Individual Listing

HUMANITIES SOCSCI
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521

Briggs, John C

Director of University Writing Program
Professor of English

Biography

John Briggs 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 is Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)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). Recent essays include a study of Catharsis in Romeo and Juliet, and an essay on Macbeth and Frederick Douglass. He is currently serving as the Director of the University 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. He is on the editorial board of Literary Imagination. He is currently Director of the University Writing Program.

Degrees

Ph.D. English 1977

University of Chicago

M.A. English 1971

University of Chicago

B.A. English 1970

Harvard University

Awards

Regents Junior Fellowship for 1983-1984
St. John's College Lectureship (April 1984)
The Thomas J. Wilson Prize (Harvard University Press, April 1988)
UCR Distinguished Teaching Award, 1996


Research Area

My research interests fall into six general areas: Renaissance Literature (especially Shakespeare), the history of Rhetoric, the works of Francis Bacon, the writings of Abraham Lincoln, the pedagogy of composition, and the California school reform movement. I have written a book on the confluence of science and rhetorical theory in Bacon's writings, and I am currently completing a book on Lincoln's pre-Civil War and literature in American higher education. As Director of the University Writing Program and the Inland Area Writing Project; and one of the framers of the statewide Subject A examination, I have been deeply involved in monitoring and participating in California's school reform efforts for the past twenty years.

Publications

Books: Francis Bacon and The Rhetoric of Nature (Harvard, 1989),"Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered" (John Hopkins Univ. Press 2005) Book Chapters: "Bacon's Science and Religion" in the Cambridge Companion to Bacon, ed. M. Peltmen, (Cambridge University Press, 1996)and "The Very Idea!: Francis Bacon, E.O. Wilson on the Rehabilitation of the Eidos" Ashgate 2005)Articles include: "Writing Without Reading: The Decline of Literature in the Composition Classroom" (web publication) and "Catharsis in The Tempest." (Ben Johnson Journal 5), "Within Atheus'Shadow: The Ghost of Phetarch in Shakespeare's Timan", Poetica Vol.48 1997) "Philosophy and Rhetoric: A Bibliographical Inquiry," in Research in Composition (Greenwood Press, 1984) Recent essays include a study of Catharsis in Romeo and Juliet, and an essay on Macbeth and Frederick Douglass.