Scott R. Stroud
Dr. Scott R. Stroud (Ph.D., Temple University, 2006) is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and Program Director of Media Ethics at the Center for Media Engagement. Working at the juncture of rhetoric and philosophy, much of his research extends the thought of the American pragmatists into the realms of rhetorical experience and political activity. He is particularly interested in the connections between artful communication, individual flourishing, religion, and democracy. His book, John Dewey and the Artful Life (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), engages these themes in detail. His most recent book, Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), provides a first-of-its-kind reappraisal of Kant and his relation to the rhetorical tradition. His most recent book is The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: Ambedkar, Dewey, and the Rhetoric of Reconstruction (University of Chicago Press 2023), which was also published as The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: An Intellectual Biography of B.R. Ambedkar by HarperCollins India (2023). It tells the story of Bhimrao Ambedkar’s engagement with Deweyan pragmatism and how it shaped his innovative rhetoric in pursuit of social justice in India. Stroud’s other work also engages topics in comparative/non-western rhetoric, religious rhetoric, narrative theory, and communication ethics. His research has been published in venues such as Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Philosophy & Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the Journal of Communication and Religion, the Western Journal of Communication, Advances in the History of Rhetoric, and the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. In 2014-2015, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. ARTICLES AND RESOURCES PROVIDED ON THIS ACADEMIA.EDU PAGE ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH USES ONLY.
Phone: 512-471-6561
Address: 1 University Station A1105
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
Phone: 512-471-6561
Address: 1 University Station A1105
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
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Books by Scott R. Stroud
“John Dewey and the Artful Life carefully reconstructs John Dewey’s account of aesthetic experience, links it to forms of moral cultivation, and extends pragmatism’s meliorist project. Joining philosophy and practice, Scott Stroud both advances our understanding of pragmatist aesthetics and points us toward ways of everyday living that would adjust us better to our circumstances and work, call us to greater mindfulness about the moral possibilities of our situated presents, and help us communicate in a fuller manner aesthetically and ethically.” —Peter Simonson, University of Colorado at Boulder
“Scott Stroud’s John Dewey and the Artful Life is an attempt to respond to our contemporary lives of Thoreauvian quiet desperation. Though he trades heavily on the aesthetics of John Dewey, Stroud does more than present a historical analysis. He engages Dewey’s ideas in the work of bringing artfulness to the full range of our everyday experiences as a mode of self-cultivation. The upshot is that, for Stroud, philosophy can direct us to the sorts of aesthetic experiences that can help ameliorate our social inertia and cynicism. Through argument and example, Stroud builds a strong case for his pragmatic uses of Dewey’s thought.” —Douglas Anderson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
“Scott Stroud’s innovative investigations of the intimacies of aesthetic and moral experience invite his readers to engage a type of artful mindfulness that is at once integrative and melioristic.” —Larry Hickman, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
“Scott Stroud's fine volume is the most complete and wide-ranging treatment of Dewey's aesthetics ever to appear. In the best pragmatist spirit, it uses its comprehensive scholarship to help us reconstruct not only art but many dimensions of our shared human experience.” —Crispin Sartwell, Dickinson College"
A Practical Guide to Ethics: Living and Leading with Integrity helps students develop their skills in ethical decision-making and put those decisions into effective practice. Its unique focus on leadership, especially the moral dimensions of understanding one’s own values, teaches students to understand and, through dialog and negotiation, communicate their own beliefs as a step to building coalitions with those who may hold different views. It is also distinctive in combining ethical theory with both multicultural ethics (Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, feminism) and a practical orientation to moral decision-making and leadership.
Articles/Chapters by Scott R. Stroud
with those they consider opponents or foes. In the increasingly embittered partisan environment animating so many democracies, this paradoxical demand justifies more attention. This article explores the challenges of democracy among polarized and divided groups by engaging the political theory of Bhimrao Ambedkar’s Navayana pragmatism. Ambedkar, an Indian political figure and thinker who felt the crushing oppression of
caste discrimination, reshapes the pragmatism of John Dewey to better encapsulate the importance of overcoming divisions and injustices while forging a community of shared interests. Using Ambedkar’s merging of the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity into a pragmatist vision of democracy as a habit or way of life, this article demonstrates that justice can be usefully taken as a balancing of values among agreeing and disagreeing citizens. This also leads to a recognition of the tragedy of democracy, or the fact that attending to the end and means of fraternity places limits on what one group can do to their opponents in the pursuit of freedom or equality.
and the reality of polarizing differences and injustices. Harsh criticism both seems a useful response to societal problems and appears to undermine the search for this ideal of unity. This article engages Bhimrao Ambedkar, the Indian statesman and anti-caste philosopher, to explore this tension in democratic rhetoric. By placing his harsh critique of Hinduism in Riddles in Hinduism in conversation with his crafting of fraternity and love as ideals in The Buddha and His Dhamma, we can perceive the tense dialectic between the democratic injunction to seek community
with opponents and the very human impulse to harshly criticize those perpetuating injustice. Analyzing archival drafts of his work that capture his processes of revision and invention, I extract a sense of tentative critique as an entailed form of Ambedkar’s reconstructive rhetoric. Such a tentative rhetorical style reduces the tensions between loving one’s enemies and harshly criticizing one’s opponents by introducing ways to lessen the impact of excessive critique, showing Ambedkar’s potential as an innovative thinker in the global history of rhetoric.
Full article here (open access):
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/jhr/article/25/1/2/300926/Excessively-Harsh-Critique-and-Democratic-Rhetoric
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/pluralist/article/17/1/15/294093/Recovering-the-Story-of-Pragmatism-in-India
*Citation:
Bruun Overgaard, C. S., Dudo, A., Lease, M. Masullo, G. M., Stroud, N. J., Stroud, S. R., & Woolley, S. (2021). “Building Connective Democracy: Interdisciplinary Solutions to the Problem of Polarisation,” The Routledge Companion to Media Misrepresentation and Populism, Howard Tumber & Silvio Waisbord (eds.), Routledge, pp. 569-578.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23736992.2019.1672554