A textbook published in October by three Wabash professors and a former teacher at the College offers a new approach to public speaking that ties it directly to civic engagement and participation in democracy.
Public Speaking and Democratic Participation: Speech, Deliberation, and Analysis in the Civic Realm was written by Wabash Professors of Rhetoric Jennifer Abbot and Todd McDorman, Assistant Professor of English Jill Lamberton, and Monmouth Professor David Timmerman, who taught at Wabash for more than a decade.
The book was published by Oxford University Press, which describes it as “a unique introductory textbook that provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic skills involved in public speaking—including reasoning, organization, outlining, anxiety management, style, delivery, and more—through the lens of democratic participation. act of civic participation.
“By integrating the theme of civic engagement throughout, Public Speaking and Democratic Participation offers a direct and inspiring response to the alarming decline in civic participation in the U.S. and the climate of vindictiveness in our current political culture.”
As reviewer and Penn State University Professor Lyn J. Freymiller put it: “The authors suggest that the endeavor of good speaking has a lot to do with being a responsible citizen in society. The book returns to this idea throughout and appropriately ties concepts back to this notion of taking responsibility for our communication.”
