Conference Home

Thursday, May 20

Friday, May 21

Saturday, May 22

Sunday, May 23

Thursday, May 20

5:00-6:15 Buffet, no-host bar, Holiday Inn

6:30-7:15 Seminars (click on the title to go to a full description of the seminar)

"Back to Basics: Applying Burkean Thought in the Undergraduate Classroom"

Coordinator: Dennis Ciesielski, University of Wisconsin, Platteville

"Kenneth Burke and American Poetry"

Coordinator: Miriam Marty Clark, Auburn University

"Burke and Ethics"

Coordinator: Timothy Crusius, Southern Methodist University

"Burke, Phenomenology, and Existentialism: Can They Dance?"

Coordinator: Wade Kenny, University of Dayton

"Burke and the Rhetoric of the Seen"

Coordinator: Bruce Gronbeck, University of Iowa

"Burke and the Rhetorical Tradition"

Coordinator: Michael Leff, Northwestern University

"Art, Politics and Social Change: Will the Real K.B. Please Stand Up?"

Coordinator: Kathleen Farrell, University of Iowa

 

Welcoming: David Cratis Williams, University of Puerto Rico, Chief Conference Planner

Introduction of the Speaker: Greig Henderson, University of Toronto

Keynote Address:

William H. Rueckert,

"A Farewell to Kenneth Burke"

(Angelo Bonadonna Presenting)

8:45-9:30 Reception

(outside the Old Capitol Senate Chamber)

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Friday, May 21

7:30-8:30 Coffee and pastries

8:00-5:00 Registration/Conference Information

Publication and Artifact exhibition

8:30-10:00 Programs (A)

A. 1 Terministic Screenings

Moderator: Angelo Bonadonna, Saint Xavier University

• H.. Scott Placke. Purdue University: "Perspective by Incongruity in the Exploration and Synthesis of Key Burkean and Ciceronian Terms: Piety and Decorum, Perspective by Incongruity, Burlesque Frame and Wit"
• Steve Long and Bryan Salmons, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale: "A Critique of Burke's 'Substance'"
• Brent Whitmore, University of Minnesota: "Contingency, Irony, Metabiology: Richard Rorty, Kenneth Burke, and the Golden Rule"

A. 2 In Search of Kenneth Burke: Mining the Archives

Moderator: TBA

• Jack Selzer, Pennsylvania State University: "Engaging Kenneth Burke: A Report from the Archives"
• Ann George, Texas Christian University: "The Southern Review Files: Burke and Attitudes Toward History"
• Miriam Marty Clark, Auburn University: "'Dear Fren and Infloonce Person'": Burke and Nemerov in the 1950s"

A. 3 "That Guy Makes Me Tired": Burke, Aristotle, and Beyond

Moderator: TBA

• Karen Whedbee: "Aristotle's Enthymeme and Burke's Theory of Form Revisited: Part I"
• Don Burks: "Aristotle's Enthymeme and Burke's Theory of Form Revisited: Part II"
• Jeff White: "The Comic Root of Postmodern Kairos"

10:00-10:30 Coffee Break

Tape and Archive Display Room Open

10:30-12:00 Seminar Sessions

12:00-1:30 Lunch (on your own)

1:30-3:15 Plenary Session

Tippe Auditorium, Pappajohn Business Administration Building

Welcomes	Bruce Gronbeck, University of Iowa, Local Arrangements Chair
	Andrew King, Louisiana State University, President, Kenneth Burke Society
Introduction of the Speaker	John Luis Lucaites, Indiana University

Keynote Address:

Michael Calvin McGee,

"Burke and Fascism"

3:15-4:00 Coffee Break

4:00-5:30 Programs (B)

B. 1 Rhetoric and Poetics

Moderator: Andrew King, Louisiana State University

• Brent Nelson, University of Waterloo: "Temporizing Election: Burke, Donne, and Courtship of the Eternal"
• Miriam Marty Clark, Auburn University: "A. R. Ammons' Dialogue with Burke: Language, Nature, and the Resources of Lyric"
• Greig Henderson, University of Toronto: "Gnosis and Nihilism in Under the Volcano: A Meta-Rhetoric of Pure Persuasion"

