C130 -- Honors Public Speaking
[note: this description is for general information only; students enrolled in the course should download a revised and updated syllabus from Oncourse]
This class is open only to students affiliated with the Hutton Honors College.
Description: This course participates in and continues a tradition of education in public speaking that stretches back for thousands of years. Within this course, public speaking is recognized as a practical art with both immediate application in contemporary culture and ancient roots entangled inexorably with the development of democratic practice. With the invention of democracy in ancient Athens, the story goes, the need arose among citizens for training in the presentation of persuasive arguments in public venues. Preparing such speeches, naturally, required astute critical analysis of the prevailing social and political climate, of the immediate audience, and especially of previous public speeches. A new field of study, rhetoric, developed in response to the need for education in the analysis and invention of public discourse. Throughout the ages, rhetoric was among the core liberal arts thought necessary for the formation of democratic citizens.
This course operates under the assumption that a rhetorical education continues to provide skills and habits of thought that are essential tools for negotiating contemporary life, and it is designed as an introduction to this ancient and practical art.
The ability to speak publicly with fluency and grace certainly has many uses, advantages, and entailments: it may aid in self-expression and build self-confidence; it develops skills in audience analysis and strategic planning; it provides practice in using sensory language and vivid examples; it has immediate implications for understanding judgment and ethics; and of course it may prove useful in a business setting. All of these will be discussed, practiced, and theorized within this course. Above all, however, courses such as this one are intended encourage productive engagement in democratic civic life.
Course Materials: Our primary textbook will be Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which has a proven track record going back through the millennia of providing the basis for the inventional, critical, and engaged form of public speaking that will be emphasized in this course. This text will be supplemented by other readings, both ancient and modern, that concentrate on the theory and practice of rhetoric.
Assignments: Course evaluation will be based on at least three major speeches, together with several smaller assignments.