Robert Asen

Office Hours:

• By Appointment

Current and Future Projects

• Analyzing possibilities for and threats to vibrant, inclusive, and empowering democratic practices
• Analyzing approaches to racial and economic inequalities in contemporary discourses about public education
• Analyzing laws and policies that seek to proscribe discussions of structural racism in public education

Expertise and Activities

Robert Asen conducts research and teaches in the areas of public policy debate, public sphere studies, and rhetoric and critical theory. Asen focuses on the ways that political, economic, and cultural inequalities interact with relations of power to shape public discourse. He considers how powerful individuals and groups use discourse to maintain their privilege and how marginalized people seek to overcome exclusions to represent their needs, interests, and identities in the public sphere. Asen explores the democratic possibilities of rhetorical practice, as ordinary folks may connect with others to build diverse communities and support individuals, as well as the ways that rhetorical practices may divide and scapegoat people, and sustain oppression. Engaging relationships of rhetoric and democracy, Asen explores ideas and practices that may promote just, equal, and free democracies as well as contemporary threats to democracy, like white nationalism and authoritarianism.

Education

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

Honors/Awards

• Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Named Professorship, 2025-2030
• Senior Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025-2029
• National Communication Association 2022 Distinguished Scholar Award
• Golden Monograph Award, National Communication Association, 2018
• Honored Instructor, University of Wisconsin Housing, 2018

Articles

• “Anti-Woke Publics.” Political Communication 41, no. 6 (2024): 1029-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2024.2425782
• “A Market for Civil Rights: Whiteness as Property, Colorblindness, and the Rhetoric of School Choice.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 109, no. 3 (2023): 276-97. DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2023.2193239
• “Knowledge, Communication, and Anti-Critical Publicity: The Friedmans’ Market Public.” Communication Theory 31, no. 2 (2021): 169-89. DOI: 10.1093/ct/qtaa033
• “Public: A Network of Relationships.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 297-305. DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2018.1454216
• “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere, and a Public Good.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 103, no. 4 (2017): 329-49. DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2017.1360507

Books

• Rhetorical Economies of Whiteness: Exploring the Intersections of Power, Privilege, and Race (Coedited and introduced with Casey Ryan Kelly). Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2024.
• School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy: How Market-Based Education Reform Fails Our Communities. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021.
• Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Coedited and introduced with Sara L. McKinnon, Karma R. Chávez, and Robert Glenn Howard). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.
• Democracy, Deliberation, and Education. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.
• Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media and the Shape of Public Life (Coedited and introduced with Daniel C. Brouwer). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010.
• Invoking the Invisible Hand: Social Security and the Privatization Debates. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009.
• Visions of Poverty: Welfare Policy and Political Imagination. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002.
• Counterpublics and the State (Coedited and introduced with Daniel C. Brouwer). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Courses

• CA 262 – Argumentation and Debate
• CA 310 – Debating American Education
• CA 360 – Introduction to Rhetorical Theory and Criticism
• CA 610 – Extremist Rhetorics
• CA 969 – Theories of the Public Sphere
• CA 967 – Rhetoric and Public Policy
• CA 969 – Rhetoric and Neoliberalism
• CA 969 – Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

Links

• Rhetorical Economies of Whiteness
• School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy
• Democracy, Deliberation, and Education
• Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method

Curriculum Vitae

• Asen CV