RHETORICS OF CRAFT

Contact Prof. Krista Kennedy

CCR 711 | FALL 13

Email: krista01@syr.edu (Preferred. With rare exceptions, I respond to all emails within 48 business hours.) IM: drkristakennedy on gTalk (If you see me online, youre welcome to ping me. After 5 p.m. and on weekends, I may or may not respond.) Office Hours: Tues/Thus 2-3 Office: HBC 228 Course Description Increasingly, people with little formal craft training are practicing the arts of knitting, weaving, canning, brewing, or woodworking. This trend has led to robust cultural conversations concerning the value and ethics of craftwork. We will explore traditional and current aspects of craftwork with an eye toward applications they may have for the study of rhetoric and composition, which has historically been understood as itself a craft. Central questions include: How has the discipline traditionally taken up issues related to craft, particularly through conceptualizations of techne? What are the implications of a body of knowledge or skill set being categorized as a craft? What are the ways in which this specialized knowledge has been attained and transmitted? How has it been valued? What are the implications of the skilled, laboring body being classified as a craftsperson? How might the field of rhetoric and composition take up theoretical and practical issues related to craft-as-making?

Meeting Spaces, Physical and Digital HBC 020, which needs no introduction, is our default meeting space. Our course website is located at http://www.kristakennedy.net/CCR711F13/ Texts Required: (Prices listed are via Amazon. You can easily locate used or e-books that are significantly cheaper.) Anderson, Chris. Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Crown Business, 2012. $17.78 Latour, Bruno. Pandoras Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. $25.75.* Pender, Kelly. Techne, from Neoclassicism to Postmodernism. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2011. $25.65. Pye, David. The Nature and Art of Workmanship. London: The Herbert Press, 1995. $20.68. Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. $10.70. Smith, Pamela. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. $38.00

*come to class before purchasing. You should also budget funds toward materials for a skill-building project that you will undertake. Lets estimate $50, but you may find that you need less or more depending on the nature of what you elect to do. You Will Also Need A blog, hosted via whatever means you prefer. Well talk more about this in class. Major Assignments Blogging and Mapping (15%): You will consider and discuss the session topics on our course blog. This is an open-ended assignment: you may focus on any aspect of the weeks readings that interests you, bores you, disturbs you, or sends you looking for more stuff. It should conclude with at least three potential questions for discussion. There are many ways to succeed in this assignment, but your response should comprise more than just notes. In the best of all worlds, these responses will result in both digital and classroom conversations. Blog posts are due each week by midnight on Monday and Wednesday, depending on which day you are assigned to. We will also collaboratively map terms and aspects as we work through the readings. This work will be hosted in a centralized space accessible through our course site.

CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft

Class Facilitation (15%): You will facilitate our opening discussion three times during the semester by providing an overview of 1-2 of the texts assigned for that session. If you choose a debate between scholars, youll be responsible for facilitating the entire exchange. If you choose a book-length work, then youll be expected to handle the book as a whole. Your facilitation, which should be approximately 10 minutes and not longer, should provide us with: information about the author a quick summary of the text(s) identification of the central argument/concerns of the text 2-3 discussion questions

You should prepare some form of visual aid for your discussion; this might be a handout, a blog post, or some form of text that we can view in projection. Midterm Project (30%): Throughout the first half of the semester, you will undertake hands-on study of a craft skillset of your choosing. Your work on this project will involve learning and taking auto-ethnographic notes on your progress, as well as research into pragmatic and theoretical aspects of the craft that you are working on. Field notes should be posted to your blog weekly. The end result will be an essay that incorporates situated experiential knowledge within a well-researched theoretical framework that is drawn from course readings as well as your own reading. Final(40%): Over the course of the term, you will develop an extended research project focused on an issue related to the course topic. Your final product may be a typical seminar paper, or you may elect for it to take another form. For instance, you might develop a multimodal exploration of your topic in just about any way that you choose - a database; an interactive timeline and meta-commentary; or some other web-based scholarly resource. Your emphasis in this project should lean toward research rather than pedagogy. I am open to the use of a wide range of technologies to create this end product and am happy to discuss possibilities with you. Expectations As with all graduate-level courses, youre expected to show up, be collegial, and contribute consistently in an engaged and original fashion. Youre also expected to meet deadlines unless an emergency arises; late submissions will affect your grade. These simple tenets of professionalism will take you a long way in the field. Im happy to meet with you, whether before or after class, during office hours, by appointment, or online. If I dont hear from you, then I will assume that youre doing just fine. Students who need special consideration because of any sort of documented disability should make an appointment to discuss it with me right away. The information you share with me will remain confidential. You should also contact the Office of Disability

CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft

Services for information and/or assistance. They can be found here: http://disabilityservices.syr.edu/. SUs religious observances policy, found at http://supolicies.syr.edu/emp_ben/religious_observance.htm, recognizes the diversity of faiths represented among the campus community and protects the rights of students, faculty, and staff to observe religious holy days according to their tradition. Under the policy, students are provided an opportunity to make up any examination, study, or work requirements that may be missed due to a religious observance provided they notify their instructors before the end of the second week of classes. For fall and spring semesters, an online notification process is available through MySlice/Student Services/ Enrollment/My Religious Observances from the first day of class until the end of the second week of class.

