9

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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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Contents

Welcome Message. 2
Acknowledgements 3
Keynote Speakers... 3-4
Seminars.. 4-7
Officers of the Kenneth Burke Society..... 7
Awards of the Kenneth Burke Society... 7
Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society... 8
The Venue 8
Water Tower Inn Shuttle Schedule. 8
Thursday, July 17 9
Friday, July 18. 10-13
Saturday, July 19. 14-17
Sunday, July 20 18
Index of Participants... 19

Welcome

The summer heat in St Louis, MO, and the subsequent humming of the air conditioner, has us thinking of Kenneth
Burkes famous treatment of symbolic action and nonsymbolic motion, around which this conference gathers. After
reminding us of his first two Dramatistic axiomsThere can be motion without action and There can be no action
without motionBurke adds, with an implied its more complicated than that, that the purely physiological
behavior on the part of the audience can figure in a totally different kind of communication (834). That is, while
the realms of action and motion remain distinct, they do not remain incommunicado.

For instance, consider the operations of air conditioning equipment in a movie house. I have read that if a thriller is
being played, this mechanism must work much harder than if the plot is of a milder sort because of the effects which
the excitement of the audience has upon the conditions of the atmosphere in the theatre. Such bodily responses as
increased warmth and accelerated respiration place a greater burden upon the air conditioning device, which is
equipped with mechanical sensors that register the change in conditions and behave accordingly. (834)

Burkes scare quotes here are, in no small way, the focus of our work together over the next couple of days. As we
retreat from the heat into air conditioned rooms to discuss our relations with each other and the many nonhumans
with whom we share the world, the behavior of air conditioners will be front and center. In concluding his
treatment of the air conditioner, Burke argues, Its motions would proceed in the same way even if there were no
drama or audience at all but there were some other such condition in the realm of motion that was communicated
to it by its sensors (834).
Again, just what communication means here and elsewhere is the primary focus of this conference. While
there are necessarily (and productively) panels outside the scope of the conference theme, a solid majority of the
panels take up the questions lingering in these scare quotes. As we make our way through the most excellent
offerings of the 9th Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society, let us maintain an attitude of openness
toward the ways in which the nonsymbolic motion of both our own bodies and the motion of the nonhumans bodies
all around us communicate.
Importantly, and in a retrospective to Attitudes Toward History, Burke defines attitude as the point of personal
mediation between the realms of nonsymbolic motion and symbolic action (394). For Burke these realms are tightly
knitted, and as Debra Hawhee reminds us, we should see them as an irreducible pair, contiguous but distinct
(Moving Bodies 158). Stuff and story dance in attitudes. May this dance shape our work together under the hot and
muggy motions of the Saint Louis sun.

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Acknowledgements

This conference is the work of many hands. In the Department of English, we would like to thank Jonathan Sawday,
Toby Benis, and Kelli Bell. Wed also like to thank the following folks at Saint Louis University who helped with event
planning and registration: Greg Pfeffer, Leah Owczarczak, Mindy Fenton, and Maggie Nikolai. Thanks to Mariam
Marty Clark, Sonja Foss, and Barry Brummett for serving as judges for the Student Paper Award contest. We would
also like to thank our wonderful student volunteers (youll have seen them running around making everything work):
Patrick Brooks, Megan Brueske, Natalie Hood, Matthew Miller, Emily Philips, Priya Sirohi, and Katie Zabrowski.
Thanks also to the KBS Executive Board for their support of the conference. Finally, wed like to thank Dave
Blakesley who simply refused to not help us even though we told him we would bother him to no end.


--Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers
KBS Conference Co-Chairs 2014
Department of English
Saint Louis University
17 July 2014

Keynote Speakers

FRIDAY LUNCH, 11:30 AM 1:00 PM

Thomas Rickert
Purdue University

Making Hope Out of Nothing at All: Amechania in Burke, Nietzsche, and Parmenides

Nietzsche once remarked that despite centuries of belief in the basic idea that God is truth, and truth is divine, it may
be that the divine is nothing but error, blindness, and the lie (GS 344). The stakes of this statement are as profound
and timely now as ever, and not simply for the humanities. A recent article argues that the fundamental belief in
sciences ability to deliver truth and self-correct may not be justifiedthat science, and technology alongside, is
always at the mercy of other forces.
The basic thematic here is that nothing humans do or produce offers escape from our foibles and errorswe
are fundamentally amechania, without metis. I explore this thematic in Nietzsche and Burke, in particular on the
tragic and comic attitudinal frames that they offer as hope. I then offer a third attitudinal perspective, that of the
ancient Greek thinker Parmenides, who also had a profoundly pessimistic view on human capability to achieve truth
and the good life, and cultivated this attitude through his philosophical poem on being. For Parmenides, hope was
predicated on the utter acceptance of our entrapment in illusion and the cultivation of a profound attitude of metis
emerging from this acceptance. Parmenidean thought is timely because science is fostering doubts within in its own
ranks as to the hopes and technological solutions it can offer, in part because science cannot offer the remedy for
our emotional, moral nature it was long believed to provide. Lastly, Parmenides offers a revelatory frame that seeks
the nonhuman divine within the human, a point that bears exploration in contrast to Nietzsches cultivation of new
values and Burkes complete sophistication allowing for new vocabularies. Each of the attitudinal stances bears on
the issue of media, for the question of what initiates a change in praxis is inseparable from the question of the
means to do so.
We shall see that Parmenides demonstrates even more than Nietzsche and Burke an attendance to the
performative dimensionpredicated not on the hope to overcome human nature but rather on absolute acceptance
of our utter helplessness, our amechania, that is, our lack of metis without appeal to revelatory aid.

