ABSTRACT British rhetorical theorists demonstrate a persistent interest in Demosthenes, but their interpretations of his significance reflect different understandings of rhetoric. This article uses reception theory to illuminate how British depictions of Demosthenes at different moments in history reflect writers’ values and rhetorical aims. The focus on Demosthenes as a model of rhetorical prowess becomes particularly important for nineteenth-century British theorists who conceive of rhetoric as an individualistic display of linguistic virtuosity. Viewing Demosthenes through the lens of reception history reveals the inherent instability of a disciplinary history that is not only shaped by important figures, but also constructs those figures in ways that reflect shifting scholarly values.

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways by which former Czech president Václav Havel and former Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus approached their rhetorical roles in the postcommunist climate of a splintering Czechoslovakia. The main argument revolves around how Klaus and Havel divergently employed national memory to make historical arguments about the Czech past and how these symbols could be marshaled to navigate the uncertain waters of postsocialism. Ultimately, Klaus employs a rhetorical strategy of “rupture” with the Czech communist past, while Havel attempts a strategy of “repair.” The tensions between such rhetorical strategies evidence the ways in which Czech intellectuals-turned-public officials vied for the position of chief public historian and national storyteller for the Czech nation.

ABSTRACT This response characterizes each of the articles in this special issue as instances of “hacking”—which is to say they create new historiographical approaches by getting inside established modes and subjects of rhetorical history, finding and exploiting their incongruities or vulnerabilities.

Abstract This essay is an attempt at primary resource recovery to inform an under-studied moment from the Civil Rights Movement—the 1963 Mississippi Freedom Vote. Analysis of these primary texts reveals how the campaign used religious narratives and discourse to create political efficacy and agency among disenfranchised voters in Mississippi. It is this rhetorical transformation that holds the key to understanding how and why over 80,000 blacks who had never before participated in any sustained and organized political campaign chose to do so in the fall of 1963. Exploring these texts and events with a nuanced eye for religious and political discourse reveals how a rhetorical transformation from religious believers to political agents came about, and why it was successful in an overshadowed moment from the Civil Rights Movement.

Abstract A case study of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, can inform nineteenth-century North American rhetorical history by exposing the interplay of rhetorical theory and practice in an educational setting during the antebellum period. Evidence of this interplay emerges in the subject matter of students' quarterly exhibition and commencement orations and of their literary society presentations from 1823 to 1845. When considered as a curricular whole, this evidence suggests a symbiotic relationship between the primarily moralistic and belletristic discourse favored by the college's curriculum and the more broadly civic judicial and deliberative discourse favored by its literary societies.