Comm Arts professor puts terror talk under rhetorical microscope
UW–Madison assistant professor of communication arts Susan Zaeske watches too, but her interest is piqued by more than just updates on the hunt for Osama bin Laden or the war in Afghanistan.
Zaeske, who teaches Comm Arts 270 — Great Speakers and Speeches, uses her trained eyes and ears to scrutinize Bush’s arguments, vocal inflections and gestures.
During the past two years, Zaeske has taught her students the ins and outs of famous orators ranging from the likes of towering historical figures Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to relative newcomers such as Ann Richards and Jesse Jackson.
Bush isn’t always part of the class. But after discussing the attacks with her students on the afternoon of Sept. 11, Zaeske decided to scrap the syllabus she had prepared over the summer and reshape the class into one of the most topical offerings in the UW–Madison course book.
“As I talked with them about what happened, they were already comparing (the WTC attack) to Pearl Harbor,” she says, noting that the connection made her wonder what Roosevelt would say in the current situation. “I just did it on the fly because I thought it would be beneficial to what they’re most interested in learning.”
The reshaped class includes sections on crisis rhetoric, uses of religious symbols and imagery and speeches. Bush, bin Laden and protesters are all put under the microscope to see how they create storylines and narratives to deliver messages.
Not all of the examples come off CNN. The crisis unit includes looks at Roosevelt’s declaration of war against the Japanese, John F. Kennedy’s speeches during the Cuban Missile Crisis and former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s address after the Soviet Union downed a commercial jet in 1983.
“Rhetoric has always been used to say, “This is who we are and this is who we are not,'” she says. “It’s an old story with new characters.”
Although classroom innovation comes easily to Zaeske, her college and career choices always led her back to Madison.
The Sheboygan native completed a UW–Madison trifecta, earning an undergraduate degree in journalism and communication arts in 1989, a master’s in rhetorical studies in 1992 and her doctoral degree, also in rhetorical studies, in 1997.
“Even at a young age, I felt drawn to a large university, where it was a little more anonymous,” she says. “But it was also a place where I could find my way and find out who I was.”
However, she nearly pursued a career in journalism, working as a reporter and editor during stints at the Racine Journal- Times, Milwaukee Journal, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Wisconsin State Journal.
Professor Stephen Lucas convinced her to return in 1988 to pursue her doctorate and begin teaching.
“I was tired of writing headlines and I wanted to express my own ideas beyond the forums I had as a journalist,” she says. “I always loved UW–Madison because it allowed me to expand myself in a way I never guessed I could have. Here I was, a small-town girl from Sheboygan and I’m interacting with all of these world-renowned scholars, learning how to think.”
Zaeske taught a number of courses in rhetorical criticism and theory, but found her true niche in 1999 when she won a prestigious Lilly Teaching Fellowship to revive the Comm Arts 270 class.
The offering had been popular under the late Fred Haberman, but had been absent from the course catalog for five years due to a faculty shortage. Her strategy for the course called for broadening its scope to include a wider diversity of perspectives, teaching basic rhetorical theory and criticism and converting visual and audio material for use in new forms of technology, such as PowerPoint presentations and the Web.
Zaeske specializes in the role of women in U.S. antebellum political culture and recently completed a new book about the period, titled “We Have Done What We Could: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity” due next year from University of North Carolina Press.
Outside of class, she spends considerable time listening to audio or videotapes of famous speeches. Her all-time favorite is a 1892 address to Congress by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, entitled “Solitude of Self.” Although the message is melancholy in tone, Zaeske says it’s particularly memorable because of the way Stanton made an argument for political rights based on the philosophical notion of responsibility and ultimate solitude of the individual.
Numerous more recent speakers are also among her favorites, including Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton. Don’t disqualify the newer generation for their rhetorical accomplishments, just because others happen to be writing the speeches, she says.
“It’s a misconception that speech writers are a new phenomena,” she says. “But Julius Caesar, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had them.”
Her impression of Bush, who also uses a cadre of speechwriters, is gradually, but steadily improving. In particular, his Sept. 20 speech to a joint session of Congress may eventually be remembered as a classic.
“I used to think that he was very difficult to listen to,” she says of Bush. “He had no finesse, no confidence and occasionally he was ineloquent to the point of being incomprehensible. But he’s really transformed himself and found his moment, at least rhetorically.”
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