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SATURDAY BANQUET, 6:00 PM 8:30 PM

Jodie Nicotra
University of Idaho

Compulsion and Transcendence Sideways: Burkes Technological Attitudes

Burke makes no bones about his fear and loathing of the symbol-using, symbol-used animals technological
psychosis. Unless remediated by symbolic action in the form of the comic frame and perspective by incongruity
(something to which he arguably devoted his entire lengthy career), Burke believed, the pervasiveness of the
technological attitude would, by the logic of entelechy, bring a bad end: in the form of an Earth made unlivable by
contamination from technological processes or in nuclear destruction.
While Burke argued that all things related to humans could be categorized as either symbolic action or
nonsymbolic motion, its clear that technology presented an unusual and troublesome case, belonging comfortably
to neither realm. As he wrote in one of his attempts to apply a comic corrective to the potential harms of the
technological attitude, the compulsiveness of mans technologic genius, as compulsively implemented by the vast
compulsions of our vast technologic grid, makes for a self-perpetuating cycle quite beyond our ability to adopt any
major reforms in our way of doing things(Helhaven 19). Here its clear that Burke sees technology as having its
own sort of agency, one that might rival symbolic action; he would certainly have appreciated Donna Haraways
observation that Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert (Simians, Cyborgs,
Women 152). This language of compulsion (which crops up frequently in reference to technology in his works) also
aptly characterizes Burkes own attitudes toward technology. In a different essay, he confesses that for years he had
been compulsively taking notes on the subject of technological pollution, even as he loathed the notes and wanted
to get shut of the whole issueBut it goes on nagging me (Why Satire, 312).
Yet at points within Burkes corpus appear signs of a different attitude toward technology, one characterized by
an appreciation for the strange not-quite-agency of machines themselves that he himself wryly names
transcendence sideways (ATH 381). Here, along with Burkes published theoretical work, I read his poetry, fiction,
and archival materials to flesh out this somewhat hidden attitude toward technology. Ultimately, I argue, the notion
of transcendence sideways is an attitude appropriate for an era where the machines have become livelier than
ever.

Seminars

Kenneth Burke and New Materialisms
Steven B. Katz, Clemson University

It is well known in Burke circles that KB was vitally concerned with questions of substancematerial vs. rhetorical,
motion vs. motive, causality vs. free willand the effects of scientism and determinism on our understanding of the
human animal as a symbol using being. What Diana Coole and Samantha Frost in their anthology have labeled New
Materialisms are emerging in the twenty-first centurybut across the entire curricula, from computer engineering
and life sciences, through social and political sciences, to posthuman philosophies and rhetorics. What all these
movements may have in common might be simplified and called an animated empiricism in which objects and
artifacts, long neglected in the situation, are increasingly recognized as having their own, powerful agency (what
Levi Bryant dubbed A Democracy of Objects).
Can Burkes discussion and analysis of substance as dramatistically rather than mechanically motivated, as
casuistic rather than universal categories, as the result of rhetorical deliberation and persuasion rather than mere
fact and sheer forcehelp us grapple with and understand new materialisms? For instance, what might Burkean
rhetoric reveal about the similarities, distinctions, and relations between objects as actants, and the symbolic of the
human body? Between classical literacy and what Ulmer in Avatar Emergencies calls flash reason? Between
speculative realism (Harman) and pentadic screens? How might Burke deal with the philosophies and sciences of
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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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new materialisms, e.g., informatics, cybernetics, actor-network theories, object oriented ontologies, digital and
virtual realities, and other metaphysical empiricisms, as well as some of the physical products of new materialisms,
e.g., radical (prosthetic/technological) enhancement, genetic modification, synthetic biology, nanotechnologies, and
biosocial engineering (as eagerly anticipated by George Church and Ed Regis in Regenesis)?
All of these questions have profound implications not only for philosophies and rhetorics of agency, but also for
political and environmental sciences, as Vibrant Matter (Bennett) and Ecology without Nature (Morton) demonstrate;
for gender, queer, and race studies; and for the rhetoric and ethics of our relations to each other, to our machines,
to our avatars, and to the Other. In light of the new materialisms, what are our definitions of symbolic action,
community, the individual, human consciousness itself?
In this seminar, we will ecstatically together explore some of the questions and issues raised above by
consulting and applying selected Burke scholarship (TBA) to a sampling of readings representing some of these new
materialisms (to be distributed to seminar participants prior to the conference).

