Cold Open: The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Announcements
- Inside Washington Seminar
- Application Deadline: Friday, 10/24–next week
- January 6 – 14, 2026
- Overview of the next few weeks
Plan for the Day
- Reaffirming the Value of this Course
- 21st Century Global Citizen
- Engaged Critical Thinker vs Apathetic Zombie
- Entrepreneurial Spirit vs Reactive, Overly Cautious Employee
- Rhetorical Theory (advanced)
- Rhetoric: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
- Sophistry: Protagoras & Gorgias
- Rhetorical Sophist?
- Isocrates
- A Lesson on “informatics” (the definition)
- “informatics” from Merriam-Webster
- “informatics” from Oxford English Dictionary (accessible if signed on to Atkins Library)
- Question: Do computers create knowledge?
- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “In Which it Appears that a Senator is but a Man” from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Making Connections Among Your Classes
Now that we’re halfway through the semester, it’s a good idea to take stock of the course. On the surface, it’s a civics course on foundational American texts. If you’re not a History, Philosophy, or Political Science major, that surface reading will not satisfy you; you’ll wonder, “why am I taking this course when there are more important courses?” This course requires self motivation and recognition of delayed gratification. You can easily put your eyes on the words of these documents, but are you engaging with them? Just like the video in the “cold open,” you might know the answer, but you never understood the question. This class isn’t about finding answers but learning to ask better questions, which is an invaluable, AI-proof skill. If you only focus on the answer from somebody else (human or informatic), you won’t exercise your critical thinking skills.
Let’s focus on our main texts thus far in the semester. What do these texts tell us that you can’t get from just knowing the words that construct them?
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Constitution
- The Bill of Rights
- Amendments 11-27
- Federalist Papers
- 10, 51, 78
- collectively
Citizenship in the 21st Century
You’ve probably heard me say that I make no claim that anything I teach will be directly applicable to your future career; however, that doesn’t mean you won’t employ critical thinking daily (not just on the job but in your life daily). Therefore, this is relevant to not just your career but your approach to life–including a career.
| Engaged Critical Thinker | Apathetic Zombie |
| Discovers why (attempts to know why) | Just wants to know the answer, not the process |
| Engages to refine or better understand assumptions | Regurgitates |
| Thinks of the “big picture” and considers perspective | Compartmentalizes usings blinders to avoid deep thought |
| Entrepreneurial Spirit | Reactive, Overly Cautious Employee |
| Risk taker who creates value (well, attempts to) | Does what they’re told, masters the system |
| Assesses opportunities | Well-defined parameters in which to work (for the boss) |
| Failure informs one’s path towards success | Failure is anathema to success |
By the way, there’s an Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and even the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UNC Charlotte.
Advanced Rhetorical Theory
We would need multiple semesters to scratch the surface on “rhetorical theory,” but I’m going to focus on a common opposition attributed to Ancient Greece and philosophical training: rhetoric vs sophistry. These definitions are not only up for debate but also can differ (expand) depending on context.
- Rhetoric: the ability to perceive the available means of persuasion (Aristotle’s definition)
- Sophistry: using rhetoric (persuasive techniques) to move audiences often through clever, deception reasoning.
- Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things”
- Socially constructed knowledge/interpretation
- Relativism
- The “pure” rhetoricians thought such teaching was immoral
- Isocrates was critical of the sophists but felt students should be trained in the art of rhetoric (“philosophy” in his words) but not for unethical purposes.
- He lived to 98 and was a contemporary of the big three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
- From translators David Mirhady, Terry Papillon, and Yun Lee Too:
- “[Isocrates] stresses that his teaching (paideia) is practical and is aimed at preparing young men broadly as gentlemen….and is essentially an education in political leadership, a mechanism for the construction of authority among the traditional elite groups that comprise Isocrates’ ideal pupils” (3)
- “At the core of his teaching was an aristocratic notion of aretē (‘‘virtue, excellence’’), which could be attained by pursuing philosophia…the study and practical application of ethics, politics, and public speaking” (4).
- Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things”
I bring these figures up because of their significance to the foundations of knowledge in Western Civilization. Facts don’t speak for themselves: someone presents the “facts” is specific ways. Consider these:
- Biased interpretation
- Age-appropriate material and level
- Technical jargon that beclouds an audience’s understanding
Did we discuss the “informatics” thing yet?
