Discusses examples in "Moby Dick" of Melvillean words symptomatic of the significance of Ishmael's rhetorical energy, in order to suggest that Ishmael's language reflects Melville's search for lexical and rhetorical forms that express the democratic impulse. (SRT)

Discusses the lack of communication and the need for a community of scholarship among literary critics and rhetoric theorists. (SRT)

Discusses various theories of literary criticism and recommends that critics take their work seriously. (AEA)

Identifies the ideas of the good that organize the professional lives of English college faculty. Discusses how these ideas should help faculty to constitute their departments, colleagues, and students. Applies insights from Aristotle's "Rhetoric" to departmental discussions. (HB)

Considers how students are represented in institutional discourse and how students are viewed by their teachers. Outlines historical and current examples of the way students are represented. Calls for a closer examination of the relationship between rhetorical representations of students and reality. (HB)

Examines the typical curriculum in an English department and the place of literary and critical theory within it. (SRT)

Argues that graduate schools are overproducing literary scholars and underproducing composition and rhetoric scholars, who carry the increasingly bulk of the work in English departments, and examines, in detail, this split between rhetoric and literary scholars. (SRT)