In this episode, we explore how the imagination is used in developing rhetorical strategies. We talk about how rhetoric is based on our values and our ability to think about future possibilities. Our guest scholar in this episode is Dr. Carolyn Commer, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech and Director of the Rhetoric and Writing PhD program.

---

Carolyn Commer is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech where she researches the rhetoric of higher education policy, histories of rhetoric, and writing pedagogy. She is also the ⁠Director of the Rhetoric and Writing PhD program⁠.

She has her M.A. in Liberal Arts from ⁠St. John’s College, Annapolis⁠, and her Ph.D. in Rhetoric at ⁠Carnegie Mellon University⁠. She currently teach courses in the Department of English at ⁠Virginia Tech⁠ on ancient and modern histories of rhetoric, critical theory, and professional and technical writing. Her book, ⁠Championing a Public Good: A Call to Advocate for Higher Education⁠, draws from the public record to demonstrate a common set of arguments, metaphors, and rhetorical frames that higher education leaders can use to champion the public value of universities and colleges.

---

While her full catalog of articles and books is far too long to list here, the publications below provide a useful introduction to her scholarship addressing the topic of imagination and rhetoric:

Commer, C. D. (2024). Championing a Public Good: A Call to Advocate for Higher Education. Penn State Press.

Commer, C. D. (2023). Rhetorical Histories in Motu: On Teaching the Octalogs. Journal for the History of Rhetoric, 26(2), 255-266.

Commer, C. D. (2021). Rivaling the rhetoric of accountability: dissociation as an advocacy strategy in US higher education policy. Argumentation and Advocacy, 57(1), 18-36.

---

The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the ⁠⁠Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠VT Publishing⁠⁠ intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: purple-planet.com

In this episode, we explore the role of imagination in social movements and the ongoing fight for justice. We investigate both how the imagination helps us think of how the world might be better and identify the problems of the moment. Our guest scholar in this episode is Dr. Michele Moody-Adams, Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University.

---

Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011. Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, moral objectivity and moral relativism, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. She is the author of Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope, published in 2022. She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy, and a co-author on the multi-author work Against Happiness (May 2023). Her current work also includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, democratic disagreement, and what constitutes an epistemically and morally defensible understanding of history. A special focus of her work on democracy is the connection between democracy and the civic art and architecture of remembrance.

---While her full catalog of articles and books is far too long to list here, the publications below provide a useful introduction to her scholarship addressing the topic of imagination and justice:

Moody-Adams, M. (2022). Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope. Columbia University Press.

Moody-Adams, M. (2015). The enigma of forgiveness. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 49, 161-180.

Moody-Adams, M. M. (2018). Democratic conflict and the political morality of compromise. Nomos, 59, 186-219.

Moody-Adams, M. M. (2017). Moral progress and human agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 20, 153-168.

---

The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the ⁠Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance⁠ and ⁠VT Publishing⁠ intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: purple-planet.com

In this episode, we look into how our imagination develops over the course of our lives, starting as children. This includes thinking through how education influences our imaginative capacity. Our guest scholar in this episode is Dr. Paul Harris, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education at Harvard University.

---

Dr. Paul Harris is interested in the early development of cognition, emotion, and imagination. After studying psychology at the University of Sussex and the University of Oxford, he taught at the University of Lancaster, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the London School of Economics. In 1980, he moved to Oxford where he became a professor of developmental psychology and fellow of St John's College.

During the 1980s, his research focused primarily on children’s understanding of mental states, including emotion. The findings were gathered together in a book published in 1989, Children and Emotion (translated into seven European languages) as well as two edited volumes (Developing Theories of Mind and Children’s Understanding of Emotion). In the 1990s, he studied the development of pretend play and imagination, culminating in a book, The Work of the Imagination, published in 2000 and an edited volume (Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific and Religious thinking in Children). In 2001, he migrated to Harvard University, where he holds the Victor S. Thomas Professorship of Education

Currently, he is studying how far children rely on their own first-hand observation or, alternatively, trust what other people tell them—especially when they try to understand a domain of knowledge in which first-hand observation is difficult. His latest book, Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn from Others, synthesizes a broad range of findings on this topic. It has received the Eleanor Maccoby Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the Cognitive Development Society Book Award.

---

While his full catalog of articles and books is far too long to list here, the publications below provide a useful introduction to his scholarship addressing the topic of imagination:

Harris, P. L. (2000). The work of the imagination. Blackwell Publishing.

Harris, P. L. (2022). Children's imagination. Cambridge University Press.

Harris, P. L. (2021). Early constraints on the imagination: The realism of young children. Child Development, 92(2), 466-483.

---

The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the ⁠Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance⁠ and ⁠VT Publishing⁠ intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: purple-planet.com