Want to Study the Nature of Power? Start by Moving the Chairs!

Abstract

At first glance, the political-theory classroom can seem like a "philosophy class in disguise." How can we make our text-based classes more "political"? This article considers how three teaching formats - debate, fishbowl, and forum theater - enact different types of power in the classroom and how those enactments necessitate political judgments. In addition to creating the need for political analysis, each of these formats embodies a particular rhetorical strategy often used by political theorists. By physicalizing the argumentative, introspective, and descriptive devices that writers of political theory use, students become better readers of these often old and usually dense texts.