Abstract This essay examines Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech “Where Do We Go from Here?” Delivered at the 11th annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the speech addressed the contentious racial politics that permeated the post–Voting Rights landscape. I argue that the speech constituted King’s call for the SCLC to reinvent its ethos—both its “character” and its “dwelling place.” In issuing this call, King cultivated new possibilities for the conceptualization and practice of social justice activism.

Abstract The July 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States was heralded by many as the best possible chance of avoiding both a nuclear armed Iran and another war in the Middle East. Although success is far from certain, the path to the deal was even less so. That the Obama administration achieved a verifiable suspension of Iran’s enrichment activity in November 2013 was itself a major success. What is even more remarkable is that the Obama administration was able to do so while utilizing the same mix of policy tools, diplomacy, and pressure as the George W. Bush administration. The difference in outcomes is especially confusing given the tendency of foreign policy experts to hold that President Obama’s and President Bush’s foreign policy worldviews are relatively identical. I argue that a rhetorical perspective provides the answer. Specifically, President Obama responded to the challenge of Iran’s nuclear program by fashioning a frame of responsibility in a comic register, shifting the obligation to resolve the standoff peacefully onto both Iran and the United States. A crucial aspect of this rhetorical strategy was that it presented the Iranian regime with the option of rejoining the global community (albeit on restricted terms). Thus, Obama presented a hybrid of Kenneth Burke’s tragic and comic frames that chastised the Iranian regime for dangerous behavior while acknowledging American guilt, error, and responsibility for bringing the nuclear standoff to a peaceful end.

Abstract To address U.S.–China communication patterns, this essay juxtaposes discourses of democracy in decline (now prevalent in the United States), democracy as chaos (the chief claim of the Chinese Communist Party), and democracy as hope (embodied in the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong). To illustrate the rhetorical dynamics of these three positions, the essay analyzes coverage of the Hong Kong protests, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s bravura 2014 defense of U.S. imperialism, and the CCP’s blistering responses to both Hagel and the Hong Kong protests. These U.S.–China debates about democracy as decline, chaos, and hope are then situated within global conversations about the merits of democracy and stability in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings and ongoing concerns about the course of globalization. Ultimately, the essay argues for a new political style of prudent internationalism scrubbed free of both U.S.-style moralizing and Chinese-style absolutism.

Abstract The nation’s first presidential inaugural address embodies key tensions shaping the origins and development of republican government. A close reading of the text suggests how Washington sought their resolution by reasserting the importance of virtue to the American experiment.

Abstract In 1790, the new United States faced a tremendous debt. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed policies for funding the debt and establishing the nation’s credit. James Madison agreed about the priority of establishing credit, but he opposed Hamilton’s proposals in the House of Representatives. The arguments each man advanced constituted two distinct rhetorics about debt, two ways of conceiving and responding to the new nation’s obligation. This essay analyzes these arguments as well as one strategy common to both men’s work: the use of an analogy insisting that states should behave as individuals do. These arguments were crucial in constructing conditions of stability in the country’s fledgling credit economy. The essay concludes by considering the legacy both of the analogy and of Hamilton’s rhetoric of credit and Madison’s rhetoric of debt in current debates over the United States’ public debt.

