This graduate seminar endeavors to provide an in-depth overview of
American public address since the end of World War II.  We will
concentrate, by turns, both upon particularly significant exemplars of
public discourse and upon the broader historical exigencies and movements
that exert continuing influences upon contemporary American public culture.
We will consider "public address" both in a relatively narrow sense, as
referring to speeches, and in a broader sense that provides an opportunity
to explore the ways that film and media might function as public address.

The course is organized as an extended response to the question, "What are
the possibilities for American public address at the end of the
millennium?"  Or, to phrase the same question slightly differently, "What
does it mean to be a rhetorical critic at the end of the millennium?"  We
will progress through the readings chronologically, but at the same time
tracing the development of a number of underlying themes; these might
include, for example, the contemporary tension between fragmentation and
unity, the implications of identity as textual performance, and the always
fuzzy line between critique and advocacy.

In addition to reading the assigned materials at extraordinarily close
range and fomenting insightful debate during the class sessions, students
will be expected to compose several shorter essays and one longer one.
The shorter essays will be responses to and critical engagements with
the assigned course material, and the longer essay should represent a
potentially publishable example of rhetorical criticism.