Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy

Author Bio, Back Cover

KEITH GILYARD is Distinguished Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches courses in composition, rhetorical theory, and literature. His books include Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence, for which he won an American Book Award; Let’s Flip the Script: An African American Discourse on Language, Literature, and Learning; and Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens. In 2000, he served as chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. “Composition and Cornel West is an engaging study of a major intellect and his importance for rhetoric and composition. . . . It asks us to think hard about our role as citizens participating in the democratic experiment that is the United States of America.” —Bradford T. Stull, author of Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipatory Composition “Keith Gilyard’s scholarship is superlative, demonstrating a command of canonized and contemporary disciplines, including philosophy , rhetoric, composition, American literature, and African American expressive culture.” —David G. Holmes, author of Revisiting Racialized Voice: African American Ethos in Language and Literature Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy identifies and explains key aspects of the work of Cornel West as they relate to composition studies, focusing on rhetorical strategies that comprise an updated form of cultural criticism that West calls prophetic pragmatism. This is the first book to comprehensively connect the ideas of one of America’s premier scholars of religion, philosophy, and African American studies with composition theory and pedagogy, and it contains the only interview in which Cornel West directly addresses the field of composition . Keith Gilyard is Distinguished Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and an award-winning author of numerous books and publications. southern illinois university press 1915 university press drive mail code 6806 carbondale, il 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress Composition / Rhetoric / African American Studies Printed in the United States of America isbn 0-8093-2854-2 isbn 978-0-8093-2854-3 ...