Classical Rhetoric and American Democracy.

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the complex role of rhetoric and speechmaking in the American democracy and its two most important predecessors, the Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and the Roman republic of the fourth through the first century BCE. Students will learn about foundational documents and key milestones of the democratic experience in America alongside documents from ancient Greece and Rome. In many cases, we will be reading the very texts that influenced the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and other American leaders.