The A&I Convocation 2011
The annual Argument and Inquiry Seminar convocation, targeted directly to the students and faculty engaged in A&I seminars, features a speaker of some scholarly renown who will present from his or her work. The A&I Advisory Committee will seek out those speakers likely to stimulate Carleton first-year students to reflection on the nature of liberal arts and a liberal arts approach to learning. The 2010 A&I Convocation speaker is Bryan Garsten, Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
Convocation
In 2011 the A&I convocation took place in Skinner Memorial Chapel on Friday, September 23. For an audio file or video of the convocation, click on: Professor Garsten's title: “What Is College For?”
Professor Bryan Garsten
Bryan Garsten writes about the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, with a special interest in the themes of persuasion and judgment. His 2006 book, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment, has won several prizes and awards, including the Thomas J. Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press and the First Book Award from the American Political Science Association.
Here is a summary of the book from the back cover:
“In today’s increasingly polarized political landscape it seems that fewer and fewer citizens hold out hope of persuading one another. Even among those who have not given up on persuasion, few will admit to practicing the art of persuasion known as rhetoric. To describe political speech as ‘rhetoric’ today is to accuse it of being superficial or manipulative. In Saving Persuasion, Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of this suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory. Revealing how deeply concerns about rhetorical speech shaped both ancient and modern political thought, he argues that the artful practice of persuasion ought to be viewed as a crucial part of democratic politics. He provocatively suggests that the aspects of rhetoric that seem most dangerous – the appeals to emotion, religious values, and the concrete commitments and identities of particular communities – are also those which can draw out citizens’ capacity for good judgment. Against theorists who advocate a rationalized ideal of deliberation aimed at consensus, Garsten argues that a controversial politics of partiality and passion can produce a more engaged and more deliberative kind of democratic discourse.”
Bryan Garsten serves as a Fellow with the National Forum for the Future of Liberal Education (sponsored by the Teagle Foundation) and at Yale he is on the executive committees of the Humanities Program and the National Initiative to Strengthen Teaching in Public Schools. He is also involved in current collaborative efforts between Yale and the National University of Singapore to found a new liberal arts college in Asia with a globalized and twenty-first century core liberal arts curriculum.
To read more of Professor Garsten's work, you will find a link to the introduction to Saving Persuasion to the right and another to two of his articles and several reviews of his work below.