Showing papers in "Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2019"
TL;DR: The authors argue that given the force of colonial violence and the politics of erasure, it is imperative to deeply address what Rhetorical Studies has inherited from academic predecessors and to uncover...
Abstract: Given the force of colonial violence and the politics of erasure, I argue it is imperative to deeply address what Rhetorical Studies has inherited from academic predecessors and to uncover ...
36 citations
TL;DR: This article made the case that rhetorical studies as a field and the Quarterly Journal of Speech as the journal of record for that field are racist, and that racism need not imply that evildoer.
Abstract: This introductory essay makes the case that rhetorical studies as a field and the Quarterly Journal of Speech as the journal of record for that field are racist. Racism need not imply that evildoer...
36 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the normalized characteristics of whiteness embedded in the disciplinary norms and forms of knowledge production in the field of Rhetorical Studies are examined and analyzed. But the focus of this paper is not on whiteness, but whiteness itself.
Abstract: In this essay, I interrogate the normalized characteristics of whiteness embedded in the disciplinary norms and forms of knowledge production in the field of Rhetorical Studies. I attend to...
20 citations
TL;DR: Rhetorical scholarship must move in new linguistic and decolonial directions, to illustrate those languages/cultures/nationalities that have been marginalized in academia as discussed by the authors. But it is not easy to do so.
Abstract: Rhetorical scholarship must move in new linguistic and decolonial directions, to illustrate those languages/cultures/nationalities that have been marginalized in academia. English language ...
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that with increased technological access and the ability to reconfigure norms of expertise, the aerial view presents both opportunities for civic engagement and counter-hegemonic potential.
Abstract: We live in a world increasingly photographed from satellites, planes, and drones. Many scholars have viewed aerial imagery through a dystopian lens, largely due to its use by the state and its legacy of military applications. While problematic uses of aerial images persist, this paper theorizes rhetorical potentialities of aerial imagery. We posit how aerial imagery creates these potentialities through strategies related to questions of visibility, scale, and aesthetics. Using case studies that illuminate these strategies, we demonstrate how they can be used to resist state and corporate interests, constitute new social movements, and invite contemplation of otherwise repellent political subject matter. Ultimately, we argue that with increased technological access and the ability to reconfigure norms of expertise, the aerial view presents both opportunities for civic engagement and counter-hegemonic potential.
14 citations
TL;DR: Scholarship of counterpublics has long illuminated the rhetorical dynamics whereby the dominant public excludes marginalized groups from the public sphere and labels them undeserving of coe....
Abstract: Scholarship of counterpublics has long illuminated the rhetorical dynamics whereby the dominant public excludes marginalized groups from the public sphere and labels them undeserving of coe...
13 citations
TL;DR: Walt Whitman's poetry challenges how rhetorical scholars are accustomed to studying democracy as mentioned in this paper, adopting an ontology similar to, and a vocabulary inspired by, the Bhagavad Gita.
Abstract: Walt Whitman’s poetry challenges how rhetorical scholars are accustomed to studying democracy. Adopting an ontology similar to, and a vocabulary inspired by, the Bhagavad Gita, Whitman root...
13 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the yoga concepts of the "path of withdrawal (sannyasa)" with the ''path of action (karma)'' in order to understand the humanistic understanding of duty.