The Problem of Substance in Kenneth Burkes Corpus
Bryan Crable, Villanova University
Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Richard Thames, Duquesne University
David Cratis Williams, Florida Atlantic University

Substance has been a central term in Burkes theory of human symbol-using at least since A Grammar of Motives,
where its paradoxical nature is connected to the problem of motives. This emphasis on substance continues in A
Rhetoric of Motives, where consubstantiality is the aim of identification, making separate entities substantially one.
And, less well known, Burke promised to consider substance and identity in A Symbolic of Motives (a version of
which was published recently, so that commentary on it has scarcely begun).
Marie Hochmuth Nichols called Burkes analysis of substance and its connection to identification his most basic
contribution to the philosophy of rhetoric (Marie Hochmuth, Kenneth Burke and the New Rhetoric, Quarterly
Journal of Speech 38.2 [1952]: 137). Weldon B. Durham, who published an essay in The Quarterly Journal of
Speech in 1980 on Burkes idea of substance, notes that Burke appropriated a term in philosophical disrepute and
spun out of it half a lifes work (Weldon B. Durham, Kenneth Burke's Concept of Substance, Quarterly Journal of
Speech 66.4 [1980]: 354).
Although most Burkeans have a working knowledge of Burkes paradox of substance and of consubstantiality,
there is much more to be scrutinized in this important concept.
This seminar seeks to explore Burkes conception of substance and its place in his theory of human symbol
using. It will revisit some of the thinkers in Burkes day whom he charged with banishing the word substance from
philosophy, and try to better understand his assertion that in banishing the term, far from banishing its functions
one merely conceals them (Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives 21.) Generally, then, the seminar will address
the following questions:
Which thinkers banished the term substance, particularly in Burkes day, and why?
Why do the functions of terms for substance persist, even if the terms for it are not used?
Without terms for substance, how have theorists worked around the problem of substance?
How does Burke define substance?
What role does substance play in Burkes theories?
Is substance a central, if unacknowledged term, in contemporary theories of symbol-using?

Readings will include excerpts from theoretical texts that use, eschew, or dismiss the term substance; Durhams and
others essays on Burke and substance, and Burkean texts that examine the concept.
Given the complexity of the issues surrounding this central and disputed concept, the seminar will feature four
co-leaders to ensure a variety of perspectives and a depth of insights into these issues.




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Kenneth Burke and the Digital Archive
Ethan Sproat, Utah Valley University

Kenneth Burke developed his entire symbol-use project throughout the 20th century when our theories of
communication were out-paced only by our means of communication. However, even though KB was one of the
most influential theorists of human communication in a time of so many advances in communication technology,
there is an apparent dearth of audio or video footage of KB. Yet such a dearth is only apparent because there
actually are many existing audio and visual recordings of KB lecturing, performing readings, or participating in
discussions or interviews. Most KB scholars have not seen or heard much of this footage for two basic reasons:
first, the existing footage is not centrally accessible or cataloged in any one place; second, such footage is often in a
medium that prohibits broad distribution (as with various analog recording technologies).
Accordingly, this seminar seeks to establish a Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative with the following goals:

Coordinate efforts among KB enthusiasts to identify the current repositories of all existing audio and video
recordings of KB.
Assemble historical notes and details surrounding each recording.
Catalog all these in one resource through the KB Journal.
Work with individual repositories to digitally transfer all existing KB footage that is not already digitized.

The first day of this seminar will provide an overview of some notable KB footage that has undergone partial or
complete digital transfer. These include three projects that have received attention at previous KB conferences and
one new project that is particularly apropos to this years KB Conference in St. Louis. This new project involves
audio recordings of KB performing a reading and participating in an extended discussion (moderated by poet
Howard Nemerov) while KB was the Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis during the 1970-71
school year.
The second day of this seminar will address the array of logistical challenges facing a Kenneth Burke Digital
Archive Initiative and some strategies for addressing them. Also during this session, seminar participants will begin
actively participating in the Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative. We will meet in a computer lab, and seminar
participants will begin a coordinated effort to find additional repositories of audio or video footage of KB. Working
from a list of universities and schools KB visited, seminar participants will scour special collections databases and
online library resources for hints of currently-not-in-print KB materials (text, audio, video, etc.) that are either not yet
digitized or not yet on the Kenneth Burke Society radari.e. materials that might be candidates for digital archive
work.
On the final day of this seminar, participants will collect their findings and make plans for further online
participation in the Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative.

Identification Redux
David Blakesley, Clemson University

In naming identification an aim of rhetoric, Burke may or may not intend to valorize identification for its own sake:

identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to
division. If [people] were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim
their unity. If [people] were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of [humanitys]
very essence. (RM 22).

We are divided, and so we desire consubstantiality. We are identified, and so we desire division. In acts of
identification or division, we imagine ourselves to be alike or different. And thus identification in the imaginary is a
rhetorical process as well as the act of decoding and encoding signs. Burke saw identificationand with it, the
corresponding situation of divisionas both the condition and aim of rhetoric. The desire for identification, which
Burke calls consubstantiality, is premised on its absence, on the condition of our division from one another. There
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would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim our unity, Burke says, if we were already identical.
Consubstantiality, with its roots in the ambiguous substance (sub-stance), may be purely an expression of desire, an
identity of attitude and act in a symbolic, visual, and (even) emotional realm, an assertion of or desire for identities
and divisions in a limitless realm of ambiguity.
This seminar will focus on the familiar and often competing concepts of identification and division in recent
scholarship, as well as their implications for rhetorical theory, critical inquiry, and Burkes own (non)system.