Book Review| March 01 2016 The Great Silent Majority: Nixon's 1969 Speech on Vietnamization. By Karlyn Kohrs Campbell The Great Silent Majority: Nixon's 1969 Speech on Vietnamization. By Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014; pp. 144. $35.00 cloth; $19.95 paper. Mary E. Stuckey Mary E. Stuckey Georgia State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (1): 125–128. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0125 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mary E. Stuckey; The Great Silent Majority: Nixon's 1969 Speech on Vietnamization. By Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2016; 19 (1): 125–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0125 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| March 01 2016 Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909–1916 Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909–1916. By Matthew May. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013; pp. xiii + 176. $39.95 cloth. Mary Anne Trasciatti Mary Anne Trasciatti Hofstra University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (1): 141–144. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0141 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mary Anne Trasciatti; Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909–1916. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2016; 19 (1): 141–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0141 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay analyzes Ralph Ellison’s 1943 “Editorial Comment” from the Negro Quarterly. In the editorial, Ellison highlighted the shortcomings of black America’s attitudinal responses to World War II; as a corrective, he offered “critical participation,” which entailed supporting U.S. and Allied principles while remaining vigilant against white supremacy. I argue that Ellison’s editorial signified more than just a meditation on wartime political strategies; it also marked the articulation of black community. Through a close reading of Ellison’s editorial, I contend that the text grounded black community in the enactment of self-conscious doubleness. Ellison’s appeal to self-conscious doubleness contributed to African American intellectual culture in that it outlined an innovative way for navigating the constraints of “double consciousness.” Rather than regarding doubleness as indicative of a static identity, Ellison engaged it as a source of dynamic rhetorical possibility.

Abstract This essay examines an early alternative to polling, Mass-Observation (M-O), that dramatically reported on the nuances, contradictions, and passions of public opinion during some of the most extraordinary times in British history. Between the Abdication Crisis of 1937 and the start of World War II, M-O’s combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, along with its emphasis on the cultural context of public opinion, produced a richer, more textured, and more deliberative rhetoric of public opinion than the Gallup poll’s survey techniques. In the process, M-O foreshadowed many of today’s scholarly trends, including the reflexive turn in social research, increased skepticism about the knowledge claims of science, and the emergence of more public scholarship.

Abstract In 2008, two of the leading presidential candidates emerged from controversial, outsider religious groups—Mormonism and the black church tradition. Dogged by ongoing questions from the media, each candidate produced a high-profile public address. In this article, I argue that Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” and Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” craft competing visions for American civic piety. Drawing on recent literature in the area of practical piety, I read the speeches as evidence that civic piety may be more than a subordinating, pragmatic agreement between church and state. It may instead be read as a spiritually substantive space of cultural identity formation. I further conclude that the 2008 election reveals a contested piety in the midst of transition, and that this transition points in a relatively well-defined direction for American civil-religious culture.

Abstract The perceived social value of higher education in the United States and the political will to fund it represents a fascinating paradox. This article explores one way that paradox is reconciled. I look closely at the emergence of a specific educational critique in the discourse of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The critique encourages a neoliberal reinvention of higher education. It does so by constructing symbolic representations that align with preexisting public vocabularies and socially shared orientations reflected in images of the Deserving and Undeserving Poor. By illuminating the discursive techniques by which these representations construct an image of what I call the Undeserving Professor, the critique offers significant theoretical and political insights into an underexplored area of rhetoric, neoliberalism, and public affairs.

Book Review| March 01 2015 Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals. By Samuel McCormick. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011; pp. 197. $64.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. James H. Collier James H. Collier Virginia Tech Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2015) 18 (1): 195–198. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.1.0195 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James H. Collier; Letters to Power: Public Advocacy Without Public Intellectuals. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2015; 18 (1): 195–198. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.1.0195 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| December 01 2014 Weapons and Words: Rhetorical Studies of the Gabrielle Giffords Shootings Thomas A. Hollihan; Thomas A. Hollihan Thomas A. Hollihan is Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Francesca Marie Smith Francesca Marie Smith Francesca Marie Smith is a doctoral candidate and Provost's Fellow at the USC Annenberg School. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2014) 17 (4): 577–584. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.17.4.0577 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Thomas A. Hollihan, Francesca Marie Smith; Weapons and Words: Rhetorical Studies of the Gabrielle Giffords Shootings. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2014; 17 (4): 577–584. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.17.4.0577 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2014 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract During his first term as president, Barack Obama delivered four national eulogies at the sites of gun violence tragedies, two of which garnered considerable national attention: one delivered in Tucson, Arizona on January 12, 2011 (following the attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and an assembled crowd), and another in Newtown, Connecticut on December 16, 2012 (following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School). The deaths of innocents, the result of a host of causes, required the president to face the issue of gun violence, help the nation work through the trauma, and create the conditions of civility necessary for policy action. At Tucson, Obama drew from the book of Job to explain that the evil in Tucson happened “for reasons that defy human understanding.” In his Newtown address, Obama replaced the more fatalistic theology of his Tucson memorial with a spirit of perseverance and renewal rooted in 2 Corinthians. In this essay, I suggest that Obama’s eulogy at Newtown serves as a counterpart to the call Obama advanced in the Tucson address. I argue that, though the messages embedded in the Tucson speech serve as a legitimate theological and epistemological check on the presumptions of reason, the Newtown address better met the aspirations of civility because it led to a consideration of policies designed to reduce gun violence.

