The English Department's annual Walker Gibson Lecture is given by a major scholar in the field of Composition and Rhetoric, and this year’s lecture, given by Dr. LuMing Mao, is not to be missed! Dr. LuMing Mao is Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies and Chair of the Department of English at Miami University, Ohio.
Professor LuMing Mao presents “The Rhetoric of the Other: Re-Presenting Facts of Nonusage” Using Aristotle and Zhuangzi as points of both departure and comparison, the talk interrogates the boundary between facts of usage (rhetoric) and facts of nonusage (nonrhetoric). It further proposes that both facts are the yin and yang of rhetoric and the hierarchy that privileges the one over the other must be challenged. Drawing from examples of both rhetoric and nonrhetoric, the talk aims to recalibrate their relationship, the first necessary step toward an ethical and a more productive engagement with the rhetoric of the other.