Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture
About Us
Graduate work in Rhetoric, Politics, & Culture focuses on three interrelated areas: Discourse, Theory, and Method.
Whether speaking from the podium or chatting on Facebook, people use discourse to craft identities, enact social change, and form a shared sense of community. Seeking to better understand this social force, the study of discourse explores significant themes, trajectories, and transformations in politics and society while considering particular individuals and groups, cultures, eras, genres, and topics. Courses in this area explore issues of power, digital media, citizenship, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, globalization, religion, inclusion and exclusion, social status, and marginalization.
Theory functions as a way of seeing, allowing us to understand familiar objects in new ways while helping us make sense of the unfamiliar. By applying theoretical concepts to specific examples from discourse, theory helps us understand discourse practices and foster positive social change. Courses in this area explore a range of perspectives from critical theory, gender theory, feminist theory, public sphere theory, and queer theory, to theories of performance, culture, technology, and globalization.
Method mediates between theory and practice, allowing us to appreciate the particularities of specific discourse practices as well as their larger implications. Using a range of cutting edge methodologies from textual-analysis and ethnography to network mapping, we gather, document, organize, catalog, and analyze the discourse that is the focus of our studies. Courses on methodology investigate tools such as textual criticism, ethnography, archival research, and Internet-based methods.
The Program
All three areas of study in Rhetoric, Politics, & Culture are united by a common commitment to understanding the role of discourse in society as we act together to engage in culture and politics. Students are encouraged to investigate a wide range of discursive phenomena as they develop expertise that will empower them to conduct significant research and to take an active role in scholarly communities.
For degree requirements and other detailed program information, please consult the graduate handbook.
Opportunities
A weekly graduate student/faculty colloquium gives students the opportunity to present their own work and to hear guest lecturers from a range of disciplinary perspectives, often in cooperation with other departmental areas. We also use this time to present information and facilitate discussions of publishing, conference presentations, and the job search process.
Offered Courses
- Historiography (A. Prasch)
- Migration and Stoppage (S. McKinnon)
- Rhetoric of the Far Right (R. Asen)
- Visuality, Culture and the Public (A. Baishya)
- Archival Methods and Rhetorical Historiography (J. Johnson)
- Digital Rhetoric (R. Howard)
- Intercultural Rhetoric (S. McKinnon)
- Race, Place, and National Identity (A. Prasch)
- Rhetoric and Field Methods (S. McKinnon)
- Rhetoric and Neoliberalism (R. Asen)
- Rhetoric and the Body (J. Johnson)
- Theories of the Public Sphere (R. Asen)
- Vernacular Discourse (R. Howard)
RPC FACULTY
Robert Asen: My research and teaching focus on public policy debate, public sphere studies, and rhetoric and critical theory. This includes the ways that political, economic, and cultural inequalities interact with relations of power to shape public discourse.
Anirban Baishya: My research interests lie at the intersection of visual and digital cultures, with a particular emphasis on media aesthetics, ethics, and affect.
Matthew Hannah: My current research and teaching focus particularly on extremist beliefs and conspiracy movements online. I focus on the history of conspiracy theories in an effort to understand the contemporary obsession with alternative political explanations for current events.
Robert Glenn Howard: Most broadly, my research seeks to uncover the possibilities and limits of empowerment through everyday expression on the Internet by focusing on the intersection of individual human agency and participatory performance.
Jenell Johnson: My research focuses on the circulation of scientific and medical information in the public sphere, with an emphasis on the social and political dimensions of nonexpert engagement with science, medicine, and technology.
Sara McKinnon: My current research studies the dynamics of human migration in Latin America and examines foreign policy relations and rhetoric in a transnational era.
Allison Prasch: U.S. presidential rhetoric, political communication, and the history of rhetoric are my research and teaching focuses. I seek to understand how U.S. political leaders use words and actions to create and sustain a particular vision of the United States to national and global audiences.