Rhetoric & Philosophy of Crisis Management

Catalog description

This course examines crisis management from a rhetorical and philosophical perspective. Lectures outline major crisis in various historical periods, discussing the rhetorical interruptions that announced a crisis, the manner in which the crisis was understood philosophically, and the practical communicative responses to a given crisis. Students read and present material from scholarly and practioner journals on crisis management and write a research paper on an organization that successfully managed a crisis-framing the rhetorical interruption, the philosophy that centered the crisis and response, the practical rhetorical responses used in meeting the crisis, and an evaluation of the rhetorical consequences of the crisis management. Rhetoric and Philosophy of Crisis Management provides a humanities background for understanding the interaction of rhetoric, philosophy, and crisis management and the practical application of this understanding to contemporary acts of organizational crisis management.