These instructional materials are from community classes, mostly in the Humanities Seminars Program. One set of courses has focused on civil rights and social justice movements in the 1960s and 70s, and the others are political rhetoric courses that I taught during the last four presidental elections and the most recent midterm elections. This link to the HSP program provides short video descriptions. The links below are to Google folders with syllabi and readings.
Google Folder with Community Courses on 60s and 70s Social Movements
- The Vietnam Era and Its Continuing Impact—This class examines the Vietnam era from the perspectives of those who fought in and against the war, Vietnamese civilians who lived through it, and those who emigrated and remained in Vietnam, including those who grew up there and in the US after the war.
- 1970: Looking Back on a Half Century—This syllabus examines historical transformations over the last half century in our modes of thought, our sexualities, our jobs, our world, and our consciousness.
- 1968—This short community class focuses on the antiwar, civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements that made 1968 such a transformative moment in American history.
- The Poetry and Politics of the 1960s—This class was part of commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the UA Poetry Center and included a class with Gary Snyder and lectures by Charles Alexander.
Google Folder with Political Rhetoric Courses on Recent Elections
- 2022: Progressive Politics in the Midterms and Beyond—This course uses the Progressive Era and ongoing progressive movements as a frame to explore the 2022 midterms. You have to go back a century to the Progressive Era to find comparable increases in immigration, income inequality, technological and demographic changes, and the facist movements that created our most expansive world war.
- 2020: The Ends of Democracy—This course focuses on the dual sense of ends, by examining the purposes of democracy against the threats to democratic institutions posed by populist authoritarianism.
- 2016: How We Feel about Politics—This class uses research on social psychology to examine the rhetoricial strategies that were being used to mobilize the shifting GOP and Democratic coalitions..
- 2012: What’s the Good in Party Politics?—This class examines the historical precedents for key moments in the reelection of Barack Obama against the last traditional GOP presidential nominee, including conventions, debates, campaign ads, and shifts in party ideologies.
- 2008: What Choices are Left, and Right?—This class uses Kathleen Jamieson’s crhetorical analyses to frame the discussions of the autobiographies of John McCain and Barack Hussein Obama and the various campaign strategies used by the first African-American president and a traditional GOP nominee.