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American critic and teacher Wayne Booth, known internationally for his work in rhetoric and literary criticism, will discuss the language used in dialogues on science versus religion in a public lecture titled "The Rhetoric of Reconciliation," at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28 in Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd., on the Emory campus. The event will inaugurate Emory University's Year of Reconciliation, a series of lectures, performances and programs during the 2000-2001 academic year to encourage conversation on the theme of reconciliation as it relates to society's most pressing issues, from peace in the Middle East and justice in South Africa to race relations and the environment. Parking is available at the adjacent Fishburne Parking Deck on Fishburne Drive. For a map online, go to: www.emory.edu/MAP. For more information, call 404-712-9280, or visit the reconciliation web site by clicking on the logo on the Emory home page at http://www.emory.edu. In his talk, Booth will focus on the science versus religion debate, suggesting that the two fields overlap much more than public controversy might suggest, and that the rhetoric used by each side of the debate provides insight into this overlap. Booth is the Distinguished Service Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Chicago and associated with The Chicago School, a group of pluralist, formalist American literary critics who had significant influence on the development of modern American criticism. Often called "Aristotelian," or "Neo-Aristotelian," the Chicago critics emphasized evaluating the author's solutions to specific problems in the writing of a text. Among Booth's best-known books are "The Rhetoric of Fiction" (1961, 2nd ed. 1983), "Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Dissent" (1974), "A Rhetoric of Irony" (1974), "Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism" (1979) and "The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction" (1988). He also was the co-founder and co-editor from 1974-85 of the quarterly Critical Inquiry. A profoundly influential teaching presence at Chicago, Booth was dean of the college during the turbulent 1960s, and wrote "Modern Dogma" as an appeal for reasoned assent in the educational community that was prompted by events on the Chicago campus. He was the recipient of Chicago's Quantrell Prize for Undergraduate Teaching (1971) and the Norman Maclean Award for Lifetime Teaching (1997). But Booth's impact reached far beyond the classroom to affect the way contemporary literary criticism has evolved. As James Phelan points out in the "Dictionary of Literary Biography": "Every student interested in 20th-century rhetoric must come to terms with the body of Booth's work." Of his lecture at Emory on science and religion, Booth commented that
for a long time "science and rationality won in the warfare between
science and religion. But in recent decades, more and more books --
by scientists as well as theologians -- have dealt with the relation
of religion and science in a reconciliatory way. People are out there
working on it." Return to Archived Public Events Releases |
Emory's
Year of Reconciliation Opens With Talk By Renowned American Critic Wayne
Booth
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