Schedule of Events (subject to change) Aug. 27: Technes Cultural Capital and Techne-as-Capital Introductions Syllabus Review Weekly Responsibilities Sign-Up Pender, Techne, 3-38. Adamson, Glen. By Any Other Name. American Craft Council. 20 May, 2013. http://www.craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/any-other-name. Aug. 29: Pender, Techne. 39-72. Young, Richard. Arts, Crafts, Gifts, and Knacks: Some Disharmonies in the New Rhetoric. Visible Languages 14.4 (1980): 341-350. (PDF) Sept. 3: Facilitator: Lindsey Pender, Techne. 73-121. Hawk, Byron. Toward a Post-Techne--Or, Inventing Pedagogies for Professional Writing. Technical Communication Quarterly 13.4 (2004): 371-392. Sept. 5: Pender, Techne. 122-151. Sept. 10: Plato, excerpts from Gorgias, and the Republic. (PDF) Roochnik, David. What Does Socrates Know? Of Art and Wisdom: Platos Understanding of Techne. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. 233-251. (PDF)
CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft 4

Sept. 12: Facilitator: Karrieann Gross, Alan. What Aristotle Meant By Rhetoric. Rereading Aristotles Rhetoric. Ed. Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2000. 2437. (PDF) Sept. 17: Craft and Society Facilitator: Karrieann Aristotle, The Rhetoric, excerpts and Nichomachean Ethics, Book VI, excerpts. (PDF) Sept. 19: Facilitator: Jana Sennett, The Craftsman, Prologue + The Troubled Craftsman, 1-52. Optional: Sept 20, trip to the Everson Museum of Art, An American Look: Fashion, Decorative Arts & Gustav Stickley September 24: Facilitator: Jason Sennett, The Craftsman, The Workshop + The Machine, 53-118. Sept. 26: Sennett, The Craftsman, Material Consciousness + The Hand, 119-178 Oct. 1: Sennett, The Craftsman, Expressive Instructions + Arousing Tools + Resistance & Ambiguity, 179-238 Oct. 3: MISSED DUE TO INSTRUCTOR ILLNESS Oct. 8: Sennett, The Craftsman, all of Part 3: Craftmanship, 241-296. Oct. 10: Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, 1-60. Oct. 15: Facilitator: Jason Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, 61-139. Optional: Visit to the Stickley Museum, Fayetteville with the Oneida Mansion House Arts & Crafts Lecture Series on Saturday, 10/19. If you plan to attend, RSVP to the Mansion. Also optional: The Salt Market, an annual craft market, is also 10/19. http://www.saltmarketsyracuse.com/

CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft

Oct. 17: Facilitator: Karrieann Ruskin, John. The Two Paths, Lecture III: Modern Manufacture and Design. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7291/pg7291.html Excerpts from The Nature of the Gothic and Definitions of Greatness in Art (PDF) Oct. 22: Craftspeople, Labor, and Embodied Knowledge Facilitator: Jason Morris, William. The Revival of Handicraft. http://ccafurniture.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/morris.pdf Oct. 24: Epstein, S.R. Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe. Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400-1800. Ed. S.R. Epstein and Maarten Prak. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. 52-80. (PDF) Reith, Rheinhold. Circulation of Skilled Labour in Late Medieval and Early Modern Central Europe. Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400-1800. Ed. S.R. Epstein and Maarten Prak. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. 114-142. (PDF) Oct. 29: Facilitator: Lindsey Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Read 3-28, skim 31-55, read 59-127 Oct. 31: Facilitator: Lindsey Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Read 129-241. Nov. 5: Goggin, Maureen D. and Beth Fowkes Tobin. Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles. Ashgate: 2009. Excerpts. (PDF) Nov. 7: Machinery and Making Latour, Bruno. Do You Believe in Reality? (1-23) and From Fabrication to Reality (113-144). Pandoras Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: 1999. (PDF) Nov. 12: Latour, Bruno. The Historicity of Things (145-173) and A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans (174-215). Pandoras Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: 1999. (PDF)

CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft

Nov. 14: Facilitator: Jana Zuboff, Shoshana. The Laboring Body: Suffering and Skill in Production Work (1756) and The Abstraction of Industrial Work (96-123). From In The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. Basic Books, 1989. (PDF) Nov. 19: Bogost, Ian. Carpentry. Alien Phenomenology, or What Its Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 85-112. Brown, Jim and Nathaniel Rivers. Composing the Carpenters Workshop. O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies. Forthcoming. Nov. 21: Facilitator: Jana Anderson, Makers, 1 - 118. Nov 24 - 30: Thanksgiving Break Dec. 3: Anderson, Makers, 119-242. Dec. 5: Wrap-Up, Feasting

CCR 711: Rhetorics of Craft