In episode 71 we are joined by John Jasso, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State. After receiving a B.A. and then an M.A. degree in Communication Studies at Kansas State University, John graduated with a PhD in communication from the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of “Merging Pedagogies and Converging Media: Classical Meets Critical in the Digital Age,” Explorations in Media Ecology 12.1&2 (2013): 121–134.
Our conversation focuses on what Jasso calls Plato’s Psychagogic Rhetoric, a phrase that suggests the manner in which Plato deployed (or had Socrates deploy) rhetorical strategies designed to move souls. It is a formulation that frames his dissertation “Psychagogia: A Study in the Platonic Tradition of Rhetoric from Antiquity through the Middle Ages.”
Our discussion extends from Homer to St. Bonaventure, but we focus in some detail on Plato’s Republic and Phaedrus.
