Parrhesia Curriculum

Through critically examining historical and contemporary political discourse the class will attempt to elucidate how symbols and symbolic action create meaning and shape political positions as well as policy decisions. Utilizing rhetorical theory, students will analyze oral, written, and digital public communication aimed at influencing social, political, legal, and religious issues and institutions. It will explore topics such as the role of power and identity in political communication, the ethical dimension of public discourse, and the concept of a free and open public sphere. Through readings, discussions, case studies, and analytic assignments, students will critically examine as well as to produce effective public discourse.

The practice of law is intrinsically rhetorical: legal work, at its essence, is a dynamic process of argument and reasoning, where various actors, from lawyers to judges to politicians to activists, continually seek to define and contest legal norms and principles within particular cultural contexts. In this course, we seek to understand the iterative process of legal argument in order to understand how to make better arguments and how better arguments lead to improved legal practice. In doing so, we will analyze the process of legal argument in the context of the United States Supreme Court. That analytical work will be complemented by practice in producing legal arguments on a range of issues. In a final project, the students will produce briefs on a relevant case and serve as justices for their classmates’ cases.

Grounded in freedom of expression and rhetorical theory from Aristotle to Foucault, this course examines fearless speech from a variety of speakers and contexts. The primary focus of the course is speaking truth to power and the potential it holds for creating new meaning, altering discourse surrounding issues, and motivating social, political, and structural change. Engaging these questions through the lens of rhetorical theory places emphasis on how context, issues, and movements can shape and be shaped by public discourse. Particular attention to social media and contemporary social movements and their influences and they shape understanding and practice of speech and social change. Students will gain an understanding of rhetorical theory and test and refine that theory through close textual analyses of cases of courageous, contentious, and counter speech. Readings will include exemplar speech and rhetorical theory and criticism to inform and provide method for examination of the texts and the practices. Students will complete rhetorical analyses of speech and a position paper on rhetorical theory.

Based in theory and practice, this course interrogates current discourse on campuses and in the public arena. Students will examine freedom of expression and methods to foster more productive and inclusive discourse on their campuses and in their communities. By exploring case studies, models, and best practices, students will design and be prepared to implement practical interventions to engage their peers and communities in the principles and practices of free expression and open inquiry. The University of Chicago has long been a prominent proponent of free expression, which depends on the ability to engage in and facilitate productive public discourse by opening spaces for others to speak freely. This course extends that tradition by preparing students to actively create the conditions to foster robust and inclusive discourse.

The course will examine the long history of parrhesia, the Greek term for free and fearless speech, from ancient Athens to its current renaissance through the rediscovery by Michel Foucault. Focusing on the relation of truth and discourse, the course will consider not only the extraction of truth as a form of subjection to disciplinary power but also acts of telling truth to power as a practice of self- formation and exercise of freedom. Parrhesia implies a relation between the human self and the act of truth-telling that is suffused with interesting political, philosophical, and ethical possibilities, which students will be encouraged to explore. The course will begin by reviewing Foucault's final lectures on parrhesia and "the courage of truth." It will then examine some of the ancient Greek and Christian texts that Foucault analyzed. It will go on to consider early modern instances of parrhesia (e.g. Galileo and Descartes) and will conclude by surveying relatively recent versions (e.g. Greta von Thunberg and James Comey, JD'85), including contemporary feminist and queer practices of parrhesia. Lectures and discussions in English. No prerequisites.

Communication is foundational to the human experience and shapes our lives - personal, professional, and political. Communication skills are also highly correlated with college and professional success: critical thinking, argument, writing, perspective-taking, and research skills are all foundational to a liberal arts education and life beyond college. The objective of this course is to help students develop these essential skills through an introduction to the principles and practices of public discourse: advocacy, argument, and speaking. Over the course of three weeks, students will research, build, and present a persuasive case on a civic issue. Through exercises, workshops, and assignments, students will study and apply theory and develop essential research, critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills. The University of Chicago has long been a prominent proponent of free expression, which depends on the ability to engage in productive public discourse and on the ability to open up public space so that others can also speak freely. This course extends that tradition by preparing students to actively engage in the public sphere.

This course is open to high school students only.

Free expression always involves strong emotions and tensions with others, who come from a different perspective. To live a full academic life, you want to be authentic. You also want to be civil and professional. What can and can’t you say on campus and in the classroom? What should or shouldn’t you say? How could you make a conflict more constructive, if it will exist? This course connects the philosophical foundations of free speech and free expression practices at US Universities, and explores the ongoing tensions around this issue. You will develop a thorough understanding of the issue through readings, writing and dialogue involving your peers at and outside of the University of Chicago. You will also practice the skill of moderating discussions on difficult issues that involve matters of free expression and inquiry in the academic setting. Readings will include influential philosophical texts of the Anglo-Saxon tradition (Milton, Locke, Mill, Meiklejohn, Berlin, Fish), legal cases, university declarations, as well as mass media coverage of recent events and proposed legislation. The course will begin with a classroom-based deliberation about free speech and the inclusive campus. You will then proceed to reading seminars and teamwork researching recent controversies concerning free expression at universities. You will write an essay proposing a collaborative solution to the case that you researched.

