In the Classroom with Kenneth Burke

Teaching students to be "symbol-wise" about the world is vital not simply to students in a successful class but to citizens in a functioning nation. Humans make sense of their world through language, and Kenneth Burke, the "word man," spent a lifetime considering how language symbols help us better understand ourselves and our interactions with others. Becoming symbol-wise is a skill teachable-and relevant-to any student of communal life in these divisive times. IN THE CLASSROOM WITH KENNETH BURKE pulls together some of the long-standing icons of Burkean pedagogy and some of its newest voices to show how any teacher can teach Burke's concepts of symbolic analysis, updated for modern classrooms and incorporating his ideas into full courses, assignment sequences, or single units.

The authors share helpful pointers, syllabi, and lesson plans that make teaching Burke accessible to students in everything from a first-year composition course to an advanced graduate program-in rhetoric, writing and communication, political science, education, even the health professions. IN THE CLASSROOM WITH KENNETH BURKE provides practical approaches to and passionate arguments for teaching Burke's ideas and methods to new generations of students, who now, more than ever, must effectively engage with complex issues of identity, power, and conflict.

Contributors include James Beasley, Elvera Berry, David Blakesley, Bryan Crable, Rachel Chapman Daugherty, Ann George, Annie Laurie Nichols, Kris Rutten, Jack Selzer, Jarron Slater, Jouni Tilli, Laura Van Beveren, Shannon Walters, and M. Elizabeth Weiser.

Ann George is Professor of English at Texas Christian University. Her most recent book is Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change: `. M. Elizabeth Weiser is Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University. Her most recent book is Museum Rhetoric: Building Civic Identity in National Spaces.