Listening & Speaking: A Rhetoric Lab

Rhetoric is the tool humans use to seek justice, build consensus, and make change. It’s also how we argue, advertise, and mislead, which makes the capacity to analyze and act rhetorically essential to engaged citizenship. In our rhetoric lab, we will explore the twin arts of listening and speaking: how can we listen deeply, across differences, and how can a heightened awareness of the audience and its values help us communicate more persuasively? Our teachers will include rhetoricians from Aristotle to Obama, Shakespeare to Sarah Silverman; ultimately, in your final orations, you and your classmates will become teachers of each other. 3 hrs. sem.