Rhetoric is never empty. Words always matter. Knowing how to use rhetoric effectively and responsibly—whether in speech, writing, or creative expression—is essential to healthy democratic deliberation.
The Center for Democratic Deliberation (CDD), founded in 2006, is a nonpartisan interdisciplinary center that promotes research and programming focused on rhetorical aspects of democratic deliberation. We study how people use language and communication, speaking and writing, argument and persuasion, or dialogue and debate to impact the quality of civic discourse.
The CDD thus advocates a variety of humanistic resources that encourage constructive norms of agreement and disagreement, of consensus and dissent, of civic engagement and decision-making. We invite you to learn more about our research and programming as one of two centers of excellence within the McCourtney Institute for Democracy.
CDD Director
Ekaterina V. Haskins is a Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Visual Studies. She investigates official and grassroots memory practices as important sites of civic engagement and political rhetoric. She is the author of three monographs, including Popular Memories: Commemoration, Participatory Culture, and Democratic Citizenship (The University of South Carolina Press, 2015) and Remembering the War, Forgetting the Terror: Appeals to Family Memory in Putin’s Russia (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024) as well as numerous articles on rhetoric, memory, and visual culture. Her current project explores how Soviet political terror is being remembered (and forgotten) in Russia and the former republics of the USSR.
Faculty Advisory Board
Members of the Faculty Advisory Board advise the Director, particularly on matters of programming. Members are invited to serve by the Director. Terms of service typically last two academic years.
Current members:
- Joshua Trey Barnett, Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
- Jessica O’Hara, Teaching Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Co-Director of Rhetoric and Civic Life
- Mariana Ortega, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- John “Jack” Selzer, Liberal Arts Professor Emeritus of English
- Karrieann Soto Vega, Assistant Professor of English
- Kirt Wilson, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Department Head, Communication Arts and Sciences
- Xiaoye You, Liberal Arts Professor of English
Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement
The CDD supports the work of Jack Selzer and his project, The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement. The website aims to supply teachers, students, and citizens with the raw materials necessary to sustain their own investigations of the civil rights movement. It includes primary materials, background information, and research assistance related to individual speeches or songs or documents or images associated with the African American freedom struggle, especially from 1955 to 1972.