This essay argues that the successful political careers of certain populist leaders rhetorically enact what scholars have long recognized in art, literature, and entertainment as the grotesque. The grotesque provides a theoretically rich means for describing the vulgar and chaotic public behaviors that take strong hold among anti-elite audiences at certain points in history. By closely reading comments from political leaders cast in the grotesque mold, including Silvio Berlusconi, Hugo Chavez, and Donald Trump, this essay explains not only what the grotesque is, but also when and how it is likely to find traction in a political culture ripe for change. The essay concludes that while the grotesque may be ideologically neutral, it shows an unsettling complaisance to twenty-first-century demagoguery and may be a defining mode for our time.

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.

This essay explores how the powerful system of cultural references in the architecture of Alexandria is disrupted by Roman visual rhetoric. Specifically, the essay closely analyzes Diocletian’s Victory Column, a monument to the third-century Roman ruler who put down an Alexandrian uprising. The authors argue that Rome employed a visual rhetoric of spectacular disruption as a means to insert itself into the city’s historical identity even after its siege created widespread disease and starvation. The essay builds on the substantial scholarship on public memory by describing a kind of rhetoric that poses a political, existential challenge to a reigning cultural identity. As rhetorical scholars continue to study public memory and the persuasive powers of designed space, the concept of megethos appears to be uniquely and increasingly relevant.

ABSTRACTTraditionally, kairos is defined by its transience. Scholars assume that in order to capitalize on the rhetorical power of kairos, a speaker must capture the “opportune moment” before it passes. This article makes the case that the kairic moment can be sustained indefinitely through the sacralization of physical space. Linking rhetorical theories of kairos as “God's time” to Mircea Eliade's discussion of “sacred hierophanies,” the article performs an analysis of the National Cathedral in Washington DC and concludes that rhetoric can circumvent traditional contingencies when deployed within kairic space.

Abstract Mitt Romney's Mormon faith has been a topic of suspicion and debate among Christian conservatives. Romney addressed the issue in a 2007 address titled "Faith in America." This article argues that Romney's use of paralipsis helps to explain the divergent popular and academic responses to the speech. Paralipsis may be used as more than a mere stylistic device; it may also be employed as a comprehensive rhetorical strategy in an increasingly polarized political culture. Notes 1I express gratitude for the supportive and diligent RR reviewers, Andrew King and David Timmerman, whose advice enriched the essay substantially. I also thank Theresa Enos, editor of Rhetoric Review, for her efficient management of the review process. 2Transcendence is a tactic identified by Ware and Linkugel as one of four common strategies of apologia. For reference, see "Apologia" in Jasinski's Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory (21). 3Article IV. "No religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." 4For a full study of such methods, see Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic (Chapters 1 and 2). 5See "Oath" in the Oxford English Dictionary and the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Also see Margaret Sonmez's 2001 article, "Oaths, Exclamations and Selected Discourse Markers in Three Genres." 6For study on this subject, see Alexander's Mormonism in Transition, Gordon's The Mormon Question, and Aarington and Bitton's The Mormon Experience. Harold Bloom's chapters on Mormonism in The American Religion are also insightful. 7The paragraph numbers correspond to the text of the speech as published on Americanrhetoric.com. This version of the manuscript can be found at Americanrhetoric.com under "Mitt Romney." 8A text of the Oath of Allegiance can be found easily on the web (see, for example, Somerville). The similarities to which I refer here include the explicit swearing off of political allegiance from the Pope or any "authorities of the Church of the See of Rome" and the offering of it to "his Majesty" the king of England. Just like Romney, Catholics are a priori asked to shed the influence of their church and to offer explicit devotion to the nation. Also like Romney, they are asked to do this because their political leaders fear that the influence of a particular church will somehow weaken the nation and strengthen that church.

This essay examines how three of the most popular public speaking textbooks address rhetorical invention. The essay argues that textbooks minimize the discursive space shared by speakers and audiences in public speaking classrooms. As a consequence, topic and argument invention is framed largely as an internal affair that occurs prior to the speaker's interaction with the audience. The essay concludes with recommendations for teaching invention by reframing the public speaking classroom as a protopublic space.

The purpose of this article is to advance the discussion of kairos by developing it as a theory of divine timing. While some critics have noted kairos' potential for understanding “God's time,” we lack a grounding of this interpretation in the close analysis of religious texts. This paper does so and asserts that kairos can be understood not only as a hermeneutic for considering temporal constraints, but also as a theory for the production of revelatory discourse and its political implications. Ultimately, the article tries to enrich our comprehension of kairos (a figure we thought we had understood) by examining an unknown text from Martin Luther King Jr. (an orator we thought we had read) as a foray into an area of our discipline that we have neglected to develop: the rhetoric of revelation.