Workshop Leader
Jeremy David Engels, Penn State University
Mindfulness has become incredibly popular in North America during the twenty-first century. How might this ancient practice, first developed by Buddhists in what is now northern India and southern Nepal over two centuries ago, speak to the concerns of rhetorical studies—and what can rhetorical scholars add to the contemporary cultural conversation on mindfulness? These are the questions we take up in this workshop. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, mindfulness is a practice of “paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” To practice mindfulness is to pay attention to whatever is happening to you, right now. It is to look, honestly, without judgment, at what is unfolding. This is a vital skill in our attention economy, which has transformed distraction into the basis of neoliberal capitalism. Mindfulness is also, as it turns out, an important skill of the rhetorical critic. Contemporary rhetorical scholars have advanced important theoretical insights concerning affect and embodiment; mindfulness is a practice of overcoming the mind/body dualism common to the academy by observing how words and discourses literally get embodied in our beings. In this workshop, we will investigate how mindfulness practice becomes rhetorical criticism as we observe our own embodied reaction to symbols. We will study theories and histories of mindfulness, and we will practice mindfulness meditation. Our goal is to build the skills of mindful rhetorical criticism—for once we observe our own reactivity to symbols, without judgment, we can create the space to pause and react differently to this world of words, hence recovering some semblance of agency in a world that is constantly escaping our control. As it turns out, rhetorical scholars have much to contribute to contemporary conversations about mindfulness, which are sorely lacking a focus on the power of rhetoric to shape our embodied beings.
Note: This workshop is not available for remote participation.
Jeremy David Engels, Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University, is an award-winning scholar and teacher committed to building wiser and more mindful democratic communities that can thrive in a world on fire. His students know him as the “bed-headed professor” and “yoga prof.” His classes have been described as “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood meets Walt Whitman, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Good Place.” Formally trained as a scholar of American politics, culture, and rhetoric, he has been studying and practicing yoga and meditation for 25 years, and he brings the insights of his spiritual practice to bear on his scholarship and his scholarship to bear on his spiritual practice. He has authored four books, including, most recently, The Ethics of Oneness: Emerson, Whitman, and the Bhagavad Gita (University of Chicago Press, 2021).