Abstract: In other words, whereas the debt of gratitude tends to narrow our focus to one privileged source of some past “gift” and then tie us in bonds of guilt and subordination to that act of giving, santosha widens our horizon and acknowledges the infinite connections between all things and reminds us that we are all, at some level, equal in producing our world as we move into the future together. The question then is not “Whom do I owe?” but “Whom can I help?” It redirects our consciousness to the pragmatic judgments we make in the present to bring about a desired future. Although Engels does not stress this point, I believe at the heart of his reorientation is a revived commitment to a humanistic understanding of duty. He makes this clear in the closing pages comparing the yoga concepts of the “path of withdrawal (sannyasa)” with the “path of action (karma)” (157). He writes: “Karma yoga is based on the recognition that just as we come from the All, we have duties to the All. We cannot be solely concerned with ourselves because we are of this world” (157). Here, duty does not mean some blind obedience to authority and hierarchy, a kind of duty that would have us die for blood and soil; rather, duty means the responsibilities we take upon ourselves because in recognizing the ties that bind us together we become committed to promoting the common welfare of all. This is the kind of duty that Frederick Douglass appealed to at the end of his speech, when he addressed “everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind” (617). With the simple phrase, Douglass sidesteps the question of debt and ingratitude entirely; his focus now turns toward what timely actions we can make in the present in order to achieve the common ideals of the future. Engels sees the practice and ethics of yoga as a means to this reorientation, but this path is but one of many; what matters is our acceptance of the duty that comes with being a part of the common world, not because we owe it a debt but because we are willing to fight make that world more loving, more just, and perhaps even more beautiful.
12 citations
TL;DR: A cascade of bodies dressed in black descended on the doorsteps of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 29, 2017 as mentioned in this paper, in the presence of biting wind and bone-chilling rain.
Abstract: Amidst biting wind and bone-chilling rain on April 29, 2017, a cascade of bodies dressed in black descended on the doorsteps of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Situated i...
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the political pornification of Spanish politician Teresa Rodriguez and assess the rhetorical strategies she and her supporters used to respond to the controversy and reveal the ways in which the conditions that produce political pornography may be endemic to democratic culture.
Abstract: In this article, the authors examine the political pornification of Spanish politician Teresa Rodriguez and assess the rhetorical strategies she and her supporters used to respond to the controversy. The authors theorize a “fungibility frame” within which women candidates and citizens are treated as interchangeable, violable, and devalued. Rodriguez and her supporters resisted this frame, asserting women's individuality, agency, and inherent value. This case underscores the ways in which political pornification impacts not just candidates and public figures, but also private citizens. When pornified, women are presented not as individuals with political agency but as objects which may be manipulated for political and commercial gain. Additionally, this analysis reveals the ways in which the conditions that produce political pornification may be endemic to democratic culture.
10 citations
TL;DR: In US v. Williams (2008), the Supreme Court upheld the PROTECT Act; this law's "pandering provision" prohibits the distribution and solicitation of child pornography, but does not distinguish betwe...
Abstract: In US v. Williams (2008), the Supreme Court upheld the PROTECT Act; this law's “pandering provision” prohibits the distribution and solicitation of child pornography, but does not distinguish betwe...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore a word-based public art project that enables varied interactions in the context of historic district codes, and explore its quotidian presence and its technical violation of the historic district code.
Abstract: This essay explores a word-based public art project. In its quotidian presence and its technical violation of historic district codes, the project enables varied interactions. The project requires ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the politics of seeing that takes place in creating the site and sight of North Korea by citizen cartographers, and historicize these processes of seeing in Cold War and post-Cold War visual culture.
Abstract: In recent years, satellite mapping of North Korea, especially of its labor camps, has become an important form of evidence of human rights violations, used by transnational advocacy groups to lobby Western governments for change. A phenomenon of “citizen cartography” has emerged where non-expert humanitarian actors use commercially available software like Google Earth to “infiltrate” the borders of North Korea. This essay interrogates the politics of seeing that takes place in creating the site and sight of North Korea by citizen cartographers, and historicizes these processes of seeing in Cold War and post-Cold War visual culture. Specifically, citizen cartography of North Korea engages in rhetorics of resolution, where the cartographer continually searches for a better, clearer view of the ground below, while still constrained by corporate software and logics of state sovereignty that make it difficult to “resolve” the problem of forced labor.
TL;DR: In the spirit of employing the "hashtag" as what Suey Park and Eunsong Kim describe as a "tool to advance conversation and disseminate tools for decolonial action,” as discussed by the authors did a cursory search of Twitt...
Abstract: In the spirit of employing the “hashtag” as what Suey Park and Eunsong Kim describe as a “tool to advance conversation and disseminate tools for decolonial action,”1 I did a cursory search of Twitt...