In this course, we start with the recognition of the influence that social media has on our personal and political lives on an everyday basis, and the complex emotional implications of this influence. The course focuses on communicative characteristics of public spaces on social media and the effects of those characteristics on political discourse in democratic societies. You will gain experience of researching dynamics of political discussions on various social media platforms, including data collection, coding and analysis. You will also have an opportunity to reflect on you own civic identity and their own current social media practices. You will discuss and write about reasons and strategies for constructive civic engagement and/or non-engagement on social media. Readings include essays on the foundational concepts of the public sphere and deliberative systems, as well as texts that analyze the infrastructure of social media, social media influence on political polarization in the United States, and case studies documenting deliberative conversations on highly controversial topics.

"Alternative facts'' and "fake news'' have fueled growing concerns that we are entering a ``post-truth'' society. But what exactly is truth, and why should we care about it? We will address this question over the course of this quarter by examining contemporary views on the role of truth in meaning and communication; challenges to these views from uncertainty and subjectivity; arguments for and against different conceptions of truth; expressions of skepticism about the value of truth; different categories of non-truth (lies vs. b.s.); and how all of these issues bear on the relation between truth, belief, and decision making. Along the way, we will consider whether our claims to know certain things are always limited because they come from a particular perspective, and what value (if any) truth contributes to the well-lived life.

We will focus on the (linguistic) knowledge and skills that underlie the use of subtle derogatory comments and what sorts of things they are used to communicate.

An investigation of the applied ethics of technology in the 21st century. Fundamental debates in applied ethics are paired with recent technological case studies. Topics covered include moral dilemmas, privacy, consent, human enhancement, distributed responsibility, and technological risks. Case studies include self-driving cars, geo-engineering, Internet privacy, genetic enhancement, Twitter, autonomous warfare, nuclear war, and the Matrix. (A) (I)

Collaborative research seminar on the history of censorship and information control, with a focus on the history of books and information technologies. The class will meet in the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, and students will work with rare books and archival materials. Half the course will focus on censorship in early modern Europe, including the Inquisition, the spread of the printing press, and clandestine literature in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, with a special focus on the effects of censorship on classical literature, both newly rediscovered works like Lucretius and lost books of Plato, and authors like Pliny the Elder and Seneca who had been available in the Middle Ages but became newly controversial in the Renaissance. The other half of the course will look at modern and contemporary censorship issues, from wartime censorship, to the censorship of comic books, to digital-rights management, to free speech on our own campus.

What is the place of conversation in political thought? What makes such conversations generative or fulfilling? What role do conversations about politics play in connecting our present to the past and in helping us to reimagine our futures? These are some of the questions that this course hopes to explore by following along the threads of a conversation that has united the aims, hopes, and disappointments of three generations of anti-colonial thinkers in the Afro-Atlantic world. Taking the intellectual life of the Jamaican-British social theorist, Stuart Hall, as an exemplary site for this investigation, students will engage with a variety of sources—recordings, interview transcripts, memoirs, scholarship, and political writings—in an effort to piece together one strand of conversation out of which Hall’s intellectual life took shape and through which he in turn shaped the intellectual lives of others. Of particular interest here is the intergenerational character of these conversations. Students will be encouraged to explore how people are shaped by intergenerational preoccupations and concerns, even as they come to take up these preoccupations in new ways that often mark a break from the past. Together, we will also examine how, in narrating their own preoccupations and intellectual lives to themselves, people lay claim to particular pasts and sketch out hoped-for futures.

Information dissemination and online discourse on the Internet are subject to the algorithms and filters that operate on Internet infrastructure, from network firewalls to search engines. This course will explore the technologies that are used to control access to online speech and information, and cutting-edge technologies that can empower citizens in the face of these information controls. Students will learn about and experiment with technologies to control online discourse, ranging from firewalls that perform network traffic filtering to algorithms for content personalization and content moderation. We will also explore underlying technical trends, such as the increasing consolidation of Internet infrastructure and protocols, and the implications of consolidation for control over online discourse. Each course meeting will include a technical overview, reading discussion, and a hands-on laboratory activity.

“Obscenity” is a term for what is repulsive, abhorrent, excessive, or taboo in a society; and yet many artworks once considered to be obscene are now celebrated as landmarks of world literature, from the ancient poetry of Sappho to modern novels like Ulysses. In this course, we will study literary works that have been banned or censored as “obscene” to examine our own perspectives, attitudes, and assumptions as literary artists. How does obscenity shape our understanding of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, or public and private speech? What are the uses of obscenity in constructing new possibilities for literary expression? Authors studied will include Toni Morrison, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Vladimir Nabokov, Hilda Hilst, and Allen Ginsburg; and we will supplement these readings with works of literary theory, psychoanalysis, and case law. Students will produce their own original poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to reimagine what is permissible—and possible—in language and society for contemporary literary artists.