2016 - 2017 / Primera edición

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Browsing 2016 - 2017 / Primera edición by Author "Arnett, Ronald C."

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    SPEAKING TO FULFILL DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY’S FAITH AND REASON
    (2017) Arnett, Ronald C.
    "The COMM 102: Public Speaking course at Duquesne University exemplifies faith and reason teaching. The course is in its tenth year. The Catholic Intellectual Tradition has faith and reason at its heart. We have tried to weave these themes together through readings and our rationale by regularly updating the course to strive for students to recognize their ground and consider faith and reason issues. As a course developed and offered by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, we work from a faith and reason perspective articulated within the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and attentive to narrative ground. We work from an understanding of narrative emerging from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, two well-known and well-regarded Catholic philosophers who suggest a notion of identity and self that emerges from narratives that situate us. They define narrative from an Old Testament perspective of practices, illuminated by stories that become corporately understood. We ask students to choose a narrative from which to explore faith and reason themes throughout the semester. Throughout the decade that Public Speaking has been offered as a faith and reason course at Duquesne, students have read material from Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Spiritan Fathers such as Francis Libermann and Henry Koren. From these voices within the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, students gain depth and breadth of knowledge about the deeply connected and complementary relationship between faith and reason. Students consider these connections in their midterm and final exams as well as in class discussion, a speech evaluation paper due at the end of the semester, and a final speechwriter’s speech written from the position of either Dorothy Day or Pope Francis. The underlying approach of the COMM 102: Public Speaking as a faith and reason course follows the position that the relationship between faith and reason informs our search for truth and our attempt to respond to issues in our public and private lives. We frame this approach within the rhetorical tradition, acknowledging public speaking as an opportunity to announce faith and reason positions related to pubic issues. We approach this goal with students’ identifying narrative ground that situates students’ positions when addressing social issues that demand public discourse and consideration".