Faculty
John Briggs, Professor (951) 827-1930 NEH Seminar (PDF format) Access a recent interview with John Briggs by "Let's Talk" of the UCR Extension John Briggs (B.A. Harvard; Ph.D. University of Chicago) is the author of Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature, which won the Thomas J. Wilson Award for the best first book published by Harvard University Press in 1988. In addition to courses in Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, and C. S. Lewis, he teaches the history and theory of rhetoric and composition, and a course on Lincoln's speeches. He has published articles and book chapters on Shakespearean catharsis; the underplot of Timon of Athens; forms of proof in Othello; Bacon and religion; the neglected role of literature in the teaching of composition; Peter Elbow and the pedagogical paradox; and the idea of magic in the rhetorical theory and practice of Elbow and Kenneth Burke. His recent book on Lincoln's rhetoric, Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) is a close and intertextual reading of pre-presidential and presidential speeches. An essay on the nature and status of ideas in the work of Bacon and E. O. Wilson has recently appeared in Francis Bacon and the Refiguring of Modern Thought (Ashgate, 2005). Briggs directs UCR's Entry-Level Writing Program and the Inland Area Writing Project. He was the winner of the 1995-96 Faculty Teaching Award. He has been chair of the CHASS Executive Committee and a consultant to the College Board. Currently, he is on the editorial board of Literary Imagination. |