1. What motives might we (or does Burke) associate with identification and division?
2. To what extent does Burke idealize or privilege identification in his understanding of rhetoric?
3. How might Burkes conceptions of identification and division help us understand motives grounded in racial
or gendered ethics?
4. Recent extensions and critiques (some of which seminar participants will read in advance) have argued that
Burke valorizes identification and in so doing has minimized or ignored other motives for rhetoric. What
critiques have most effectively challenged Burkes concepts of identification or division?
5. What material bases for identification or division does Burke imagine?
6. From the identity politics of Facebook and social media to the virtual and augmented realities of Google
Glass, in what ways do emergent technologies and interfaces extend or limit identifications or expose or
increase division?
7. What is the visual basis of identification and division (e.g., in film, media, design, image)

Seminar participants will be asked to submit a short position statement (250-500 words) addressing one of these
questions, or one they want to bring to the attention of others. A short list of reading suggestions will be distributed
by mid-June or earlier.

Officers of the Kenneth Burke Society

President: Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama, Huntsville
Immediate Past-President: Ann George, Texas Christian University
Vice President: David Cratis Williams, Florida Atlantic University
Treasurer: Virginia Anderson, Indiana University Southeast
Secretary: Elvera Berry, Roberts Wesleyan College
Editor of Publications: David Blakesley, Clemson University

Awards of the Kenneth Burke Society

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes extraordinary achievement in Burke studies over a number of years.
Previous recipients are Leland Griffin (1990); William Rueckert (1993); Bernard Brock (1993); James Chesebro
(1999); Tim Crusius (2002); Jack Selzer (2005); Wayne Booth, Michael Burke, Julie Whitaker (2008). Bryan Crable
(2011).

The Distinguished Service Award recognizes extraordinary service to the Society. Previous recipients are Sharon
Dailey (1990), James Chesebro (1993), Dale Bertelson (1996), Robert Wess (1999), Clarke Rountree (2002), David
Blakesley (2005), Mark Huglen (2008), Ann George (2011).

The Emerging Scholar Award recognizes the extraordinary promise of the work of a young scholar. Recipients in
the past have included both senior graduate students and new assistant professors. Previous recipients are Dale
Bertelson (1993), Mark Wright (1996), Mark Meister and Glenn Stillar (1999), Debra Hawhee (2002), Ryan Weber and
Nathaniel Rivers (2005), Elizabeth Weiser (2008), Kyle Jensen (2011).

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Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society

Founded in 2004, KB Journal takes as its mission the exploration of what it means to be Burkean. To this end, KB
Journal publishes original scholarship that addresses, applies, extends, repurposes, or challenges the writings of
Kenneth Burke, which include but are not limited to the major books and hundreds of articles by Burke, as well as
the growing corpus of research material about Burke. It provides an outlet for integrating and critiquing the gamut
of Burkean studies in communication, composition, English, gender, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology,
and technical writing. In light of this, Kenneth Burke need not be the sole focus of a submission, but Burke should be
integral to the structure of the argument.

Editors
Current: David Blakesley
2011-2013: Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers
2008-2011: Andrew King
2004-2008: Clarke Rountree and Mark Huglen

Web Developers
2008-2011: Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber
2004-2008: David Blakesley

The Venue

Saint Louis University is located in St. Louis, MO. The Busch Student Center (http://www.slu.edu/bsc.xml) is located in
bustling Midtown St. Louis (http://www.grandcenter.org). On-campus lodging is available at the recently built Hotel
Ignacio, the Water Tower Inn, and in the recently renovated Marchetti Tower West.

For those participants who wish to exercise (engage in some nonsymbolic motion), the Simon Recreation Facility is
available for use for $10 a day. The center has a list of registered participants.

Water Tower Inn Shuttle

BSC = Busch Student Center
WTI = Water Tower Inn

Thursday, 7/17

3:30 pm pick up at WTI

9:15 pm pick up at BSC




Friday, 7/18

7:30 am pick up at WTI

4:30 pm pick up at BSC

5:30 pm pick up at WTI

9:15 pm pick up at BSC
Saturday, 7/19

7:30 am pick up at WTI

4:30 pm pick up at BSC

6:30 pm pick up at WTI

9:45 pm pick up at BSC
Sunday, 7/20

7:30 am pick up at WTI

9:45 am pick up at BSC

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Thursday, July 17

3:00 7:00 pm
Busch Student Center (BSC)
Registration Table Open

4:30 6:00 pm
SEMINAR MEETINGS

BSC Room #253A
The Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative

BSC Room #254
Burke and the Problem of Substance

BSC Room #253C
Burke and New Materialisms

BSC Room #253D
Identification Redux


7:00 9:00 pm
WELCOME RECEPTION

Busch Student Center
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Friday, July 18

Busch Student Center (BSC)
Registration Table open from 8:00 am 5:00 pm

A: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (8:30 9:45 AM)

