The University of Southern California’s 125th Anniversary celebrated the long-standing tradition of rhetorical study at USC by hosting a reception for the International Society for the History of Rhetoric Thursday, July 14, ASC, 6:30 pm. Students and faculty were invited to meet with 300 scholars from the world over who came to USC this summer to discuss how the many theories of rhetoric over the centuries have shaped global culture, and the studies of this tradition are creating new understandings of influence and communication.

Three distinguished scholars who have provided leadership at USC, and for their respective disciplines, were honored at a July 14 reception during the 15th biennial Congress of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric.

Walter R. Fisher is a USC Annenberg Professor Emeritus and former head of the Annenberg School of Communication. As contributor and later editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, he initiated a rhetorical movement, "Toward a Logic of Good Reasons." In 1984 he contextualized the concept as the narrative paradigm with "Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action" (1987,1989). He went on to generate research programs in the analysis of the rhetorical constitution of community with "Narration, Reason, and Community" (1992) and the rhetoric of science in "Narration, Knowledge and the Possibility of Wisdom" (1995). Professor Fisher is currently at work on the relation between rhetoric and ethics.

W. Ross Winterowd is the Bruce R. McElderry Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California. He founded the doctoral program at USC in Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature. From his early education at universities in Nevada and Utah, to his early teaching at universities in Kansas and Montana, he sought ways to understand how readers read, how writers write, and how texts convey meaning. His books include: The English Department: an Institutional and Personal History (1998), The Rhetoric of the "Other" Literature (1990), The Culture and Politics of Literacy (1989), The Contemporary Writer (3rd, 1989), Composition/Rhetoric: a Synthesis (1986), Rhetoric and Writing (1965), and most recently, Searching for Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey (2004), along with numerous articles in many scholarly journals.

Edward Finegan is professor of linguistics and law at the University of Southern California. He is author of Language: Its Structure and Use, 4th ed. (2004) and Attitudes toward English Usage (1980) and co-editor of Language in the USA (2004) and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register (1994). He has written extensively on register and style variation in English and contributed chapters on grammar and usage in Britain and America to the Cambridge History of the English Language. His interests range across usage, attitudes toward language, and style variation; he also serves as an expert consultant in forensic linguistics. USC has honored him with its Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he has twice received the College of Letters, Arts and Science’s highest honor, the Albert S. Raubenheimer Distinguished Faculty Award.

RHETORIC AT USC, A SHORT HISTORY: The first student organization chartered with the university’s founding in 1880 was the debating squad, and students were soon able to earn credit in public speaking, elocution. In 1895 a College of Oratory was founded and hired the University’s first female professor. This College became the School of Speech in 1921, offering the first graduate degrees in speech and rhetoric in the Western United States, awarding its first PhD in 1935. Rhetoric was placed within USC’s College of Letters and expanded to a Department of Communication Arts and Sciences. In 1972, the Rhetoric, Language and Literature Program was formed within English to study the ways that rhetoric, contemporary linguistics, and traditional literature inform one another. USC Departments of English, Communication, and Linguistics shaped a tradition of prolific doctoral studies in history of rhetoric, composition theory, and literary criticism.

RHETORICAL INQUIRY AT PRESENT: Lawrence D. Green studies Renaissance and earlier continental Greek and Latin rhetorics, is the current president of ISHR, and the convener of the Congress at USC. Annenberg faculty include: Walter Fisher, emeritus; Randall A. Lake in rhetorical theory and studies in public address; Thomas A. Hollihan in political communication and studies of the public sphere; Stephen D. O'Leary in religious and ethical communication; G. Thomas Goodnight in criticism, rhetoric of science, and political economy; Patti Riley in globalization and public argument, and Sandy E. Green of the Marshall School of Business in corporate governance and asset bubbles. Hayward Alker (IR) and Ed Finengan lead a group meeting on rhetoric, discourse analysis and international relations, and in Classics Thomas Habinek has just published Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory, and Claudia Moatti, Clifford Ando, and Vincent Farenga inquire into aspects of classical rhetorics and culture.

For more about the Congress, visit http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/ishr2005/.