Professor Janet M. Atwill Receives A Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Here is anabstract of her project, titled " Art, Imitation, And Exemplarity: The Role Of Character In Greek Rhetorical Training:"
This project examines the role of "character" in Greek rhetorical training in the Hellenistic Period through the late second century CE. Though this era witnessed the institutionalization of rhetorical curricula and the renaissance of rhetorical discourse known as the Second Sophistic, it is generally viewed as a period of decline for Western rhetorical traditions-a retreat from civic discourse and a trivialization of rhetorical art by school exercises and sophistic declamations. This project re-examines this interpretation, arguing that the rhetorical theories and pedagogies of the time cannot be adequately assessed apart from the influences of the Stoics, who largely believed that there was an "art" of ethics. In this context "art" refers to a form of knowledge, more closely related to craft than to aesthetics. The notion that character might be consciously "crafted" goes back at least to Aristotle, whose concept of the calculation of the mean introduced the possibility of an "art of character." Aristotle placed this art, however, under the aegis of ethics, not rhetoric. This examination of philosophical and pedagogical treatises complicates the neat division between rhetoric as an instrumental art and ethics as a body of precepts and practices leading to exemplary character.