A.1 BSC Room #254
FEATURED SESSION: BURKEIAN PERSPECTIVES ON ART AND CULTURE: LIFE IN A DITIGAL
(AUGMENTED) WORLD
David Blakesley (Clemson University), Chair
Katherine Hanzalik (Clemson University), Studio-Art-Movements: Trans-formation, (Dis)Connection, and
Social Engagement
John Jay Jacobs (Clemson University), Physical and Virtual Bodies and Spaces
Daphne-Tatiana Canlas (Clemson University), Everyday Visual Technologies: Motives and the (Ephemeral)
Spaces of the Quotidian

A.2 BSC Room #253C
KENNETH BURKE IN THE PARLOR
Zac Wendler (Northern Illinois University), A Difference of Philosophy: Reconciling Burke & Bitzer
Satish Gupta (Rajiv Gandhi University), Point Counter-point in Kenneth Burke and Charu Sheel Singh's
Literary Theory
Cynthia L. Jeney (Missouri Western State University), Kenneth Burke, John Searle, and Chris Hables Gray
Walk Into a Cyber Bar: Why the Burkean System Must Be Extended Online

A.3 BSC Room #253D
OF INTERFACES AND OPERATING SYSTEMS (ALSO DROIDS)
Anneli Bowie (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Skeuomorphism vs. Flat Design: Exploring the
Technological Orientations Expressed in Interface Aesthetics
Damien Smith Pfister (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), These Are Probably the Droids Kenneth Burke Was
Looking For
Ryan D. Shirey (Wake Forest University), Her, Hermeneutics, and Terministic 404 Screens

A.4 BSC Room #253A
PARLIAMENTS OF PERSUASIVE TOOLS
Robert Wyckoff (Housatonic Community College), Technology's Attitudes Toward Humanity
Melvin Hall (University of WisconsinMadison), Tools Critiquing Tools: Technology as Poetry for Living and
the Dialectical Irony of Humility in Godfrey Reggios Qatsi Trilogy
John Dowd (Northern Illinois University), The Symbolic and Material Realms of Technology: Understanding
Mediation Through Burke and McLuhan

A.5 BSC Room #253B
LANGUAGE & LITERATURE
Christopher Oldenburg (Illinois College), Attitudes Towards Wallace Stevens: Kenneth Burke, Hierarchy, and
the Symmetry of Incongruity in The Emperor of Ice Cream
Annie Laurie Nichols (University of Maryland, College Park), The Mediation of Moral Action
Raymond Blanton, The Wanderer: On the Road with Kenneth Burke

9:45-10:15 am
Break
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B: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (10:15 11:30 AM)

B.1 BSC Room #254
FEATURED SESSION: BODIES THAT LEARN LANGUAGE: RHETORIC, ANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION
Ronald Soetaert and Kris Rutten (Ghent University), Rhetoric & Anthropology as Equipment for Education
Steven Mailloux (Loyola Marymount University), Jesuit Theorhetoric as Equipment for Living
Richard van Oort (University of Victoria), Kenneth Burkes Shakespearean Anthropology
Respondent: Barry Brummett (University of Texas at Austin)

B.2 BSC Room #253C
BURKE AND HIS CHICAGO CIRCLE
Jack Selzer (Penn State University), Kenneth Burke's 1949-50 Chicago Stay
Robert Wess (Oregon State University), The Aristotle in the Burke/McKeon Correspondence

B.3 BSC Room #253D
BURKE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Brian Henderson, Technological Psychosis and the Problem of Nature: What Burke Still Has to Teach Us
Christine M. Skolnik (DePaul University), Logology, Hyperobjects, and Mirrors
Jessica Sheffield (The University of South Alabama), Drama in the Delta: A Burkean Analysis of the
Mobile-Tensaw River Delta National Park Controversy

B.4 BSC Room #253A
ONLINE BODIES
Elizabeth Lowry (Arizona State University) Symbolic Action, Symbolic Efficiency, and the Practice of
Blogging
Mari Ramler (Clemson University), Body-less Voices in the Burkeian Parlor
Sarah Turner McGowen (University of Missouri), Like if You Agree: Political Convergence in a Social Media
Environment

B.5 BSC Room #253B
BURKEAN HABITS/HABITUS
AmyLea Clemons (Francis Marion University), Rhetoric, Technology, and Identification: The Spoon Theory
as Disabled Habitus
Jos M. Cortez (University of Arizona), Rotting with Perfection: Technological Psychosis as a Rhetoric of
Bioinformatics in Genetic Patent Discourse
Jim Creel (Texas Christian University), The Body as Scene: Substance, Identification and Abjection
Waldemar Petermann (Lund University), Circumference, Attitude and the Analysis of Habitual Action!

















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11:30 - 1:00 pm
Busch Student Center (BSC) Saint Louis Room

LUNCH: KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Thomas Rickert, Purdue University
Making Hope Out of Nothing at All: Amechania in Burke, Nietzsche, and Parmenides

Thomas Rickert is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Purdue University. His areas of interest
include the usual suspects: histories and theories of rhetoric, critical theory, composition, cultural studies, music, and
digital culture. His first book, Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, !i"ek, and the Return of the Subject (U of Pittsburgh P),
was published in 2007. His second book, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (U of Pittsburgh P),
was published in June 2013. This book was awarded the 2014 CCCC Prize. He has begun a third book project that
lacks both title and capsule description, but seems to involve the prehistory of rhetoric and a starring role for caves.
There may be music.