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Excerpt from from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
I asked you to read Ch. 9 “In Which it Appears that a Senator is but a Man” from this famous novel. Here’s a little background on Harriet Beecher Stowe and her novel:
- Prolific author and Abolitionist from Connecticut
- Lived next door to Mark Twain
- Met Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War in 1862
- Legend has it that Lincoln said, upon meeting her, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
- Don’t confuse her with the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, who’s buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary (quite spooky this time of year)
- Originally serialized in a newspaper, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a bestseller in 1852 and again after the Civil War started
- “Known in its day for being the second best selling of a book after The Bible” (DiMaggio 15)
- She was hated in the South, but, interestingly, moved to Florida for a bit after the war
- Is Florida the South?
The Rhetoric of Chapter 9 of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On occasion, I pretend to be a real English professor and discuss literature and stuff. Much has been said about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but we’ll focus on Ch. 9’s presentation of slavery. Here are some questions to get us started:
- What appears to be the relationship between Senator Bird and his wife, Mary?
- What are some of Mary’s (Mrs. Bird’s) daily duties?
- What do you notice about the language of the novel? How do the characters speak?
Here are some quotations to consider. All page numbers refer to the UVA digital edition:
- p. 119: “…frolicsome juveniles, who were effervescing in all those modes of untold gambol and mischief that have astonished mothers ever since the flood.”
- p. 120: “…it was a very unusual thing for gentle little Mrs. Bird ever to trouble her head with what was going on in the house of the state…”
- “I wouldn’t give a fig for all your politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian.”
- Senator Bird: “…our brethren in Kentucky are very strongly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than Christian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet the excitement.”
- p. 121: “Mrs. Bird was a timid, blushing little woman, of about four feet in height…she ruled more by entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument….[however,] anything in the shape of cruelty would throw her into a passion…
- p. 122: “”You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance…”
- Senator Bird: “…dear, we mustn’t suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider it’s not a matter of private feeling,—there are great public interests involved,—there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we must put aside our private feelings.”
- “Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible…and that Bible I mean to follow.”
- “”Obeying God never brings on public evils.”
- p. 123: “Duty, John! don’t use that word! You know it isn’t a duty—it can’t be a duty! If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let ’em treat ’em well….I tell you folks don’t run away when they are happy.”
- What’s her persuasive technique here? What argument might she (Mary and Stowe) be countering?
- p. 124: “With many gentle and womanly offices…in time, rendered more calm.”
- p. 128: Eliza asks, “Ma’am,” she said, suddenly, “have you ever lost a child?”
- “I have lost two…I had only this one left.”
- “…they were going to take him away from me,—to sell him,—sell him down south, ma’am, to go all alone,—a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life!“
- What’s the reader going to feel when they read this?
- p. 129: “Because he was a kind master…and my mistress was kind; but they couldn’t help themselves. They were owing money…that a man had a hold on them, and they were obliged to give him his will.”
- Who else sold slaves because of debt?
- p. 130: Eliza’s husband “…belongs to another man. His master is real hard to him…and he threatens to sell him down south…”
- p. 132: Mary says, “Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John.”
- p. 133: “And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so.”
- What’s the effect of speaking directly to the reader?
- p. 134: “What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abettors!”
- Is there some irony here?
- “…his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with “Ran away from the subscriber” under it.”
- Directly appeals to Southerners, “Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect of us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you to render, were you in our place?“
- p. 139: Commenting on Eliza, Van Trompe says, “Why, this is an uncommon handsome un,” he said to the senator. “Ah, well; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they has any kind o’ feelin, such as decent women should. I know all about that.”
- p. 140: Van Trompe claims, “I never jined the church till I found a minister that was up to ’em all in Greek and all that, and he said right the contrary; and then I took right hold, and jined the church,—I did now, fact.”
- He wouldn’t join a church that supported slavery.
Next Class
I’m sure we’ll be covering the rest of , so be ready for that. Then, we’ll move on to Abraham Lincoln’s “The Emancipation Proclamation” (1863). Don’t forget to do Weekly Discussion Post #6 before Friday, 10/17, 11:07pm.
Work Cited
DiMaggio, Kenneth. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Global Best Seller, Anti-slave Narrative, Imperialist Agenda.” The Global Studies Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, 2014, pp. 15-23. DOI: 10.18848/1835-4432/CGP/46892
Mirhady, David, Terry Papillon, and Yun Lee Too. “Introduction to Isocrates.” Isocrates I. Trans. David C. Mirhady & Yun Lee Too. U of Texas P, 2000, pp. 1-11.