Andrew Black

Biography

Mikhail Bakhtin has written, "One's own discourse and one's own voice, although born of another or dynamically stimulated by another, will sooner or later begin to liberate themselves from the authority of the other's discourse." The classroom, then, should be a space where students study the discourse of others in order to liberate themselves, to discover their interpretive powers and their own unique voices. More than anything else, I want my students to develop their "ethos" as writers and readers, and to realize their own agency as they participate in a tradition of readers and rhetors.

Research Interest

Critical Theory History of Rhetorical Theory Long 18th-Century Literature, Philosophy, Religion and Rhetoric