Title
On Critical-Rhetorical Pedagogy: Dialoging with Schindler's List
Abstract
The two prevailing critical paradigms in rhetorical and media studies can be characterized as artistic and ideological. Despite their evident differences, both of these analytical modes impose a final signified on the text. That is to say, each approach insists its critical interpretation is authoritative. Consequently, neither mode is particularly well suited to the broad aims of critical pedagogy, which values the dynamic and always-unfinished interplay among text, citizen-student, and other. Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of dialogism, this essay offers an alternative critical paradigm that values the lived experiences of students and promotes agentive citizenship. This paradigm, which we have dubbed critical-rhetorical pedagogy (CRP), conceptualizes criticism dialogically and situates it in a much larger network of pedagogical and political discourses. To illustrate the utility of CRP, this essay provisionally sketches how it might be practiced to critically engage Stephen Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List.
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2012.719659
Keywords
Bakhtin, Critical Pedagogy, Dialogism, Ideological Criticism, Schindler's List
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Recommended Citation
Ott, Brian L., and Carl R. Burgchardt. "On critical-rhetorical pedagogy: Dialoging with Schindler's List." Western Journal of Communication 77, no. 1 (2013): 14-33.
Journal Title
Western Journal of Communication
