Robert L. Ivie
Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture in the Department of Communication and
Culture at Indiana University,
a member of the interdisciplinary faculties of American Studies, Cultural
Studies, and Myth Studies.
Ivie was awarded a Ph.D. in rhetoric and communication in 1972 by
Teaching and Research Interests
Ivie’s teaching and research interests focus on rhetoric
as a mode of political critique and cultural production, with particular
emphasis on democracy and the problem of war.
He teaches undergraduate courses on democratic
persuasion which explore themes such as democratic dissent in
wartime, peace-building
communication, and war
propaganda.
His primary graduate classes
in rhetoric and public culture include:
1. Productive Criticism of
Political Rhetoric. This course conceptualizes rhetoric as a mode of
social critique while focusing on the problem of the scapegoat in public
culture. It draws on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism as a framework for
productive rhetorical critique to critically examine constructions of the
threatening Other as they foster alienation and victimization within and
between polities.
2. Rhetorical Theories of
Cultural Production. This course examines theories of rhetoric as a
primary source of cultural production. It features Giambattista Vico on
eloquence, tropes, and the poetic wisdom of culture, Friedrich Nietzsche on
rhetoric, metaphor, and the will to power, Chaim Perelman on the realm of
rhetoric and the problem of justice, and Kenneth Burke on rhetoric,
identification, and the drama of human relations.
3. Constituting Democracy in
Rhetorical Discourse. This course compares the role of rhetoric in
liberal, deliberative democracy to its place in radical, participatory,
agonistic democracy. It examines problematic rhetorical constructions of
democracy in
4. Rhetorical Critiques of
War. This course treats rhetoric as a heuristic for critically
engaging discourses of war and transforming the legitimization of war into a
cultural problematic. It focuses on the problem of war in U.S. political
culture and may critique in any given semester the discourse of a single war,
some combination of wars, war in a historical era, a sustained period of
international tension, a recurrent motive for war, or some current cause for
international conflict.
Selected Publications
Books
Robert L. Ivie, Dissent
from War (
Robert L. Ivie, Democracy and
Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie,
Philip Wander, and Robert L. Scott, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor,
and Ideology, rev. ed. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1997).
Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler and Robert
L. Ivie, Congress Declares War: Rhetoric, Leadership, and Partisanship
in the Early Republic (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press,
1983).
Most-Recent Articles
Robert
L. Ivie, “Hierarchies of Equality: Positive
Peace in a Democratic Idiom,” in ICA
Handbook on Communication Ethics, ed. George Cheney, Steve May, and
Debashish Munshi (New York:
Routledge/Lawren Erlbaum Publishers, forthcoming in 2009).
Robert
L. Ivie, “Depolarizing the Discourse of American Security: Constitutive Properties of Positive Peace in
Barack Obama’s Rhetoric of Change,” in After
Hiroshima: Memory, Warfare and the
Ethics of Peace, ed. Edward Demenchonok (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming in
2009).
Robert
L. Ivie and Oscar Giner, “American Exceptionalism in a Democratic Idiom:
Transacting the Mythos of Change in the 2008 Presidential Campaign,” Communication Studies 60 (forthcoming in
2009).
Robert
L. Ivie and Oscar Giner, “Genealogy of Myth in Presidential Rhetoric,” Sourcebook for Political Communication
Research: Methods, Measures, and
Analytical Techniques, ed. Erik P. Bucy and R. Lance Holbert (Routledge,
forthcoming in 2009).
Robert
L. Ivie and Oscar Giner, “More Good, Less Evil:
Contesting the Mythos of National Insecurity in the 2008 Presidential
Primaries,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs
12.2 (Summer 2009): 279-301.
Robert L. Ivie, “Speaking Democratically in
the Backwash of War: Lessons from Brigance on Rhetoric and Human
Relations,” in Rhetoric and Democracy, ed. Todd McDorman and David
Timmerman (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2008), 265-280.
Robert L. Ivie, “Toward a Humanizing Style of Democratic
Dissent,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11 (Fall 2008): 454-458.
Robert L. Ivie, “Finessing the Demonology of War:
Toward a Practical Aesthetic of Humanizing Dissent,” Javnost—The Public
14.4 (2007): 37-54.
Robert L. Ivie and Oscar Giner, “Hunting the Devil:
Democracy’s Rhetorical Impulse to War,” Presidential Studies Quarterly
37.4 (December 2007): 580-598.
Robert L. Ivie, “Fighting Terror by Rite of Redemption and Reconciliation,” Rhetoric
& Public Affairs 10.2 (2007): 221-248.
Robert L. Ivie, “Academic Freedom and
Antiwar Dissent in a Democratic Idiom,” College Literature 33.4 (2006):
76-92.
Robert L. Ivie, “Web-Watching for
Peace-Building in the New Communication Order,” Javnost--The Public 12
(October 2005): 61-78.
