In an era increasingly marked by polarized and unproductive political debates, this volume makes the case for a renewed emphasis on teaching speech and debate, both in and outside of the classroom. Speech and debate education leads students to better understand their First Amendment rights and the power of speaking. It teaches them to work together collaboratively to solve problems, and it encourages critical thinking, reasoned and fact-based argumentation, and respect for differing viewpoints in our increasingly diverse and global society. Highlighting the need for more emphasis on the ethics and skills of democratic deliberation, the contributors to this volume—leading scholars, teachers, and coaches in speech and debate programs around the country—offer new ideas for reinvigorating curricular and co-curricular speech and debate by recovering and reinventing their historical mission as civic education. Combining historical case studies, theoretical reflections, and reports on programs that utilize rhetorical pedagogies to educate for citizenship, Speech and Debate as Civic Education is a first-of-its-kind collection of the best ideas for reinventing and revitalizing the civic mission of speech and debate for a new generation of students. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Jenn Anderson, Michael D. Bartanen, Ann Crigler, Sara A. Mehltretter Drury, David A. Frank, G. Thomas Goodnight, Ronald Walter Greene, Taylor W. Hahn, Darrin Hicks, Edward A. Hinck, Jin Huang, Una Kimokeo-Goes, Rebecca A. Kuehl, Lorand Laskai, Tim Lewis, Robert S. Littlefield, Allan D. Louden, Paul E. Mabrey III, Jamie McKown, Gordon R. Mitchell, Catherine H. Palczewski, Angela G. Ray, Robert C. Rowland, Minhee Son, Sarah Stone Watt, Melissa Maxcy Wade, David Weeks, Carly S. Woods, and David Zarefsky.

Using primary sources from archives around the country, Democracy as Discussion traces the early history of the Speech field, the development of discussion as an alternative to debate, and the Deweyan, Progressive philosophy of discussion that swept the United States in the early twentieth century.

Citizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase “rhetorical citizenship” as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. To accomplish this, the book brings together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. For the most part, discussions of citizenship have focused on aspects that are central to the “liberal” tradition of social thought—that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. This collection gives voice to a “republican” conception of citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is rhetorical citizenship. Rhetoric is thus at the core of being a citizen. Aside from the editors, the contributors are John Adams, Paula Cossart, Jonas Gabrielsen, Jette Barnholdt Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen, Sine Nørholm Just, Ildikó Kaposi, William Keith, Bart van Klink, Marie Lund Klujeff, Manfred Kraus, Oliver W. Lembcke, Berit von der Lippe, James McDonald, Niels Møller Nielsen, Tatiana Tatarchevskiy, Italo Testa, Georgia Warnke, Kristian Wedberg, and Stephen West.

This edited volume presents selected works from the 20th Biennial Alta Argumentation Conference, sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensics Association and held in 2017. The conference brought together scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America to engage in intensive conversations about how argument functions in our increasingly networked society. The essays discuss four aspects of networked argument. Some examine arguments occurring in online networks, seeking to both understand and respond more effectively to the acute changes underway in the information age. Others focus on offline networks to identify historical and contemporary resources available to advocates in the modern day. Still others discuss the value-added of including argumentation scholars on interdisciplinary research teams analyzing a diverse range of subjects, including science, education, health, law, economics, history, security, and media. Finally, the remainder network argumentation theories explore how the interactions between and among existing theories offer fruitful ground for new insights for the field of argumentation studies. The wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches employed in Networking Argument make this volume a unique compilation of perspectives for understanding urgent and sustaining issues facing our society.

"Robert Asen explores the ways that school board members in the U.S. engage each other to make decisions for their local communities. He addresses issues of ideology, scarcity, expertise, and trust while examining the perils and promise of local policymaking"--Provided by publisher.

Spanning a historical period that begins with women’s exclusion from university debates and continues through their participation in coeducational intercollegiate competitions, Debating Women highlights the crucial role that debating organizations played as women sought to access the fruits of higher education in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite various obstacles, women transformed forests, parlors, dining rooms, ocean liners, classrooms, auditoriums, and prisons into vibrant spaces for ritual argument. There, they not only learned to speak eloquently and argue persuasively but also used debate to establish a legacy, explore difference, engage in intercultural encounter, and articulate themselves as citizens. These debaters engaged with the issues of the day, often performing, questioning, and occasionally refining norms of gender, race, class, and nation. In tracing their involvement in an activity at the heart of civic culture, Woods demonstrates that debating women have much to teach us about the ongoing potential for debate to move arguments, ideas, and people to new spaces.

This volume presents the best scholarship from the 19th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association Conference on Argumentation, which took place July 30-August 2, 2015, at Cliff Lodge, Snowbird Resort, in Alta, Utah. The Alta Conference, first held in 1979, is the oldest conference in argumentation studies in the world and biennially brings together a lively group of scholars, representing a variety of countries, with diverse perspectives on the theory and practice of argument. The essays in Recovering Argument invite reflection upon and reconsideration of argumentation’s legacy, present status, and potential roles in social, cultural, and political life. Readers will encounter essays that treat the relationship between argumentation and memory, historical approaches to argumentation, the vitality of public and interpersonal argument, argument’s role in leadership, discursive and presentational forms of argument, and the challenges of difference. Readers also will find these topics addressed from a variety of historical, social-scientific, and critical-interpretive perspectives.