COMM 398V: Constructing Political Identity -Winter Course, Advanced Studies

Advanced Studies Course, Winter 2014 Term!

This course focuses on the analysis of political speeches, memoirs, and campaigns to concentrate on how prominent political figures define themselves through language. The course engages with problems like: How do presidential candidates define themselves while representing 300 million people? How do candidates cope with the complex ideologies and positions animating ordinary Americans? How do advertisements and the internet mediate candidate identity? And how do issues of race, gender, and class factor into modern campaigns? 

Assignments in the course are both applied and analytical: students will engage with the language and memoirs of their favorite political figures, and practice developing articulations of their own political identities.