Dartmouth boasts a storied tradition of influential speakers and influential speech professors, from Daniel Webster to Fred Rogers, Prof. James Winans to Prof. Merelyn Reeve. Early classes in rhetoric honored rhetoric's position as one of the original liberal arts; current classes in rhetoric celebrate its disciplinary history while pushing theory and practice forward to meet the new challenges of modern contexts.
We design our courses mindful of scholarship of learning and knowledge transfer so that we can discover with our students ways to become more confident, more effective, more informed communicators. We critically aim to engage theory into practice both in and out of the classroom.
From ancient rhetorical theory to contemporary disciplinary scholarship, readings of Aristotle to the commentary of present-day rhetorical, critical, and social science scholars, students in Speech courses embark on a rigorous course of study that equips them for a variety of rhetorical situations, across contexts, including advocacy campaigns, social movements, and persuasion analysis.