On November 2, 2016, Theresa Jarnagin Enos unexpectedly passed away at her home in Tucson, Arizona, leaving behind a trailblazing legacy of work in writing, teaching, scholarly editing, (wo)mentori...

I am one of those kooks who believe that when I kneel down by my bedside at night to pray, my ill-formed, spontaneous, and largely unuttered thoughts somehow project out into the universe and into ...

In God's Politics evangelical minister Jim Wallis uses what I call “prophetic alchemy,” a strategy meant to reconcile and combine two opposing viewpoints—particularly liberal secularists and conservative Christians—into one progressive agenda for social change. Prophetic alchemy is magical thinking through argument, and as rhetorical strategy it participates in Kenneth Burke's alchemic tropes, particularly transcendence and division. In this article I review prophetic rhetoric as a genre, situate Wallis's rhetorical efforts in the timeline of the Protestant dialectic between progressive and conservative ideologies, and then analyze God's Politics as it participates in prophecy by attempting to reconcile opposing audiences through the symbolic power of prophetic alchemy.

Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube have made it likely that students participate in online back-and-forth exchanges that influence their rhetorical literacy. Because of the back-and-forth nature of online communities, we turn to the procedural, critical, and progressive qualities of dialectic as a means of accounting for what makes public deliberation effective and how we can teach students to deliberate.

In 1834 the Richmond Whig declared with alarm that “the Republic has degenerated into a Democracy” (Sean Wilentz. The Rise of American Democracy. New York: Norton, 2005. 425). What they meant was t...

Preview this article: What Are English Majors For?, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/58/4/collegecompositionandcommunication5927-1.gif

As a contribution to the discussion of Rhetorical Pathways between English and Communication Studies, I argue that rhetoric education for civic engagement can be furthered best by providing more undergraduate curriculum in rhetorical performance and analysis. I use the word “paideweyan” to invoke both the classical tradition of rhetorical instruction for civic praxis and John Dewey's argument for critical and poetic public engagement. In addition to forming interdisciplinary coalitions, rhetoricians should continue to develop courses, majors, and departments in rhetorical studies. To support the argument I provide curricular data from 257 English and Communication departments (or their equivalents) in four-year institutions.

Abstract This article traces the argumentum ad baculum, or appeal to fear, from Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century to the contemporary fundamentalist Christian practice of staging morality plays, often called Hell House. In his scare-for-salvation sermons, Edwards used descriptions of the reality of hell to invoke psychosomatic reactions of terror in his audience, and we see similar rhetorical tactics at work in evangelical hell houses. In a post-9/11 world where leaders, governments, and media can exert considerable power over individuals by frightening them into impulsive behavior, and considering the New Testament's message of love, this strategy seems questionable.

Abstract This article traces the argumentum ad baculum, or appeal to fear, from Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century to the contemporary fundamentalist Christian practice of staging morality plays, often called Hell House. In his scare-for-salvation sermons, Edwards used descriptions of the reality of hell to invoke psychosomatic reactions of terror in his audience, and we see similar rhetorical tactics at work in evangelical hell houses. In a post-9/11 world where leaders, governments, and media can exert considerable power over individuals by frightening them into impulsive behavior, and considering the New Testament's message of love, this strategy seems questionable.

Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies by Elizabeth McHenry. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. xiv + 423 pp. Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing by J. Blake Scott Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. xii + 281 pp. Authority and Reform: Religious and Educational Discourses in Nineteenth‐Century New England Literature by Mark G. Vasquez. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. xxii + 393 pp.