Co-winner, 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award
Claims that students are too sensitive are familiar on and around college campuses. The ideas of cancel culture, safe spaces, and political correctness are used to shut down discussion and prevent students from being recognized as stakeholders in higher education and as advocates for their own interests. Further, universities can claim that student activists threaten academic freedom. In Sensitive Rhetorics, Kendall Gerdes puts these claims and common beliefs into conversation with rhetorical theory to argue that critiques of sensitivity reveal a deep societal discomfort with the idea that language is a form of action. Gerdes poses important questions: What kind of harm can language and representation actually do, and how? What responsibilities do college and university teachers bear toward their students? Sensitive Rhetorics explores the answers by surfacing submerged assumptions about higher education, the role of instructors and faculty, and the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.
| ISBN: | 9780822948117 |
| Publication date: | 27th February 2024 |
| Author: | Kendall Gerdes |
| Publisher: | University of Pittsburgh Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 152 pages |
| Series: | Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture |
| Genres: |
Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics Higher education, tertiary education |
Co-winner, 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award
Claims that students are too sensitive are familiar on and around college campuses. The ideas of cancel culture, safe spaces, and political correctness are used to shut down discussion and prevent students from being recognized as stakeholders in higher education and as advocates for their own interests. Further, universities can claim that student activists threaten academic freedom. In Sensitive Rhetorics, Kendall Gerdes puts these claims and common beliefs into conversation with rhetorical theory to argue that critiques of sensitivity reveal a deep societal discomfort with the idea that language is a form of action. Gerdes poses important questions: What kind of harm can language and representation actually do, and how? What responsibilities do college and university teachers bear toward their students? Sensitive Rhetorics explores the answers by surfacing submerged assumptions about higher education, the role of instructors and faculty, and the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.
Sensitive Rhetorics features in the following genres: Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Higher education, tertiary education
Sensitive Rhetorics is available in Hardback
Sensitive Rhetorics was written by Kendall Gerdes and published by University of Pittsburgh Press
Sensitive Rhetorics has 152 pages
Yes it is part of Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture series
£44.95