Social Advocacy and Ethical Life

As the Bridge Humanities Teaching Fellow at the University of South Carolina, I taught Social Advocacy and Ethical Life. The course was an interdisciplinary humanities course that combined ethics, public speaking, rhetoric, and communication. The combination produced impressive work from students and cemented my belief in the efficacy of interdisciplinary teaching. Though students’ speeches were ephemeral, this section will include my syllabus and representative assignments.  

Finding a Topic

As was often the case in South Carolina, the beginning of the semester was interrupted by a hurricane. I adapted my lecture on choosing strong research topics into an at home assignment. Fortunately, the assignment is representative of the challenges students faced as they studied advocacy for the first time.

Sample assignment – Speeches

The strongest student work that this class produced was, unfortunately, not recorded. Below, I include the assignments for all three speeches. Students rose to the challenge and gave excellent, progressively complex speeches on such varied topics as veteran mental health, holistic medicine, student athletics, and interfaith tolerance.