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Northwestern School of Communication

Robert Hariman

(he/him)
Owen L. Coon Professor of Argumentation and Debate; Director, Master of Science of Communication
CV
Current work includes continuing although spotty involvement in the history of rhetoric and the study of modern visual public culture, and a new, long-term project that attempts to reboot formalism as a post-critical method for engagement with the existential problems of the Anthropocene.

Department

Communication Studies

Area(s) of Expertise

Public Discourse, Rhetoric, Visual Culture
Robert Hariman

Robert Hariman joined the Northwestern faculty in 2004. His scholarship focuses on the role of public art and artistry in human affairs, particularly with regard to political judgment and the discursive constitution of modern society. Hariman teaches courses in rhetorical theory and the critical study of public culture. In addition to his book publications, Hariman has numerous book chapters and journal articles in several disciplines, and his work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese and French.

Education

  • PhD, Communication Studies, University of Minnesota
  • BA, Communication, Macalester College

Selected Publications

  • The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship, co-authored with John Louis Lucaites (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)
  • Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric: The Texture of Political Action, co-edited with Ralph Cintron, Studies in Rhetoric Culture, vol. 7 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015)
  • No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy, co-authored with John Louis Lucaites (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
  • Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice, edited volume, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003)
  • Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations, co-edited with Francis A. Beer (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996)
  • Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
  • Popular Trials: Rhetoric, Mass Media, and the Law, edited volume (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990)
  • “Prudence and the Anthropocene,” Journal for the History of Rhetoric 27 (2024): 204-235
  • “Color Blind: Political Realism, Racism, Rhetorical Salience and Strategies of Non-Knowing,” with Francis A. Beer, Rhetoric and Public Affairs 25 (2022): 1-33.
  • “Dark Embodiment: The Silhouette as Rhetorical Form,” Rhetorica Scandinavica 26 (2022): 5-22
  • “Image World, Memory Space: Photographic Spectatorship as a Mode of Remembrance,” in Image, History and Memory: Central and Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective, ed. Michał Haake and Piotr Juszkiewicz (New York: Routledge, 2022), 121-130
  • “Public Culture,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, ed. Jon Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), http://communication.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-32
  • “What is a Chiasmus? Or, Why the Abyss Stares Back,” in Chiasmus and Culture, ed. Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 45-68
  • “Political Parody and Public Culture,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94.3 (2008): 247-272
  • “Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 35 (2002): 267-296

Courses

  • The Public Image
  • Environmental Art and Advocacy
  • Rhetoric, Democracy, and Empire in Classical Athens
  • Classical Rhetoric and Its Afterlives
  • Visual Rhetoric