by Kevin Thomas (Directed by Matthew Newcomb)

In this thesis, I attempt to explore several of the components of a new rhetoric that teacher, author, and rhetorical scholar Jimmie W. Corder espoused over four decades ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s. I offer a close reading of Corder’s most famous article, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” which includes Corder’s notions of narrative identity, the ecological relationship of the three Aristotelian appeals, and the idea of generative ethos. Corder suggests that each of us is not only a narrative, but we are arguments as well. Interested in how we can learn to accept arguments that run counter to the stories we use to define our worlds, Corder suggests that the answer might lie in his notion of generative ethos. By writing ourselves more completely into our texts, he believes we can reach a greater level of understanding, even in the face of disagreement. Following Corder’s own performative writing style, I have adapted his unusual blending of the academic and the personal in order to try my hand at writing my own self into this thesis.