Michael Leff
Encyclopedia
Michael Leff was an internationally known U.S. scholar of rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

. He was a Professor and served as Chair of the Department of Communications Studies at the University of Memphis
University of Memphis
The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....

. Before teaching at the University of Memphis he held faculty positions at The University of California-Davis, Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

. He also served as editor of Rhetorica, the journal of the International Society for History of Rhetoric, and as the founding president of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric. Leff was an Argumentation Scholar and believed argumentation studies could bridge traditional divisions between dialectic and rhetoric.

Leff had many influential ideas about rhetoric in his scholarship. One idea that that is prevalent when studying his works is humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 and how it relates to rhetoric. The history of humanism constantly relates to Ciceronian principles and requires an intricate relationship between the orator and the audience. The humanistic approach to rhetoric was often distinguished as “Ciceronian Humanism” because Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 played a dominant role throughout its history and development Leff in particular argued a humanistic approach to rhetoric. He saw that the humanistic approach to rhetoric was necessarily vague and that it positioned the orator both as an individual who leads the audience and as a community member shaped and constrained by the demands of the audience Another reason Leff argues for humanistic rhetoric is their view of the orator as a cultural hero that holds important oratorical power. Leff disagreed with aspects of the humanistic approach, such as their over-emphasis on the orator’s individual agency, but recognized the importance of Renaissance humanists to the tradition as well.

Leff’s voluminous scholarship also focused on the rhetorical artistry of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 and neo-classical criticism. Neo-classical criticism was a central idea in Leff’s critical work. In his work, “Lincoln at Cooper Union: Neo-classical Criticism Revisited” he uses Lincoln at Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

to show a notable shift in ideals of neo-classical criticism. Leff refers to Abraham Lincoln “as our foremost rhetorical president [that] provides and ideal case for examination Lincoln at Cooper Union displays the earliest example of the direction of close reading as a mode of criticism In Leff’s work, he shows how Lincoln at Cooper Union is an example of how argument, style, and interlocking main points effectively have changed within neo-classical rhetoric.

Leff was a renowned critic of rhetoric; he was knowledgeable in many areas such as argumentation, humanism, and neo-classical criticism, which made his work so well-known in the academy. For his many publications he was awarded the NCA Winans-Wicheln Award, the Woolbert award for influential scholarship, and the Ehinger Award for a sustained program of research. He was also awarded the Distinguished Research Award at the 2002 conference of the International Society for the study of Argumentation In addition to these prestigious awards, Leff also mentored numerous graduate students who now lead in the fields of argumentation, rhetorical criticism, and the history of rhetoric.

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