Spring Course Announcement: Rhetoric and the Public Sphere

COMS 930: Rhetoric and the Public Sphere

Spring 2013              Bailey 401      Tuesdays 6 pm to 9 pm

Professor Jay Childers

Historically, the public sphere has been the space outside of the personal realm where members of a community (i.e., the public) come to communicate with one another about shared concerns, form and maintain a collective identity, and engage in the struggle over who gets what, when and how—to borrow Harold Lasswell’s famous definition of politics.  But, who is this public?  Where is this public sphere?  Do different types of public spheres create different modes of communication?  Do different modes of communication create different types of public spheres?  Can different modes of communication and different types of public spheres create different kinds of publics?  These are the questions underlying the study of rhetoric and the public sphere.

As a way to begin answering some of these questions, this seminar will focus on accomplishing two objectives.  First, the course will introduce students to seven key texts in the study of publics and public spheres.  Indeed, the bulk of the course will focus on foundational books by John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and others.  Second, the course will also explore the many ways in which communication and rhetorical scholars have been working to make sense of the public sphere in recent years.  To do so, the final five weeks of class will be devoted to reading contemporary essays on topics that include deliberative democracy, public modalities, constitutive rhetorics, and counterpublics.  The hope is that students will leave this course with an in-depth understanding of some of the key works on the public sphere and a solid grasp of the contemporary issues that communication and rhetorical scholars continue to grapple with today.

Required Texts:

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958/1998).

John Dewey, The Public & Its Problems (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1927/1954).

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1962/1991).

Gerard Hauser, Vernacular Voices (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 1985/2001).

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1925/1997).

Michael Warner, Publics and Couterpublics (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2002).

In addition to smaller assignments, the seminar will ultimately require a publishable length essay on a topic related to the study of communication/rhetoric and the public sphere.  If you have any questions, please contact the instructor: jaychilders@ku.edu.