Access Type
Open Access Dissertation
Date of Award
January 2016
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
First Advisor
Ellen Barton
Abstract
Applying a public sphere approach to Wayne State, I argue that the university has defined itself as a public subject within public debates about race, educational access, and economic development in the city of Detroit, even when such commitments to its local urban public sphere have existed uneasily alongside its ambition to function as a research university with a primary research mission within a wider public sphere of peer research universities. I focus on Wayne State University’s urban mission and open for consideration the ways the university has both expanded and contracted its relationships to its local and academic public spheres in the past century and a half. This argument is developed by tracing the past, present, and possible future of the University’s urban mission through readings of what I identify as institutional texts—texts created by, within, or on behalf of the University which make legible the ways in which Wayne State’s role within its constituent publics has been continuously articulated and rearticulated since its founding nearly 150 years ago. The work in this dissertation contributes to scholarship in publics theory and public rhetoric, first, by arguing that tensions between publics are legibly inscribed in institutional texts; and second, by demonstrating a critical methodology for understanding institutions as public subjects.
Recommended Citation
Mcginnis, Michael, "Public Subjects: Wayne State, Institutional Texts, And Public Rhetoric" (2016). Wayne State University Dissertations. 1403.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/1403