Abstract In this essay, we examine public responses to Jared Lee Loughner’s attempted assassination of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, focusing in particular on the rhetorical strategies employed by political conservatives. We argue that the most prominent conservative reactions either undermined the potential for reasoned debate and a cohesive narrative regarding the causes of the attack or, by emphasizing Loughner’s agency as an individual, deranged actor, painted the event in a way that failed to provide transformative redemption, foreclosed even the possibility of a rhetorically satisfying sense of justice, and preempted what could otherwise have been a rich, deliberative deployment of civility. We utilize Kenneth Burke’s dramatism in speculating about possible alternative interpretations of the situation, hopeful that such an analysis might offer both the public and the government more effective rhetorical resources for dealing with and even preventing such increasingly common tragedies. In particular, we advocate the use of a hybrid, tragicomic frame—a sort of Burkean Serenity Prayer in which we accept the things we cannot change while still finding the inspiration, strength, and wisdom to respond productively—alongside a multifaceted set of pentadic ratios to address the complex demands created by mental illness.

Abstract Gabrielle Giffords survived, recovered, and returned to public life after being badly wounded by an assassination attempt on January 8, 2011. During this extended ordeal, the Arizona representative mobilized lyric, dramatic, and oratorical resources into a singular, untimely rhetoric. I contend that she invoked the cultural resources of Polyhymnia—a classical figure reminding us of the ingenious, contingent resourcefulness among the symbolic arts—to recover her public agency in a time of deep incivility and public violence. In this essay, I find Giffords’s rhetoric, including her appearances, speeches, interviews, testimony, and editorials from 2011 through 2013, to comprise acts of civil courage.

Abstract The myth of the heroic teacher posits that transformational educators, through sheer will, dedication, and selflessness, can break through complacent school bureaucracies to alter the lives of students born into difficult circumstances. Like all myths, the heroic teacher myth functions as depoliticized speech; it reconciles the competing egalitarian and individualistic components of the American Dream by providing a heroic resolution to indissoluble tensions. As president, Lyndon B. Johnson invoked his experience as an educator to construct a character formally aligned with historic conceptions of ideal teaching. Through this construction, he developed a framework of educational heroism that related synecdochically to the institutional reforms propounded by his landmark education legislation. By analyzing Johnson’s education policy rhetoric between 1964 and 1966, I argue that Johnson’s use of the heroic teacher myth operated to shift the antipoverty emphasis of the Great Society to the center of federal calls for education reform. I conclude by juxtaposing Johnson’s invocation of the myth against that of contemporary education reformers, who marshal the myth toward a less sustainable vision of education that valorizes heroic teachers as the solitary cure for poverty.

Abstract Rhetorical scholarship and cultural commentary have demonstrated that environmentalist voices are consistently associated with apocalyptic rhetoric. However, this association deflects attention from the apocalyptic rhetoric that comes from industry and countermovements to environmentalism. This essay seeks to remedy that oversight by proposing the concept of “industrial apocalyptic” as a significant rhetorical form in environmental controversy. Based on analysis of the rhetoric of the U.S. coal industry, we find that these industrial apocalyptic narratives rely on a burlesque frame to disrupt the categories of establishment and outsider and thus thwart environmental regulation. Ultimately, we argue that industrial apocalyptic co-opts environmentalist appeals for radical change in the service of blocking such change and naturalizes neoliberal ideology as the commonsense discourse of the center.

