Rhetoric Week 2013:
Comedy (and Cross-Cultural Communication) Night
Thursday, February
21, 2013, 7-9 p.m., Handlery Room (LM 100)
As part of Rhetoric Week 2013, the Department of Rhetoric
and Language has invited two Bay Area stand-up comedians to be part of an
evening performance/panel on the relationship between comedy and cross-cultural
communication. Also on the panel will be USF students and a faculty member.
The performances and panel will focus on questions of
interest to the Department of Rhetoric and Language and, we think, to USF
students. These questions include:
- Can comedy have an agenda? Can it persuade or
make an argument, or is it just entertainment?
- What can comedy teach us about public speaking?
- How does comedy negotiate issue of language and
identity?
- How do we know what’s appropriate and what’s out
of bounds?
Dhaya
Lakshminarayanan is a stand-up comic/public speaker/storyteller, television
host, and proud nerd. She graduated (twice) from MIT, and worked in finance and
tech before becoming a comedian. She wan a New England Emmy for her work as
host of the television show “High School Quiz Show” (WGBH), was featured as
part of KQED’s “Black History Month,”
and has appeared on the NPR show “Snap Judgment.” For the last three years, she
has performed at Sketchfest, and she has performed and led public speaking
workshops at MIT, Stanford, and the University of Michigan.
George Chen is a comedian,
writer, and musician. He has performed at The Porchlight story telling series,
The Business, SF Sketchfest, and Holy F*ck in Los Angeles. He produces the
legendary weekly comedy series The Cynic Cave in the basement of Lost Weekend
Video he has produced comedy shows in a comic book store, an art gallery, and
on a moving bus. He will be MCing at the SFMoMA closing event on June 1st.
More about Rhetoric Week:
The Department of Rhetoric
and Language presents Rhetoric Week 2013 (Feb. 19-22), a series of events
highlighting the study, practice, and art of rhetoric at USF and beyond.
Rhetoric Week 2013 has a
special focus on celebrating student work in the context of the diverse
rhetorical landscapes of USF, the Bay Area, and the world.
What is rhetoric? Rhetoric
means stating your case; it means argument and persuasion. It also means
listening to others, evaluating their arguments—perhaps to find weaknesses or
resist manipulation, but also to work together to solve problems, to
investigate the world around us, to explore who we are as a community.
To study rhetoric is to ask
how we use communication to help and to harm others, how we use language
struggle against each other and to work together to make the world a better
place. The study of rhetoric helps us to think more clearly, to become better
listeners, to be more responsible participants in a discussion, to be more
thoughtful, more skilled, and more versatile communicators.