1:00 2:30 pm
SEMINAR MEETINGS

BSC Room #253A
The Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative

BSC Room #254
Burke and the Problem of Substance

BSC Room #253C
Burke and New Materialisms

BSC Room #253D
Identification Redux

2:30 - 3:00 pm
Break

C: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (3:00 4:15 PM)

C.1 BSC Room #253C
OF MOTIVES AND MACHINES
Virginia Anderson (Indiana University Southeast), The God in the Machine: Language as the Ultimate Tool
Joseph Bartolotta (University of New Mexico), Humans Act and Machines Move: Burkes Critical Approach
to Technologies
Dale Keller (Taylor University), A Rhetorician Ponders Technology: Burke and Contemporary Selections,
Reflections, and Deflections

C.2BSC Room #253D
TECHNOLOGIES OF CHANGE
James Klumpp (University of Maryland), Rhetoric and Social Order: Burkean Revisions in the Problem of
Social Change
Gretchen Underwood (Pittsburgh University), Policy vocabularies: Man versus Machine
Camille Kaminski Lewis (Independent Scholar), He said, They said: Dueling Bob Jones University in the
Public Sphere
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C.3 BSC Room #253A
POLITICS AND/OF RACE
Jean Costanza Miller (The George Washington University), Rhetoric as Equipment for Healing: A Burkean
Approach to Confronting Racism in Wendell Berrys The Hidden Wound
Timothy Ballingall (Texas Christian University), Piety, Impiety, and Social Awkwardness

C.4 BSC Room #253B
DRAMATISM ONLINE
Matt Pitchford (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana), Democracy from the Machine: Reddit,
Identification, and Technology
Emily Jo Schwaller (North Carolina State University), A Dramatistic Reading of Pinterest

4:15 - 4:30 pm
Break

FEARURED SESSIONS (4:30 5:30 PM)

Busch Student Center (BSC) Room 254
PUBLISHING IN/ON KENNETH BURKE

David Blakesley, Clemson University
Bryan Crable, Villanova University
Paul Lynch, Saint Louis University
Jodie Nicotra, University of Idaho
Nathaniel Rivers, Saint Louis University
Elizabeth Weiser, Ohio State University

A Roundtable Q&A discussing the prospects and challenges of publishing scholarship that employs, deploys,
critiques or challenges the work of Kenneth Burke

6:00 - 9:00 pm
Busch Student Center (BSC) Saint Louis Room

BARBEQUE AND OPEN-MIC NIGHT


9
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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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Saturday, July 19

Busch Student Center (BSC)

D: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (8:30 9:45 AM)

D.1 BSC Room #254
FEATURED SESSION: BURKE AND RHETORICAL WORLDING IN THE PARLIAMENT OF THINGS
Kundai Chirindo (Lewis and Clark College) and Jaclyn Howell (University of Kansas), Of Rhetorical
Science/Scientific Rhetoric: Burke and Latour on the Parliament of Things
Rob Topinka (Northwestern University), Desirous Rhetorics: Latour and Burke in Londons Sewers
Jason Barrett-Fox (Arkansas State University), Attuning (Dis)Connection: Burkean Ontology, Ambient
Rhetoric, and an Historiography of the Kairic Possible

D.2 BSC Room #253C
DEVELOPING KENNETH BURKE
David Cratis Williams (Florida Atlantic University), Buckeye Burke: Kenneth Burkes Term at The Ohio State
University
David Erland Isaksen (Texas Christian University), The Aesthetic of Technological Consummation: Burke,
Oppenheimer, and the Nuclear Bomb
Courtney Wright (Bowling Green State University), The Entelechy of Formlessness and the Civic
Technologies of KBs Formative Years

D.3 BSC Room #253D
MULTIMODAL EQUIPMENT FOR LIVING
Joshua Hill (Duquesne University), Of Eloquence in Advertising: Theorizing Advertising Through Kenneth
Burkes Rhetorical Aesthetics
Ira Allen (Indiana University), The Multimodal Attitude Toward History: Reflections on Translating Benjamins
Radio-Plays
Deborah Leiter Nyabuti (Southern Illinois University-Carbondale), Whodunnit?, Reality TV, and Life as
Equipment for Literature

D.4 BSC Room #253A
BURKE AND POLITICS
Ann George (Texas Christian University), The Ins and Outs of Communism
M. Karen Walker (University of Maryland College Park), Burkes Value to Diplomatic Tradecraft:
Transforming a Bilateral Relationship through Courtship and Consubstantiation.
Kathy Elrick (Clemson University), Mansplaining: Kenneth Burkes Discussion on Motives, Frames and
Ideology
Edward C. Appel (Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania), Melodrama and Tragedy as Dramatic Action: The
Case of Tom DeLay