Robert L. Ivie, "Democratic
Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique," Cultural Studies
<=> Critical Methodologies 5 (August 2005): 276-93.
Robert L. Ivie, “A Presumption of
Academic Freedom,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies
27:1 (2005): 53-85.
Robert L. Ivie, "Savagery in
Democracy's Empire,"
Robert L. Ivie, “The Rhetoric of Bush’s
‘War’ on Evil,” KB Journal 1 (Fall 2004): on line http://www.kbjournal.org
Robert
L. Ivie, “Prologue to Democratic Dissent in
Robert L. Ivie,
"Democracy, War, and Decivilizing Metaphors of American Insecurity,"
in Metaphorical World Politics, ed. Francis A. Beer and Christ'l de
Landtsheer (
Click here for a full list of
Ivie's publications, 1971- present.
Editorial
Service
Ivie has served as editor of Communication and
Critical/Cultural Studies (2004-2006), Quarterly Journal of Speech
(1993-95), and Western Journal of Communication (1985-87).
He is currently a member of the editorial boards of the Quarterly
Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Communication and
Critical/Cultural Studies, Presidential Studies Quarterly, KB Journal,
Controversia, Review of Communication, and the “Rhetoric and Public
Affairs” book series for
He has also served on the editorial boards of Political
Communication, Communication Education, Argumentation and Advocacy, Western
Journal of Communication, Southern Journal of Communication, Communication
Studies, Journal of Religion and Communication, and Communication
Reports.
Dissertations
Directed
Jeffrey
Motter, “Tending the Garden: The Country
Life Movement between Productivity and Sustainability,” Indiana University,
Ph.D. Dissertation, June 2009. Visiting
Assistant Professor, Wabash College (Indiana).
Kelly
Wilz, “From Caricatures to Characters:
Processes of Rehumanization in Iraq War Films,” Indiana University,
Ph.D. Dissertation, February 2009.
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Marshfield.
Jeanette Castillo, “Agonistic
Democracy and the Narrative of Distempered Elites: An Analysis of Citizen Discourse on Political
Message Forums,” Indiana University, Ph.D. Dissertation, August 2008
(Department of Telecommunications).
Assistant Professor, Florida State University.
Xianguang “Peter” Zhang,
“Entrepreneurial Culture in Transition-Period China: A Rhetorical Critique,” Indiana University,
Ph.D. Dissertation, July 2008. Assistant
Professor,
Scott Welsh, "The Rhetorical Pursuit of Political
Advantage: Toward a Rhetorical Theory for Democratic Politics,"
Michael Butterworth, "Baseball and the Rhetorical
Purification of
Jamie Skerski, “Re-Pairing Heterosexual
Hegemony: Discursive Articulations of Female Subjectivity,”
David Moscowitz, "Nice Jewish Boys: Trope,
Identity, and Politics in the Rhetorical Representation of Contemporary Tough
Jews,"
Victoria Godwin, "Feminist Identities and Popular
Mediations of Wiccan Rhetoric,"
Jeffrey A. Bennett, “Citizenship in Vein: Queer
Identity and the Stigma of Banned Blood,”
Alena Amato Ruggerio, "How Interpretation Becomes
Truth: Biblical Feminist and Evangelical Complementarian
Hermeneutics,"
Bryan Fisher, "Creating Citizens: Public
Speaking Instruction for a Diverse Democratic Society,"
George F. LaMaster, "Prophets in Dialogue: The
Presbyterian Church (
Darryl Clark, “Jimmy Carter’s Presidential and
Post-Presidential Strategies for Waging Peace,”
Camille Kaminski Lewis, “’Whatsoever Things Are Lovely’:
Irwin Mallin, “Identity and Instrumental Goals in
Workplace Interaction in a Law Firm,”
Stephanie Houston Grey, “Representing Eating Disorders in
Kristina K. Horn Sheeler, “Women’s Public Discourse
and the Gendering of Leadership Culture: Ann Richards and Christine Todd
Whitman Negotiate the Governorship.”
Nathan A. Baxter, “Toward a Decorous Rhetoric of Public
Theology: ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’: Betrayal,
Karrin V. Anderson, “Complicating Political Identity: A
Rhetorical Biography of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Robert S. Brown, “Football as a Rhetorical Site of
National Reassurance: Managing the Crisis of the Kennedy Assassination.”
Tarla Rai Peterson, “Conceptual Metaphor in Soil
Conservation Service Rhetoric and Farmers' Responses.”
Michael Casey, “Ronald Reagan's Epideictic Rhetoric
within the Context of the State of the Union Addresses During the Cold War,
1945-1985,”
Charles Ewing, “An Analysis of Frank Capra's War Rhetoric
in the ‘Why We Fight’ Films,”
Jane Purtle, “Rhetorical Invention and Creativity in
Freshman Composition,” Doctor of Arts Paper,
Jeanne
Nelson, “Rhetorical Stances in Ms. Magazine,”