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College of Arts and Humanities


Victor Vitanza

Victor Vitanza

Emeritus Faculty - English; Founding Director of the RCID program (2005); Fellow, Rhetoric Society of America

Contact
Affiliated Faculty, External To CAH
Website: https://sophist.people.clemson.edu/
Email: sophist@clemson.edu

Education
Ph.D. Literature, Northern Illinois University; Ph.D. (Habilitation) Media and Communications Philosophy, European Graduate School; M.A. English, University of Houston; B.A. English, University of Houston


 

Courses
Rhetorics of Cinematics and Post-Cinematics

Research Interests
Victor's areas of special interests are histories and theories of rhetorics (Greco-Roman, Early Modern, Modern, Postmodern); historiographies of rhetorics; contemporary writing theories and pedagogies; rhetorical invention; technology and writing (electracy, new media, digital studies); architecture, photography, film, and video; contemporary philosophy (German, French, Italian), and the failures of cultural critique.

Publications in Progress
Victor's first book of a trilogy-- Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric (SUNY P 1997, 400 pages)--examines three contemporary historians of the Sophists and how these historians as well as others represent Sophists and, in particular, Isocrates and Gorgias under the signs of negativity and sub-jectivity (ab-jectivity). The second book-- Chaste Rape (under consideration for publication, 500 pages)--examines how Western rhetorics and cultures are represented under the signs of negativity and sexual violence. The third book-- Design as Dasein (in progress)--will examine how philosophical and architectural attitudes are represented under the signs of negativity and death.

Additionally, he is working on two other books: The Coming Peculiar Pedagogies: A User's Guide , in progress (includes samplings unmixed of beta versions of texts and videos on performing peculiar pedagogies), is part of a larger project on peculiar pedagogies developed for and by a community of post-pedagogues. James A. Berlin and Cultural Studies (a sampling and remix of a seminar on Berlin).


 

Selected Professional Works

Books (Published)

Sexual Violence in Western Thought and Writing: Chaste Rape. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

CyberReader. 2nd ed. New York, New York: Longman, 1998. Print.

Writing for the World Wide Web. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997. Print.

Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. Print.

Writing Histories of Rhetoric. Editor. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. Print.

PRE/TEXT: The First Decade (U of Pittsburgh P, 1993).

Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)

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Favorinus. In Classical Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources . West Port, Conn, and London: Praeger, 2005. 148-52.

Adieu Derrida, in Poiesis 7 (Toronto, EGS Press, 2005): 64-65.

Abandoned to Writing: Notes Toward Several Provocations ." Enculturation 5.1 (Fall 2003): (A continuation of "The Hermeneutics of Abandonment")

From Heuristic to Aleatory Procedures; or, Towards 'Writing the Accident'. Inventing a Discipline: Rhetoric Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Young , Ed. Maureen Daly Goggin. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000. 185-206.

Love, Lust, Rhetorics (from Double Binds to Intensities). Living Rhetoric and Composition: Stories of the Discipline . Ed. Duane Roen, Stewart Brown, and Theresa Enos. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998. 143-58.

The Hermeneutics of Abandonment. Parallax 4.4 (1998): 123-39.

Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Accepted or Submitted)

"A Philology for the Future Anterior." Re/Theorizing Writing Histories of Rhetoric, Ed. Michelle Ballif. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2011.

"Octalog III: The Politics of Historiography." Rhetoric Review. 2011.

Edited Journals

General issue of PRE/TEXT 20.1-4 (2010). 325pp

Conference Presentations (Delivered)

Presenter-Respondent. "Octalog III: The Politics of Historiography" (a spotlighted session). College Composition and Communications Conference March 19, 2010, Louisville, KY. 

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