Directory

Robert Asen
Associate Professor
Rhetoric
6142 Vilas Hall
608-263-4518
rbasen@wisc.edu

Office Hours:
by appointment

Expertise and Activities

I conduct research and teach in the areas of public policy debate, public sphere studies, and rhetoric and critical theory. My research explores relationships between social and economic inequality and public deliberation as well as issues that arise in theorizing a post bourgeois public sphere. I also am an affiliate at the university's Institute for Research on Poverty.

Education

Ph.D. Northwestern University, 1998
M.A. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1994
B.A. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1991

Honors and Awards

National Communication Association, RCT New Investigator Award, 2004
American Forensics Association, Daniel Rohrer Research Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Argumentation, 2001

Selected Works

Books

2010. Public Modalities (edited volume). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
2009. Invoking the Invisible Hand: Social Security and the Privatization Debates. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
2002. Visions of Poverty: Welfare Policy and Political Imagination. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
2001. Counterpublics and the State (edited volume). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Articles

2009. "Reflections on Rhetoric and Public Policy." Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 12.
2005. "Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere." Informal Logic, 25, 117-37.
2004. "A Discourse Theory of Citizenship." Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90, 189-211.
2003. "John Dewey and the Public Sphere." special issue of Argumentation and Advocacy, 39, 157-221.
2003. "The Multiple Mr. Dewey: Multiple Publics and Permeable Borders in John Dewey\'s Theory of the Public Sphere." Argumentation and Advocacy, 39, 174-88.

Courses

CA 360 - Introduction to Rhetorical Theory and Criticism
CA 969 - Theories of the Public Sphere