D.5 BSC Room #253B
CONSTRUCTIONS OF AUTHORITY: LEGAL, RELIGIOUS, SCIENTIFIC, AND TECHNOLOGICAL
Clarke Rountree (University of Alabama in Huntsville), Defending Gun Ownership: The United States
Supreme Courts Construction of Judicial Authority in District of Columbia v. Heller
Jouni Tilli (University of Jyvskyl, Finland), Prophets, Priests, and Sinners: Construction of Authority in
Finnish Lutheran Clerical Rhetoric during WWII
John Rountree (Georgia State University), NASAs Constructions of Authority in Allaying 2012 Doomsday
Fears
David Payne (University of South Florida), Technology, Transhumanism, and Transformation of Motive: A
Look at Agency and Purpose in the Rhetoric of the Future
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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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9:45-10:15 am
Break

E: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (10:15 11:45 AM)

E.1 BSC Room #254
FEATURED SESSION: TO THE END(S) OF TECHNOLOGY
Elizabeth Weiser (The Ohio State University), Technological Devolution: Attitudes Toward Industry
Jimmy Butts (Wake Forest University), How Burke Wanted To Save Us From Our Techno-Apocalypse
James P. Zappen (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Kenneth Burkes Conversation with Technology

E.2 BSC Room #253C
AESTHETICS AND IDEOLOGY: BURKE, MARX, AND LENIN
Greig Henderson (University of Toronto), Ideology and Its Perturbations: Mystery and Mysticism in A
Rhetoric of Motives
Thomas Carmichael (University of Western Ontario),Constitution, Ultimate Order, and the Locomotive of
the Revolution: Burke, Marx, and Lenin
Jonathan Butler (Soochow University),Solipsism as Style (or, What is the Sound of One Man Ranting?): The
Aesthetics of Communicative Failure in Kenneth Burkes Towards a Better Life

E.3 BSC Room #253D
PICTURING THE CHANGE: BURKE AND IMAGE IN THE 21
ST
CENTURY
Joel Overall (Belmont University), Reanimating Burke
Tom Jesse (Texas Christian University), Digital Poetics + You = Pure Persuasion
Sharon A. Harris (Southern Methodist University), Thought Bubbles, Static Images, and Piety: The Rhetoric
of 350.org

E.4 BSC Room #253A
ARTFUL BODIES
Lorin Shellenberger (Virginia Tech), Bodies as Symbolist Poets: Dramatistic Approaches to Ethos in
Contemporary Athletics
Paul Berry (Yale School of Music), Burke and the Technologies of Musical Performance
Ellen Klein and David Payne (The University of South Florida), The Technological Psychosis, Cultural Lag,
and the American way of Death: the Search for a Poetic Corrective

E.5 BSC Room #253B
BURKE AND RELIGION
Matthew Miller (Saint Louis University), Attitudes toward Religion: (Theological) Gnosis/(Liturgical)
Incarnation
Gavin F. Hurley (University of Rhode Island), Contemporary Spirituality as Technology: Burkean Mysticism
and Matthew Foxs The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
Jarron Slater (University of Minnesota), Seeing Through a Lens of Feeling: A Patho-Logology of Love

11:45-1:00 pm
Break





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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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1:00 2:30 pm
SEMINAR MEETINGS

BSC Room #253A
The Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative

BSC Room #254
Burke and the Problem of Substance

BSC Room #253C
Burke and New Materialisms

BSC Room #253D
Identification Redux

2:30 - 3:00 pm
Break

F: CONCURRENT SESSIONS (3:00 4:15 PM)

F.1 BSC Room #254
FEATURED SESSION: CHASING TECHNOLOGY: BURKEAN PERSPECTIVES ON A CHANGED WORLD
Elvera Berry (Roberts Wesleyan College), Let Us Try Again! Ethos as Method in the Face of Technological
Change
Bryan Crable (Villanova), Burke, Bodies, and Technology: Transformations in our Attitudinal Dancing
Erik Garrett (Duquesne University), Burke and (Anti)Urban Technologies: Re-Imaging the City
James Klumpp (University of Maryland), The Post-Mass Media Age: How do the New Technologies of
Communication Alter Rhetorical Study of Motivation?

F.2 BSC Room #253C
TECNHOLOGY IN THE ACADEMY
Stan A. Lindsay (Florida State University), Using Technology in Online Learning Systems: An Agency-Act
Ratio
Matthew Osborn (Clemson University), Transformation of Apparatus in the Humanities as Reorientation

F.3 BSC Room #253D
HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE THAN MODERN: BURKEAN RHETORIC AS POSTHUMANIST INQUIRY
Kellie Sharp-Hoskins (New Mexico State University), Rhetorical Ratios: Multiplying Perspective on the Limits
of Recognition
Chris Mays (Illinois State University), 'It's More Complicated Than That': Nonlinear Causalities and The
Rhetoric of Religion
Julie Jung (Illinois State University), Motivation as Perception: Perspectives on Orientation via Burke and
Ahmed"