Abstract On March 2, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Snyder v. Phelps that protests by members of Westboro Baptist Church, a small group of religious fundamentalists committed to communicating their beliefs publicly in spectacular fashion, were protected under the First Amendment based on a dual standard of “public concern”; that is, their speech dealt with sociopolitical issues and their speech attracted media attention. This rhetorical conflation of sociopolitical issues with subjects of media interest provides legal encouragement for the creation of media spectacles on the part of hate groups and other ideologues and discourages the development of the very public reason taken for granted by the Court. To defend this claim, we first provide a brief history of the Westboro Baptist Church and its strategic manipulation of the mass media and free speech law, situated within competing traditions of public sphere theory. After next providing a history of the judicial evolution of Snyder v. Phelps, we engage in a close reading of the majority and dissenting Supreme Court opinions to reveal the rhetorical conflation of “public issues” and “public concern,” and we conclude with reflections on the relationships among that conflation, the role of different forms of spectacle in advanced capitalist societies, and the possibilities for more informed democratic citizenship.

Abstract This essay revisits William Jennings Bryan's campaign against evolutionary theory through analysis of four rhetorical moments—his platform orations “The Prince of Peace” (beginning in 1904) and “The Menace of Darwinism” (beginning in 1921), his testimony at the Scopes Trial, and his undelivered closing speech, “On Evolution.” In contrast to popular memory of Bryan as the fundamentalist fool, I maintain that he shared little rhetorical ground with his fundamentalist contemporaries, who tended to make arguments that used scientific reasoning to prove empirical facts of religious truth. Instead, Bryan opposed evolution through what Michael Lee has called the “populist argumentative frame,” a rhetorical orientation devoted to guarding the interests of the common people against an oppressive elite. Recognizing the populist foundations to Bryan's anti-evolution discourse, as well as the absence of fundamentalism in his discourse, helps to explain how Bryan fared so badly on the stand at the Scopes Trial.

Book Review| September 01 2013 Compelling Confessions: The Politics of Personal Disclosure Compelling Confessions: The Politics of Personal Disclosure. Edited by Suzanne Diamond. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011; pp. 230. $58.50 cloth. Mary Jo Wiatrak-Uhlenkott Mary Jo Wiatrak-Uhlenkott University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2013) 16 (3): 600–603. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.16.3.0600 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mary Jo Wiatrak-Uhlenkott; Compelling Confessions: The Politics of Personal Disclosure. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2013; 16 (3): 600–603. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.16.3.0600 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2013 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| June 01 2013 The U.S. Catholic Bishops, "Religious Freedom," and the 2012 Presidential Election Campaign: A Reflection Steven R. Goldzwig Steven R. Goldzwig Steven R. Goldzwig is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2013) 16 (2): 369–384. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.16.2.0369 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Steven R. Goldzwig; The U.S. Catholic Bishops, "Religious Freedom," and the 2012 Presidential Election Campaign: A Reflection. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2013; 16 (2): 369–384. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.16.2.0369 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2013 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract In 1951, the American Federation of Labor produced a map of the Soviet Union showing the locations of 175 forced labor camps administered by the Gulag. Widely appropriated in popular magazines and newspapers, and disseminated internationally as propaganda against the U.S.S.R., the map, entitled “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.,” would be cited as “one of the most widely circulated pieces of anti-Communist literature.” By contextualizing the map's origins and circulation, as well as engaging in a close analysis of its visual codes and intertextual relationships with photographs, captions, and other materials, this essay argues that the Gulag map became an evidentiary weapon in the increasingly bipolar spaces of the early Cold War. In particular, “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.” draws on cartography's unique power of “placement” to locate forced labor camps with authenticity and precision, infiltrating the impenetrable spaces of the Soviet Union as a visually compelling mode of Cold War knowledge production.

