Ralph Cintron, associate professor of English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, will present the Center for Democratic Deliberation’s 2022 Kenneth Burke Lecture.  Join us for the lecture online or in person at the Hintz Family Alumni Center.

The intensity of the question "Is democracy under attack?" seems to be consuming our moment. Academic books such as Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start and Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die are now bestsellers. CNN airs special programs on the topic, such as Trumping Democracy. MSNBC poses the question nightly.

This talk will be framed through Kenneth Burke’s “a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing”—which can be extended to: a way of knowing is also a way of not knowing. Ralph Cintron will put on the table all possible motives behind the question Is Democracy Under Attack?

Cintron holds a joint appointment in the Department of English and the Latino and Latin American Studies program at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research and teaching interests are in rhetorical studies; ethnography, particularly urban ethnography; urban theory; theories of transnationalism; political theory, particularly the anthropology of democracy; and social theory. His most recent book is Democracy as Fetish, published in 2020 by Penn State University Press.