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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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F.4 BSC Room #253A
BURKEAN CONCERNS IN (RHETORICAL) THEORY
Miriam Marty Clark (Auburn University), The Memex, the Pentad, and Poetry in the Information Age
Megan Brueske (Saint Louis University), Attitudes Toward Morality: The Rhetoric of The Rhetoric of Hitlers
Battle
Hunter Stephenson (University of Houston-Clear Lake), Strategic Spots and Kairos: (One of) Burkes Debts
to Classical Rhetoric
Brian Gogan (Western Michigan University), From Burke to Baudrillard: Modern Attitudes Towards
Consubstantiality

4:15 - 5:00 pm
Break

5:00 - 6:00 pm
Busch Student Center (BSC) Saint Louis Room
CASH BAR

7:00 - 9:30 pm
Busch Student Center (BSC) Saint Louis Room

BANQUET, KEYNOTE ADDRESS, AND AWARDS

Jodie Nicotra, University of Idaho
Compulsion and Transcendence Sideways: Burkes Technological Attitudes

A native of Pittsburgh, Jodie received a Ph.D., in the field of rhetoric and composition in 2005. She has published
articles on various aspects of rhetoric and writing, and is currently working on two books: a rhetorical genealogy of
the concept of habit, and a new book (with Rochelle Smith from the UI Library) about the current renaissance of the
do-it-yourself ethos. Jodie typically teaches undergraduate writing courses and graduate courses in composition
theory and various aspects of rhetoric; she has also taught in the Honors and Core Discovery Programs.
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9
th
Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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Sunday, July 20

8:30 9:30 am
SEMINAR MEETINGS

BSC Room #253A
The Kenneth Burke Digital Archive Initiative

BSC Room #254
Burke and the Problem of Substance

BSC Room #253C
Burke and New Materialisms

BSC Room #253D
Identification Redux

9:30 - 9:45 am
Break

9:45 - 10:45 am
BSC Room #254
KENNETH BURKE SOCIETY GENERAL MEETING

11:00 - Noon
BSC Room #254
KENNETH BURKE SOCIETY OFFICERS MEETING
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Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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Index of Participants
Allen, Ira, 14
Anderson, Virginia, 12
Appel, Edward C., 14
Ballingall, Timothy, 13
Barrett-Fox, Jason, 14
Bartolotta, Joseph, 12
Berry, Elvera, 16
Berry, Paul, 15
Blakesley, David, 6, 7, 10, 13
Blanton, Raymond, 10
Bowie, Anneli, 10
Brueske, Megan, 17
Brummett, Barry, 11
Butler, Jonathan, 15
Butts, Jimmy, 15
Canlas, Daphne-Tatiana, 10
Carmichael, Thomas, 15
Chirindo, Kundai, 14
Clark, Miriam Marty, 17
Clemons, Amylea, 11
Cortez, Jos M., 11
Crable, Bryan, 5, 13, 16
Creel, Jim, 11
Dowd, John 10
Elrick, Kathy, 14
Garrett, Erik, 16
George, Ann, 7, 14
Gogan, Brian, 17
Gupta, Satish, 10
Hall, Melvin, 10
Hanzalik, Katherine, 10
Harris, Sharon A., 15
Henderson, Brian, 11
Henderson, Greig, 15
Hill, Joshua, 14
Hurley, Gavin F., 15
Isaksen, David Erland, 14
Jacobs, John Jay, 10
Jeney, Cynthia L., 10
Jesse, Tom, 15
Jung, Julie, 16
Katz, Steven, 4
Keller, Dale, 12
Klein, Ellen, 15
Klumpp, James, 12, 16
Lewis, Camille Kaminski, 12
Lindsay, Stan, 16
Lowry, Elizabeth, 11
Lynch, Paul, 3, 13
Mailloux, Steven, 11
Mays, Chris, 16
Miller, Matthew, 15
Miller, Jean Costanza, 13
Nichols, Annie Laurie, 10
Nicotra, Jodie, 4, 13, 17
Nyabuti, Deborah Leiter, 14
Oldenburg, Christopher, 10
Osborn, Matthew, 16
Overall, Joel, 15
Payne, David, 14, 15
Petermann, Waldermar, 11
Pfister, Damien Smith, 10
Pitchford, Matt, 13
Ramler, Mari, 11
Rickert, Thomas, 3, 12
Rivers, Nathaniel, 3, 13
Rountree, Clarke, 5, 7, 14
Rountree, John, 14
Rutten, Kris, 11
Schwaller, Emily Jo, 13
Selzer, Jack, 11
Sharp-Hoskins, Kellie, 16
Sheffield, Jessica, 11
Shellenberger, Lorin, 15
Shirey, Ryan D., 10
Skolnik, Christine M., 11
Slater, Jarron, 15
Soetaert, Ronald, 11
Sprout, Ethan, 6
Stephenson, Hunter, 17
Thames, Richard, 5
Tilli, Jouni, 14
Topinka, Rob, 14
Turner, Sarah 11
Underwood, Gretchen, 12
van Oort, Richard, 11
Walker, M. Karen, 14
Weiser, Elizabeth, 13, 15
Wendler, Zac 10
Wess, Robert, 11
Williams, David Cratis, 5, 7, 14
Wright, Courtney, 14
Wyckoff, Robert, 10
Zappen, James P., 15

9
th
Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society

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