TL;DR: In Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity as mentioned in this paper, Patricia G. Davis examines how blackness and southernness are co-constructed through memories of the Civil War.
Abstract: The version of Civil War history that I learned as an elementary schooler in middle Tennessee went something like this: white men from the North fought to preserve the Union and white men from the South fought to protect “states’ rights.” Both sides fought honorably in defense of noble causes, but, because of the region’s industrial might, the North eventually won. In school, the conflict was framed as a tragic mistake, one that could have been avoided if the Confederacy had been left alone. Conspicuously missing from this version of the Civil War is the history of slavery in the United States. In this retelling, the millions of African Americans who struggled to secure their freedom both during and after the conflict are completely overlooked. My elementary school introduction to Civil War history is not unique and is certainly not confined to the southeastern portion of the United States – a Pennsylvanian recently told me that “the Civil War wasn’t about slavery.” Put plainly, dominant memories of the Civil War actively obscure the historical agency of black communities, especially black southerners. In Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity, Patricia G. Davis examines how blackness and southernness are co-constructed through memories of the Civil War. Building from the well-established premise that practices and places of public memory shape group identities, Davis argues that reconciliationist narratives in popular culture firmly equate southernness with whiteness (8–9). Take the South’s commemorative architecture, for instance; the hundreds of Confederate monuments standing on public property have “rendered the region’s memorial landscape both a symbolic and material paean to southern whiteness” (7). From antebellum plantation tours to The Dukes of Hazzard, conventional Civil War memories stress whiteness as benevolent and normative, while blackness operates as a foil: “servile, one-dimensional, hidden in the background, and silenced” (150). Yet, as Davis painstakingly demonstrates throughout Laying Claim, dissonant memories of the Civil War can challenge hegemonic narratives that mark southernness as essentially white. This, in fact, is Davis’ central argument: “there is a form of African American identification with the South centered on Civil War memory, and... this sense of belonging to the region is most productively constructed and articulated through a variety of vernacular cultural practices” (4). By examining resistant performances of Civil War memory, Davis reveals that southern identity is not monolithically white, nor is it necessarily tethered to the geographic region. Instead, twenty-first-century southernness is characterized “by the emergence of fluid, decentered, and fragmented identities” (150, emphasis in original). While there are multiple reasons for this change, not the least of which is the South’s rapidly shifting demography, Laying Claim focuses principally on the vernacular histories of African American communities in the South. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork at Civil War sites and interviews with vernacular historians, Davis organizes Laying Claim around five central questions:
TL;DR: The journal Nature, the journal that in 1953 published James Watson and Francis Crick's double-helix model of DNA, also published numerous pieces about crystallographer Rosalind Franklin this paper.
Abstract: Nature, the journal that in 1953 published James Watson and Francis Crick’s double-helix model of DNA, also published numerous pieces about crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. Franklin’s co...
TL;DR: For example, during his first year in office, President Reagan sought to authorize the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia over strong con...
Abstract: During his first year in office President Reagan sought to authorize the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), an advanced weapons system, to Saudi Arabia over strong con...
TL;DR: Serious considerations of intersectionality are critical to the future and viability of feminist rhetorical scholarship and scholars have made impressive methodological shifts in response to the #MeToo movement as mentioned in this paper...
Abstract: Serious considerations of intersectionality are critical to the future and viability of feminist rhetorical scholarship and scholars have made impressive methodological shifts in response t...
TL;DR: The plight of women and girls fleeing violence, sexual assault, and murder in their home countries and crossing the U.S/Mexico border has caught the attention of political leaders and ordinary peo...
Abstract: The plight of women and girls fleeing violence, sexual assault, and murder in their home countries and crossing the U.S./Mexico border has caught the attention of political leaders and ordinary peo...
TL;DR: In 2018, the National Communication Association (NCA) erupted in controversy when Martin et al. as discussed by the authors introduced the issue of sexual harassment in the NCCA's annual meeting.