Abstract Following a democratic uprising in 1998, the Muslim-majority nation of Indonesia embarked on a transition from four decades of authoritarian rule to become the world's third largest democracy. A recent surge in religious intolerance, however, has sparked concern over an apparent backlash against the political and religious pluralism of the new democratic era. As the world looks to this vast country of 237 million as a model for other Muslim nations now rebelling against their own dictatorships, it is important to understand this political turn marked by a growing incapacity to deal with otherness. This article examines public discourse surrounding accelerating attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia to provide insight into a similar rise in intolerance worldwide, and to address a pressing question for many rhetoric scholars: how does religion work to legitimate or eliminate violence?

Abstract This study examines the case of the American philosopher John Dewey as rhetor and public intellectual in China in 1919–1921 to elucidate the lived rhetoric of pragmatism. In China, Dewey gave more than 200 lectures to large academic and general audiences on topics such as education, philosophy, and science. This lecturing activity represents a remarkable and complex rhetorical situation as it involves Dewey addressing an audience not familiar with his ideas and potentially open to persuasion. Using recently discovered lecture notes written by Dewey and translations from the Chinese interpretations of his lectures, I argue that his lectures evinced a pragmatist rhetorical style that attempted to reconstruct dominant habits of thought and communication among his Chinese audiences. In so doing, this study advances our understanding of Dewey as rhetor and the theoretical grounds of the pragmatist rhetoric of experience and synthetic conflict.

Abstract Formerly a synonym for oratory and elocution, "public speaking" after 1900 signaled, instead, a paradigm shift whereby extemporaneous-conversational speechmaking replaced declamation and oratorical composition. This study of more than 200 key titles published between 1730 and 1930 demonstrates that the modern public-speaking book emerged, not as an innovation in whole cloth, but rather from a generation-long process of selectively recombining materials extracted from preceding text genres. As a practical revolution, the new public speaking contributed to democratic, argument-rich public affairs and, as an intellectual movement, furthered the emergence of speech as a separate academic discipline.

Research Article| December 01 2012 Celluloid Circulation: The Dual Temporality of Nonfiction Film and Its Publics Nathan S. Atkinson Nathan S. Atkinson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (4): 675–684. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940630 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nathan S. Atkinson; Celluloid Circulation: The Dual Temporality of Nonfiction Film and Its Publics. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2012; 15 (4): 675–684. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940630 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay examines reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln that were published in the aftermath of his death by those who had interacted with Lincoln personally. An understudied genre y Lincoln reminiscences offered judgments of Lincolns character through a portraiture style designed to make salient private as well as public dimensions of his character. We historicize the rhetoric of portraiture and trace the rise of reminiscence out of biography as a stand-alone genre, which reached unprecedented popularity in the competitive subgenre of the Lincoln reminiscence. We argue that Lincoln reminiscences featured a balance of common and uncommon virtues thought essential for a president, a balance that helped democratize and humanize presidential character.

Abstract The American Colonization Society emerged at a time when some Americans believed that a "moderate" solution to the problem of slavery could be achieved by removing free blacks to Africa. Upon announcing its formation in 1816, the society received a public rejoinder: the Counter Memorial against African Colonization. This essay explores multiple interpretations of the Counter Memorial to demonstrate the instability of colonizationists moderate rhetorical position. More specifically, this essay argues that the Counter Memorial suspends colonization within the uneasy and unresolved tensions manifested by competing depictions of blackness, or black personae, in American public discourse at the time.

Abstract President Obama’s commencement address on the University of Notre Dame campus evoked substantial controversy, providing public demonstration of rhetorical differences and demands generated by differing provincial and cosmopolitan positions. Icontend that public civic rhetoric, in an era of narrative and virtue contention, must address the creative interplay of both provincial and cosmopolitan perspectives. In this essay I examine reactions to the Obama address from news sources connected with the local Catholic diocese, as well as the South Bend and University of Notre Dame newspapers. I argue that Obamas address is an example of a public civic speech that openly engaged the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan understandings of a controversial communal common center. Obamas Notre Dame speech framed discourse that walks within a world of tension and difference on the public stage, highlighting the communal rhetorical constitution of a speech moment shaped through the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan commitments.

