News

In the 2024 Princeton Seminar in Poetry and Poetics, April 15-17, James Porter took audiences through the philosophies set forth in the fragments of Heraclitus(link is external) (6/5th centuries BCE) and 

Niobes: Antiquity, Modernity, Critical Theory (Ohio State University Press) edited by Mario Telò and Andrew Benjamin was published in February 2024.

From the publisher:

A new book by David Bates, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age (University of Chicago Press), will be available on April 5, 2024.

From the publisher:

A new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines.

Nietzsche and Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press), editerd by Jim Porter, will be available in April 2024.

From the publisher:

Radical Formalisms: Reading, Theory, and the Boundaries of the Classical (Bloomsbury 2024) edited by Sarah Nooter and Mario Telò was published on January 11, 2024.

From the abstract:

The Department of Rhetoric is a leading center for interdisciplinary research and teaching in the humanities and social sciences, committed to the study of rhetorical traditions from the classical to the contemporary eras.

Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon has been awarded first place for the 2023-24 Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize in Prose. Congratulations, Maisie!

2024 Rhetoric Commencement Ceremony*

Wednesday, May 15, 2024
2PM | Zellerbach Auditorium

Basic Department Commencement FAQs for students*

How long is the ceremony?
The ceremony starts promptly at 2pm and lasts approximately 2 hours.

Is regalia required?
No, regalia is not required. We do suggest wearing business casual attire for the event. Regalia will be available for purchase or rent at the Cal Student Store.

Is there a reception?
Yes!

David Bates appeared on a podcast episode of Entitled Opinions with Robert Harrison. 

In this philosophy-heavy episode, Professor Robert Harrison and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, discuss the “unnatural” origins of human technology and the difficulty of drawing sharp distinctions between artificial and natural intelligence. 

Trinh Minh-ha, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, has two new books released this year (Traveling in the Dark, Milan, Italy: Mousse Publishing, 2023 and The Twofold Commitment, New York: Primary Inform

PhD candidate Yael Hacohen has been awarded first place in the Adult Category of the 2023 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards, an annual celebration of poetic excellence, for "Amos 3:5".

See the 2023 Poetry Contest Winners announcement on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website for more information about the award and to read the winning poems.

Congratulations, Yael!

Doctoral student William Morgan co-authored Secrets and Machines: A Conversation with GPT-3 with with Ethan Plaue and GPT-3. The piece is featured in e-flux Journal #123

Rhetoric Graduate Student Aliosha Pittaka Bielenberg was recently featured in an article on the Graduate Division website about his summer fieldwork in Cyprus: Meet Aliosha: Rhetoric Ph.D connects with Cyprus’ cultural heritage through his research.

Kyra Sutton received a 2023 Teaching Effectiveness Award for “That Which Moves: Affect and Analysis”. The TEA award is sponsored by the Graduate Council’s Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs and the GSI Teaching and Resource Center.

The Department of Rhetoric was honored to have Julia Jarcho (Rhetoric PhD 2013) return to UC Berkeley to deliver the keynote address for our 2023 Rhetoric and Film & Media Commencement (watch the 2023 Commencement livestream recording).

Congratulations to our newest cohort of Rhetoric Ph.D. students starting this fall! We are delighted to welcome you to our active and vibrant intellectual community at Cal! 

Chiara Bercugot her BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University. She will be pursuing a project about the carceral uptake of machine learning tech and the colonial imperatives that structure epistemological networks, with a special interest in psychoanalytic and cybernetic conceptions of the subject.

Summer Session A (May 22-June 30)
Rhetoric R1A | Class #14989
Tue Wed Thurs 10am-12:30pm
Instructor: Osarugue Otebele

In(ter)vention and the Rhetorical Tradition

Rhetoric 103A explores what is called rhetorical tradition from its Western historical origins in Greece and Rome. The rhetorical tradition refers to the multiple and divergent ways that people throughout time have thought about the effects of language, both in theory and practice. Rhetorical study and practice today continues the tradition’s interest in varied, artful acts of invention and intervention that shape our worlds—for better and worse.