Abstract: At this specific moment, the issue likely needs no introduction; but some day, years from now, it will. In June 2019, the National Communication Association (NCA) erupted in controversy when Martin...
TL;DR: Oral contraception (e.g., "the pill" as discussed by the authors ) is an iconic technology and everyday object, which has shaped women's embodied experiences and notions of self, and has been widely used in women's empowerment.
Abstract: Oral contraception (e.g., “the pill”), an iconic technology and everyday object, has shaped women's embodied experiences and notions of self. Feminist remembrances of the pill often credit it with ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that Barack Obama's immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of America,” can be seen as a kind of self-reference.
Abstract: I argue that Barack Obama’s immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of America...
TL;DR: In this article, Brin's February 2013 TED Talk, "Why Google Glass?" is an example of technoliberal rhetoric that offers a constricted vision of civic attention, and it is used as a justification for the Google Glass project.
Abstract: Sergey Brin’s February 2013 TED Talk, “Why Google Glass?,” is an example of technoliberal rhetoric that offers a constricted vision of civic attention. Technoliberalism, the intensification of neol...
TL;DR: The case of Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt as discussed by the authors was the most important abortion case to come before the United States Supreme Court in 25 years and it was also the first time that three women were seated on the court.
Abstract: Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was the most important abortion case to come before the United States Supreme Court in 25 years. It was also the first time that three women were seated ...
TL;DR: As the field of rhetoric widens, traditional disciplinary questions have been textured by challenges to the idea of a universal human rhetor as mentioned in this paper, and the figure of the human has held a central place in rhe...
Abstract: As the field of rhetoric widens, traditional disciplinary questions have been textured by challenges to the idea of a universal human rhetor. The figure of the human has held a central place in rhe...
TL;DR: Burke visited the Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Road to Victory: A Procession of Photographs of the Nation at War" in the summer of 1942, and most likely did not expect to le...
Abstract: When Kenneth Burke visited the Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Road to Victory: A Procession of Photographs of the Nation at War” in the summer of 1942, he most likely did not expect to le...
TL;DR: In the mid 1950s, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was a rhetorical colossus. Within the closed doors of a hearing, committee members displayed a rhetorical mastery of procedural, topi...
Abstract: In the mid 1950s, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was a rhetorical colossus. Within the closed doors of a hearing, committee members displayed a rhetorical mastery of procedural, topi...
TL;DR: Johnson v. M'intosh (1823) as discussed by the authors was the seminal case in establishing and enforcing the principles that now govern this nation at the intersections of land, knowledge, and race.
Abstract: To say that the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. M’intosh (1823) fundamentally altered the history of America is to understate the case’s importance in establishing and enforcing the principles that now govern this nation at the intersections of land, knowledge, and race. That case, in which the Court unequivocally supported settler colonialism by holding that title to land passed through the United States federal government, was superior to that passed through the Piankeshaw Indians, articulated the property interests that arise from the Doctrine of Discovery and aboriginal title respectively. The Court reasoned that European settler colonizers, because they created the nation’s architectures of sovereignty and rules of ownership through the Constitution and property law, were legally and intellectually superior to the inhabitants of the Americas, who had only a “right of occupancy” in their lands. The Doctrine of Discovery, originally set forth in the 1493 Papal Bull “Inter Caetera,” naturalized settler colonial taking as a foundational principle of colonization in the Americas and marked land and knowledge claims that did not originate from Euro-American property law as secondary to those that did. Yet its impact was not limited to the Americas. Settler colonies all over the world embraced the Doctrine of Discovery and its corollaries as vehicles for expanding national boundaries
TL;DR: Although neither Billings nor Moscowitz considers themselves rhetoricians, Billings is among the most published sports media scholars in the world and Director of the University of Alabama Program in...
Abstract: Although neither Billings nor Moscowitz considers themself rhetoricians—Billings is among the most published sports media scholars in the world and Director of the University of Alabama Program in ...