Abstract In this essay, I contend that political culture and campaign journalism during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign was "pornified." Examination of broadcast journalism, viral videos, online commentary, political pop culture, andget-outthe-vote campaigns reveals the ways in which pornographic metaphors, images, and narratives infiltrated U.S. political culture during the 2008 presidential primary and general election season. I assess the media framing of candidates Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, as well as that of female voters as a group, arguing that the emergence of the pornification frame signals a backlash against the gains women have made in the U.S. political system.

Book Review| March 01 2011 Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. Kenneth Osgood and Andrew K. Frank. Kevin J. Ayotte Kevin J. Ayotte Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2011) 14 (1): 188–191. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940535 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Kevin J. Ayotte; Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2011; 14 (1): 188–191. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940535 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This essay uncovers rhetorical processes devoted to rehumanizing the enemy as an antidote to the virulent rhetoric of war. With an eye toward disrupting a problematic process of national identity construction based on otheringand dehumanization, this essay examines Jarhead as a case study that challenges current ideologies of soldiers and their enemies. Using Kenneth Burkes concept of consubstantiality and Linda Hutcheons discussion of reflective oscillation, essay examines Jarhead as a case of rhetoric working to rehumanize enemies, thus providing an example of how film can work against war culture.

Abstract This article examines the public controversy surrounding the National Park Services decision about how best to recognize the site of the nations first executive mansion—the Presidents House—in Philadelphias Independence National Historical Park. The first of the houses two presidential occupants, George Washington, kept nine slaves in the mansion while circumventing a Pennsylvania law that could have given the slaves their freedom. The National Park staff’s resistance to acknowledging Washingtons actions led to an ongoing and lengthy public debate that eventually resulted in the decision to build an installation that recognized all of the occupants of the house. Advocates for building such a site invoked two types of vernacular discourse—a counternarrative ("Liberty has been incompletely enacted") and a representative anecdote ("Excavating buried history")—that embraced the traditions of storytelling at Independence National Historical Park.

Abstract The September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was an event that inaugurated a "War on Terror" This essay constitutes a productive rhetorical analysis and critique of the 2002 congressional debate over Iraq in an effort to open a metapolitics. Congressional debate is read as an intertextual extension of administration rhetoric pitting fear appeals lit up through a network imaginary against pragmatic policy questions. The reflexive rhetoric constituting a national policy debate at the federal level is discussed, and the outcomes of common cause and political cover are critiqued.

Abstract U.S. government agencies are collaborating with outside scholars to untangle disparate threads of knotty technoscientific issues, in part by integrating structured debating exercises into institutional decision-making processes such as intelligence assessment and public policy planning. These initiatives drive up demand for rhetoricians with skill and experience in what Protagoras called dissoi logoi—the practice of airing multiple sides of vexing questions for the purpose of stimulating critical thinking. In the contemporary milieu, dissoi logoi receives concrete expression in the tradition of intercollegiate switch-side debating, a form of structured argumentation categorized by some as a cultural technology with weighty ideological baggage. What exactly is that baggage, and how does it implicate plans to improve institutional decision making by drawing from rhetorical theory and expertise? Exploration of how switch-side debating meets demand-driven rhetoric of science not only sheds light on this question, but also contributes to the burgeoning scholarly literature on deliberative democracy, inform argumentation studies, and suggest new avenues of inquiry in rhetorical theory and practice.

Book Review| March 01 2010 The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush. Elvin T. Lim. Steven R. Goldzwig Steven R. Goldzwig Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2010) 13 (1): 145–148. https://doi.org/10.2307/41955594 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Steven R. Goldzwig; The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2010; 13 (1): 145–148. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41955594 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2010 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract This article situates public policy as a mediation of rhetorical and material forces. From this perspective, public policy draws on the constitutive and consequential power of rhetoric as well as other factors like institutional authority and financial resources. As a constellation of multifarious forces, public policy refigures the text as process, which raises issues of authorship, temporality, and polysemy differently than singular speech texts and other relatively discreet texts.