Call for Papers
“ Thinking Through Rhetoric: A Symposium on Rhetoric, Cognition, and Culture”
Human cognition and human culture, in their rich diversity and stunning complexity, are now the focus points for scholars representing a broad range of disciplines from neuroscience and evolutionary biology to rhetoric and literary studies. Historically, various cultural and/or scholarly conceptions of cognition – how the human minds come to know and understand – have had profound influence on rhetorical theory, the teaching of rhetoric, and rhetorical practice. Indeed, every practical or pedagogical rhetorical program has relied upon implicit or explicit notions of cognition, or what might be called "cultures of cognition." Furthermore, the ups and downs of the art of rhetoric's fortune have been more than once tied to theories of cognition, as in the oft-cited disrepute into which rhetoric fell in the Enlightenment due in part to Cartesian theories of cognition. Rhetoric's history, therefore, is closely related to the history of conceptions of cognition, and conceptions of cognition are closely related to culture. Today, both the science of cognition and the study of rhetoric represent dynamic intellectual fields, each with rich histories. This symposium considers these histories, as well as the present state of studies in these areas and their overlap.
Conference Keynote Speaker
Thomas Habinek
University of Southern California
