Episode 9: Eliza Gellis

Just in time for a Labor Day weekend, we're back in your feeds with another episode! This time, Eliza Gellis, a fourth-year PhD Candidate in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University stops by to chat about her dissertation project bridging rhetorical studies with Jewish studies through a focus on the rhetoric of the Tanakh (or the Hebrew Bible). Specifically, she examines encounters with the Divine as a framework for understanding Otherness and the rhetorical encounter using a transdisciplinary methodology. Eliza, who was a third-year doctoral candidate at the time or recording, chats about the project, but also the broader implications of her work regarding historiography, comparative rhetoric, classical and/or ancient rhetoric, and bringing rhetorical studies into conversation with Jewish studies. For those of you who find yourselves wondering about what the past reveals about today—and vice versa—or how to use our training in classical rhetoric to envision new avenues for work, this is the episode for you!

You can reach out to Eliza on Twitter (via DM) at @ElizaGellis or via email at egellis@purdue.edu. Read more about her work and projects at her website, available at this link. If you'd like to learn more about the show, find links to things we talked about, find transcripts, or sign up to be a guest, please check out tellmemorepod.com. Feel free to follow us on Twitter at @TMM_Pod, too. Well wishes and safety to you all as we make our way through the fall semester.

References to Things Mentioned in this Episode:

• Enos, Richard Lee. Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle, Revised and Expanded Edition. Parlor Press, 2012.
• Geiger, Joseph. “Notes on the Second Sophistic in Palestine.” Illinois Classical Studies, vol. 19, 1994, pp. 221–230.
• Katz, Steven B. “The epistemology of the Kabbalah: Toward a Jewish Philosophy of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1-4, 1995, pp. 107-122.
• ---. “The Kabbalah as a Theory of Rhetoric: Another Suppressed Epistemology.” Rhetoric, Cultural Studies, and Literacy, edited by John Frederick Reynolds, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
• Magonet, Jonathan. A Rabbi Reads the Bible, 2nd ed. SCM Press, 2004.
• Loewen, James. Lies Across America. New Press, 1999.
• Porter, James I. The Sublime in Antiquity. Cambridge U Press, 2016.
• Rickert, Thomas. “Parmenides: Philosopher, Rhetorician, Skywalker.” Logos Without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language Before Plato, edited by Robin Reames, University of South Carolina Press, 2017.
• Versnel, H.S. “The Poetics of the Magical Charm: An Essay in the Power of Words.” Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, edited by Paul Mirecki, Brill, 2015.
• Walker, Jeffrey. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Oxford U Press, 2000.