy, Classics, history, and archeology. I'm not sure exactly what he's going to do with what he learned during this trip, but I know it will be impressive.

* Whoo! That page needs to be updated. Richard also teaches a seminar in Classical rhetorical theory and one in rhetorical stylistics, neither of which are represented. And I think The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition is out now. On a somewhat related note, on that page Richard has one of the most eloquent, thoughtful explanations I've seen for reasons to study rhetoric:

To me, communication is an astonishing achievement. Coming to understand others or the world by means of signs or symbols, words or gestures seems a most improbable feat, and misunderstanding a far more likely outcome. Yet, it is apparent that communication happens all the time. This is to me a source of wonder. Rhetoric provides an especailly satisfying account of communicative processes and possibilities. As a mode of inquiry, rhetoric is expansive in scope, supple enough to be applied in the study of various media and multiple contexts of interaction. As an art, rhetoric is manifest in settings ranging from the professional to the political, personal to public. As a theory, it cannot break with the "real world," being especially sensitive to the manifold contingencies constraining human choice and outcomes. But rhetorical inquiry is practical and critical as well as theoretical. It discovers techniques for the production of discourse and formulates methods of critical analysis. Much of rhetoric is driven by pragmatic and pedagogical impulses. It aims not only to assess how communication is used but also to suggest ways it might be improved. The study and teaching of rhetoric has a long, rich, and valuable history. Any given rhetorical system gives insights into the social, political, and literary culture of its age. But the history of rhetoric also reveals the understandings of past ages on questions that still confront us today. The study of this history can enrich contemporary pedagogy and invigorate contemporary theory.

** I'm working on a post explaining my peeve about "interdisciplinarity" as an abused word. I'll try to post it tomorrow.