Course Description
The role of communication and rhetoric in the (re)formation of the common good in collective life. Students will be required to think critically about and advocate persuasively on behalf of the common good at the local, state, regional, national, and global levels.
Athena Title
Rhetoric and the Common Good
Prerequisite
COMM 2200 or COMM 2200E or COMM 2360 or COMM 3100 or COMM 3300 or COMM 3320 or COMM 3340 or GEOG 3640 or INTL 3200 or INTL 3200E
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course is designed to give students tools for thinking critically about and advocating persuasively on behalf of the common good, scaled for various publics (local, state, regional, national, global). Goals of the course include sharpening students’ argumentation skills, with specific attention paid to crafting editorials, speeches, and debates that are attentive to the constraints of specific rhetorical situations and political contexts.
Topical Outline
1. What is a common good? What do common goods do for us? 2. Who decides what the common good is? (Personal, private, public, and technical spheres of argument) 3. How are we collectively to settle on a/the common good? 4. Local common good(2) 5. Regional common good(s) 6. National common good(s) 7. Thinking about the global common good
Syllabus
Public CV