B. 2 Thirtysomething Writings

Moderator: David DePew, University of Iowa

• Jerald L Ross, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale: "'The engine after long development': From Towards a Better Life to The Philosophy of Literary Form"
• Garth E. Pauley, Pennsylvania State University: "Criticism in Context: Kenneth Burke's 'The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle'"
• Patricia Tallakson, Texas Christian University: "Bims and Bams: Style and Argument in Kenneth Burke's 'Semantic and Poetic Meaning'"

B. 3 Presidential (Im)Politics

Moderator: Tony Palmeri, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh

• Virginia Anderson, Indiana University Southeast: "'The Perfect Enemy': Clinton, the Contradictions of Capitalism, and Slaying the Sin Within"
• Zachary White, Purdue University: "Clinton's Search for Symbolic Redemption"
• Tony Brussat, Hyattsville, Maryland:"A Sense of Telos: Bill Clinton and His Remarks Before the Religious Leaders Breakfast"

5:30-8:00 Dinner (on your own)

8:00--10:00 "Howling with Kennel Bark: a Miscellany"

Host: David Blakesley

• J. Clarke Rountree: "Burke in Iowa, As You've Never Seen Him Before: Takes from the Interviews"
• Julie Whitaker: "A Sampler from Kenneth Burke's Late Poetry"
• Elvera Berry: "Definiendum: He's Yet to Be Defined"

  The audience is invited to share stories, anecdotes, letters, and other items which further this celebration of the comic perspective.

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Saturday, May 22

7:30-8:30 Continental Breakfast/coffee

8:00-5:30 Registration and Conference Information

8:30-10:00 Seminars

10:00-10:30 Coffee Break

10:30-12:00 Programs (C)

C. 1 Burke Among the Philosophers

Moderator: James A. Mackin, Tulane University

• Tom Carmichael, University of Western Ontario: "Representation, Repetition, and the Political Unconscious: Burke and Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire"
• Gary Scott Groce, Southern Illinois University Carbondale: "Perspectives: Nietzsche and Burke"
• C. Allen Carter, Norman, Oklahoma: "Interrogated by the Response: Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida"

C.2 Interfacing

Moderator: W. Lance Haynes

• L.W. Rosenfield: "The Kenneth Burke-Malcom Cowley Correspondence"
• Dennis Ciesielski: "Burke to Basics: Dialogue and Cultural Studies in the First-Year Writing Program"

C.3 Writing Women In: Critical and Theoretical Feminist Applications of Burkean Theory

Moderator: Donn W. Parson, University of Kansas

• Keri A. Bodensteiner, University of Kansas: "Transforming Sexism: Impiety and Perspective by Incongruity"
• Julie Davis, University of Kansas: "The Citadel's Response to Harassment Allegations: Burke's Pentad as a Grounding of Ideographs"
• Sarah T. Partlow, University of Kansas: "Between Persuasion and Invitation: Burkean Identification as an Inclusive Theory of Persuasion"
• Valerie Renegar, University of Kansas: "Logology: A Feminist Application of Burke's Method"
• Stacey Sowards, University of Kansas: "Burke, the Paradox of Identification and Intersectionality of Race and Gender"

Respondent: Ekaterina Haskins, University of Iowa

12:00-2:00 Lunch/Post-Prandial Parlor Conversations

"Organizing Oral Histories of Kenneth Burke" (Jack Selzer, Pennsylvania State University, and Mike Jackson, Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute)

Jack Selzer of Penn State University will lead a discussion of the possibility of organizing a KB Oral History Project--an effort to obtain first-person recollections of KB from former colleagues, associates, family, friends, and students. To initiate discussion, Mike Jackson, a doctoral student at Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, will present a short example of what such an effort might generate: an account of his interview with Ben Belitt, a poet and colleague of Burke's in the 1930s and later a faculty colleague at Bennington.

"Taking Burke On(line)" (David Blakesley and Jerald Ross, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale)

What sort of web-presence should Burk(i)ean studies have? Who's on the other end of that Burke-L message? What web-based projects are planned? What can you do to help? The coordinators will unveil (in multimedia fashion) several new web-based projects too secret, too important, and too surprising to announce early. But in addition to that, they'd like to discuss with intellectual interlopers some plans for additional projects, the character and future of Burke-L, and the obligatory question, "Just what would ol' KB say about his virtual identity?"

