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CAS 375 – Rhetoric & Public Controversy

Students Teaching Students

In coordination with an undergraduate-run organization called Students Teaching Students, CAS department faculty members mentor exemplary students who develop and teach 1-credit courses on a variety of subjects that advance expertise in communication and its role in public life. This semester, Associate Teaching Professor Lori Bedell is supporting undergraduates Kara Miller (who was in Lori’s RCL course a few years back) and Jess Strait as they teach a course titled “Period Talk: The Impact of Stigma on the Menstrual Equity Movement.”
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CAS 375 – Rhetoric & Public Controversy

Whether it is an ex-president’s ban from a social media platform or the leaking of a football coach’s bigoted emails, the public imagination seems to be persistently captured by controversies. This course explores different controversies that have impacted our public culture, ranging from the removal of confederate monuments to the response elicited by Dave Chappelle’s The Closer. In this class we will analyze specific cases of public controversy with an eye to their specific significance as well as to the general importance of controversy for a democratic public culture.

Course Objectives

  1. Identify and analyze some of the controversies that are, or have been, significant for our public culture.
  2. Appraise the sociopolitical challenge that controversies pose, including their positive and negative consequences.
  3. Explore the rhetorical means by which citizens provoke and navigate controversies