Fall 2004
C401 Senior Seminar in Communication and Culture
Topic:  Rhetoric and Democracy in the Electronic Republic
Professor:  Robert Ivie
Time and Place:  Monday & Wednesday, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
Office Hours:  Monday & Wednesday, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. and by
appointment; Mottier 203
Office Phone:  855-5467; E-mail:  rivie@indiana.edu
Webpage:  http://www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb

Purpose of the Course

This course is about communication and the challenge of democratic
citizenship in the electronic republic, or global information age.

Democracy is a rhetorical practice of collective self-rule and,
accordingly, an object of both apprehension and attraction in
American political culture.  In Walt Whitman’s approving
words, “America and Democracy” are “convertible terms,” but a
skeptical Alexander Hamilton had previously warned that democracy is
America’s “real disease.”  Indeed, “Democracy has failed,” according
to W.E.B. Du Bois, “because so many fear it.”  Yet, as presidential
candidate Al Smith remarked, “The only cure for the evils of
democracy is more democracy.”

This class is devoted to exploring our conflicted national identity
by considering the meaning of democracy, the character of democratic
communication, and the role of the democratic citizen and nation in
a global information age marked by diversity and conflict yet
interconnected by transnational networks of commerce and
communication.

Our discussions will involve, for example, various ways in
which “democracy” has been symbolically constructed, including its
contradictory representation as a disease or source of danger, as
the means to universal peace, and as a cause for war.  The role of
various communication strategies and media will be considered in
this context, including a democratic idiom through which deep
divisions might be productively addressed to prevent adversaries
from becoming sheer enemies.

The course is designed to emphasize class discussion based on
assigned readings as well as active engagement in the democratic
process through student-designed term projects and reports.

Books for the course will include works such as Robert W. McChesney,
The Problem of the Media:  U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st
Century (New York:  Monthly Review Press, 2004), and Michael
Schudson, The Good Citizen:  A History of American Civic Life
(Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1998).