General Summary: Professor Jeffrey Walker talks about his research on ancient rhetoric and his efforts to bring ancient methods of teaching argumentation into twenty-first century classes at the University of Texas at Austin. Several graduate students at UT reflect on Walker’s research, the connection between rhetoric and democracy, and the impact of classical pedagogy on their own first-year writing pedagogy.

Detailed Summary: Walker’s scholarly transition from American poetics to classical rhetoric (00.00-03.53); Walker’s recent scholarly work on ancient methods of teaching argumentation (03.53-06.11); Walker’s incorporation of ancient declamation exercises in his classes and his thoughts on UT graduate instructors, Mac Scott and Tristin Hooker , who have similarly incorporated performance in their writing classes (06.12-13.31); Walker’s research on Byzantine rhetoric (13.32-17.26); Walker responding to comments about his work on democracy, rhetoric, and ethics by graduate students (Stephen Dadugblor, Andy Heerman, and Cindy Holland) (17.27-22.11); Walker discussing his style of writing in response to comments by Tristan Hanson, K.J. Shaffner, and Hannah Folz (22.12-25.53).

Scholarly Article Informing this Production: Walker, Jeffrey. “Mime, Comedy, Sophistry: Speculations on the Origins of Rhetoric.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric, vol. 8, no. 1, 2005, pp. 199-209.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Mark Longaker, with resources and assistance provided by the Digital Writing and Research Lab (Links to an external site.) at the University of Texas at Austin. It features the voices of Jeffrey Walker, Mark Longaker, Hannah Folz, Tristan Hanson, Mac Scott, Tristin Hooker, Cindy Holland, K.J. Shaffner, Andy Heerman, and Stephen Dadugblor. Music featured in this podcast, titled “commonGround,” was created by airtone and has been repurposed here under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license 3.0. Additionally, conversation.wav was adapted and incorporated under Creative Commons 1.0 license.