"Burke and Rhetoric 2000" (Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine; Timothy Crusius, Southern Methodist University, D. Diane Davis, University of Iowa; and Michelle Ballif, University of Georgia)

How does Burke serve as a possible model for us as we work out the future of our disciplines and interdisciplines? How does he help us bring together critical theory and cultural studies with rhetoric and literary criticism, communication studies and composition pedagogy? How is his work a model of interdisciplinary study? How does he help us redefine the relation between the humanities and the interpretive social sciences? How does Burke rework the humanistic tradition in ways useful to meeting the immediate challenges facing the university?

"On Teaching Burke" (Donn W. Parson, University of Kansas, and Richard Coe, Simon Fraser University)

This conversation concerns the sharing of experiences and ideas regarding teaching Burke. Questions include: Does one teach Burke differently to undergraduates? Under what contexts does one teach Burke to undergraduates? Under what contexts to graduate students? Is Burke a whole course or parts of a course? If part of a course, what else goes into the course? Are different disciplinary interests at stake in teaching Burke?

"Burke on Tape" (J. Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama, Huntsville)

Clarke Rountree, who worked on the 1986 University of Iowa interviews with Kenneth Burke (available on 8 hours of videotape), will discuss the interview project, identify significant segments for viewing, and direct interested interlocutors to video segments discussing their favorite topice. In addition, possibilities for an archive of Burke on tape will be discussed.

2:30-3:45 Plenary Session

Tippe Auditorium, Pappajohn Business Administration Building

Introduction of the Speaker: David Blakesley, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Keynote Address:

Steven Mailloux,

"Rhetorical Paths of Thought: Burkean (Dis)Connections"

3:45-4:00 Coffee Break

4:00-5:30 Seminars

6:00 Vans Depart for Amana Colonies

6:30-7:00 Cocktails

7:00 Dinner and Awards Banquet (Ox Yoke Inn, Amana Colonies)

• Andrew King, President of the Kenneth Burke Society:"A Summing Up"
• Greig Henderson, President-Elect of the Kenneth Burke Society: "An Address"
• David Blakesley and James A. Klumpp, Program Planners: "Awards for Papers"
• Chris Carter, Chair of the Awards Committee: "Kenneth Burke Society Awards"

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* Note: All activities will be at the Holiday Inn

8:00-8:30 Coffee

8:00-10:15 Registration/Information (Display Room)

8:30-10:00 Programs (D)

D. 1 Burke and 'Everyday Life': Health, Happiness and 'The Good Life' in Consumer Culture

Moderator: Mary Evelyn Collins, Sam Houston State University

• Phyllis M. Japp, University of Nebraska: "Purification through Simplification: Cutting Down, Scaling Back, Opting Out"
• Mark Meister, North Dakota State University: "Burke's 'Good Life' and the TV Food Network"
• Diana Rehling, St. John's University: "'Caring Enough' to Purchase a Sentiment: A Burkean Analysis of Greeting Cards"
• Lynn Harder, University of Nebraska: "Technology as 'Representative Anecdote' in Popular Discourses of Health and Medicine"

D. 2 Don't Be a Freud in the Dark

Moderator: Catherine H. Palczewski, University of Northern Iowa

• Donald Jennermann, Indiana State University: "Norman Douglas' Nerinda and Kenneth Burke"
• Ellen Quandahl, San Diego State University: "The Rhetoric of Desire: Burke's Freud as Dialectician"
• Edward Berlinski, University of Maryland: "Kenneth Burke and the Psychology of Identification"

D. 3 Enculturation

Moderator: V. William Balthrop, University of North Carolina

• Robert Wess, Oregon State University: "The Dialectic of John Locke's Constitution Then and Now; or The Turn from Enlightenment to Post-Enlightenment Culture"
• Amy Sileven, Southern Illinois University Carbondale: "Motivating the Molten Mass of Humanity in Defense of Cultural Obsolescence: Kenneth Burke on Altering Cultural Paradigms"
• Gregory Clark, Brigham Young University: "Kenneth Burke's Rhetorical Aesthetic and the Scope of Public Discourse"

10:00-11:30 Breakfast Buffett and Business Meeting

11:45-1:00 Plenary Session

Roundtable Discussion: "Culture, Criticism, Dialectic: Engaging Kenneth Burke"

Moderator: James Klumpp, University of Maryland

Panel Discussants:

• Barbara A. Biesecker, University of Iowa
• Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine
• Michael Calvin McGee, University of Iowa
• Robert Wess, Oregon State University

Moderator: TBA

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Last Updated: 26 April 1999--David Blakesley 

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