Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism

Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism

Gerdes, Kendall

Hardcover

Series: Composition, Literacy, and Culture

General ReferenceGeneral Education

ISBN10: 0822948117
ISBN13: 9780822948117
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: Feb 27 2024
Pages: 152
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
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.

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