Reading Harper Lee's novel through the eyes of Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Cicero, reveals a narrative of education. Jean Louise Finch is not merely experiencing a rite of passage, but is being instructed in the art of rhetoric by a wide variety of nontraditional teachers, who embody Southern sensibilities, practice Greek mentorship, and represent the philosophies at the heart of Classical Rhetoric: all of which aim to instill moral education and citizenship. This presentation applies rhetorical analysis to illustrate how persuasion occurs in key scenes in both public and domestic spheres, and how the art of teaching within the pages of the novel gives teachers and readers a legacy worth reclaiming.

Breakout Sessions - Participants choose three workshops to attend during the course of the day

Workshop #1: 10:20 A.M. - 11:20 A.M.
Workshop #2: 11:30 A.M. - 12:30 P.M.
Workshop #3: 1:30 P.M. - 2:30 P.M.


Participants choose three of the following seven sessions:

• "The "Everyday Use" of Short Stories: Rhetorical Approaches to Alice Walker's Fiction"
  Mary Lamb (Clayton State College and University) and Mark Joyner (Department Chair, Stephenson High School)
  Alice Walker's fiction lends itself to rhetorical approaches since Walker develops quilting as a metaphor for art in both her fiction and her nonfiction. This metaphor emphasizes literature's role in reconstructing history and culture disrupted by the African diaspora. In particular, "Everyday Use" argues for such a rhetorical approach to literature, one that emphasizes literature's role in our everyday lives rather than its role as cultural artifacts to be appreciated from a distance. In this presentation, we will offer a framework for approaching Walker's short story, a framework built from her own essays discussing the nature of art, and pedagogical strategies for approaching her work with students. We'll break into small groups so teachers can share ideas and build their own lesson plans.


• "Reading Folklore on Several Critical Levels: What Brer Rabbit's Trickster Tales Can Teach Us about Race, Power, and Identity"
  R. Bruce Bickley, Jr. (Florida State University, Emeritus) and Robyn Tibbetts (Renfroe Middle School, Decatur)
  Beginning with four primary orientation-points for critically analyze any work of literature or folklore, we will briefly review the controversies that Joel Chandler Harris's stories have engendered over the decades (are they racist, minstrel, slapstick tales designed to appeal to white children and their parents? What happened to Harris's legacy when Disney took over and stylized the stories? Why has Harris come back into his own now, in several circles?) We'll work primarily with the Tar Baby story, which Uncle Remus intentionally narrates as a tricksy two-part, suspended story, although most publications print only one of the halves) and, secondarily, with one or two additional Brer Rabbit stories that are especially complex in their layered meanings such as "Mr. Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter" that suggests issues of morality and amorality.


• "Southern Shrews in Gone with the Wind and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
  Christy Desmet (University of Georgia) and Jill Melancon, North Springs Charter High School
  Beginning with a review of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in America and specifically in the South, this workshop will move to explore the rhetorical strategies of "shrewness" appropriated by Margaret Mitchell in her character Scarlett O'Hara of Gone with the Wind and then dramatized by Tennessee Williams in the play and film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.


• "The Writer's Eye and the Reader's Ear: Rhetoric in Eudora Welty's Works"
  Cara Cassell (Department Chair, Decatur High School) and Peter Rorabaugh and Beth McMahon (Decatur High School)
  Participants will study excerpts from Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings, a memoir of with a very modest title, "A Worn Path," a tale of Phoneix Jackson's determined journey to get medicine for her grandson who has swallowed lye-a story some read as a journey alluding to the Underground Railroad, and other highly anthologized works of the award-winning author whose one hundredth birthday we note in 2009. Our focus will be on Welty's rhetoric of emphasis and persuasion, and participants will receive practical guides for students' reading and discussion.


• "Rhetorical Markers of Point of View in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying"
  Tom McHaney (Georgia State University, Emeritus) and Sheldon Kohn (West Forsyth High School)
  As I Lay Dying is a cubist construction of the ordeals of the Bundren family of the hill country of Faulkner's famous county Yoknapatawpha. The "novel," if we can call it that, is "told" by stream of consciousness or interior monologue from each character as they undertake to bury Addie Bundren, the mother, beside her deceased father, a cynic or sophist who had once told her that "all living is to get ready to be dead for a long time." Each of the fifty-nine sections of As I Lay Dying may be studied on the basis of the thirteen different characters from whose mental processes they issue. Investigating the different rhetoric involved will reveal many suggestions for learning and writing. Classical rhetoric is invoked in the sense that logic and fallacy play a large part in the discourse of almost all the voices; the rhetoric of discourse is relevant in that each character displays a unique idiolect that can be identified through the study of diction, imagery, sentence structure, recurrent reliance upon set phrases; visual rhetoric occurs with the descriptive art Faulkner applies to people and things; legal or argumentative rhetoric comes into play in the sense that each character's thoughts are not random musings but actually arguments for attention, relief, equity, understanding, etc.; and a rhetorical investigation of how dialogic discourse differs from expository or argumentative rhetoric in writing can be applied to the characters' conversations.


• "Rhetorical Tricks in Flannery O'Connor's 'Good Country People'"
  Bruce Gentry (Georgia College and State University) and Dan Richardson (Atlanta International School)
  The characters in Flannery O'Connor's story "Good Country People" are constantly saying things that seem meaningless, pointless, obscure, and/or irritating. This session will investigate the possible rhetorical strategies behind the characters' talk, as well as O'Connor's strategies for tricking her readers. Our discussion will also address questions or issues or challenges typically arising from reading O'Connor in high school.


• "The Rhetoric of Sanity in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher'"
  Bob Sattelmeyer (Georgia State University Honors Program) and Scott Honeycutt (Luela High School)
  Since Poe's literary theory and practice were devoted to producing a singular and sustained emotional response in his readers, rhetoric plays a major role in his arsenal of literary devices. One of his principal rhetorical devices involves an obviously deranged first -person narrator attempting to persuade the reader that he is sane. Well-known stories in which this device is employed include "The Telltale Heart," "A Cask of Amontillado," and "The Man of the Crowd." Poe's most interesting and sophisticated use of this ploy, however, is in what may his greatest and most psychologically complex Gothic tale, "The Fall of the House of Usher," in which the narrator's very rationality eventually proves him to be the source of the tale's ultimate insanity.


Lunch Break: 12:30 P.M. - 1:30 P.M.
Workshop #3: 1:30 P.M. - 2:30 P.M.
Wrap U: 2:30P.M. –3:00 P.M.

Additional Information

The Troy Moore is located on the 9th floor of the General Classroom Building, at the corner of Decatur Street and Peachtree Center Avenue. Parking will be available for $5 in the G Deck, which may be entered from Collins Street off Decatur Street. (Visit www.gsu.edu, Campus Life - Campus Maps - Campus Map Gif for a map.) Call 404-413-5800, or email Pearl McHaney (pmchaney@gsu.edu) or Nancy Chase (nchase@gsu.edu) for more information. The conversation is free and open to the public. Coffee, refreshments, and lunch will be provided. The break-out sessions will be presented at 10:20, 11:30 and 1:30 so that participants may attend three sessions during the course of the day. You can register online Here or by mail, using the registration form that follows.

Registration:
Please register online or by mail, indicating your preferences for break-out sessions. Click here for a printable registration form.