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Storytelling As Soul-Tuning: The Ancient Rhetoric Of Valmiki's Ramayana, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I illuminate rhetorical dimensions of storytelling as soul-tuning in Valmiki's Ramayana. I explore how the story's historical, reflexive, and paratactic rhetoric invites experiencing it not just as Rama's story, but as the telling of Rama's story. The telling is the tuner of the soul, as it creates an indelible impression on human memory of divine revelation.

“Weekend Update” And The Tradition Of New Journalism, Paul Achter

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

“Weekend Update,” like much of SNL, saw itself as a show talking back to the media, as “television’s antidote to television, to all the bad things–corrupt, artificial, plastic, facile–that TV entertainment had become.”³ The show sought this influence in a period of heavily publicized official corruption: it’s not a coincidence that the segment, which Chevy Chase hosted on SNL’s first show, debuted on the heels of Nixon’s resignation over Watergate and Johnson’s lies about Vietnam. These abuses of power led not only to widespread disappointment with Washington politics and politicians, but to a kind of skepticism about journalism and …

Racing Jesse Jackson: Leadership, Masculinity, And The Black Presidency, Paul Achter

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In June of 1983, the New York Times published a survey revealing that nearly one in five white voters would not vote for a black candidate for president, even if that candidate was qualified and was the party nominee.² For some readers, such a revelation might have induced shock or even outrage; for others the poll would merely reflect an obvious and ugly reality. The survey was prompted by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s attempt to become the first black, Democratic nominee for president.

A news story exploring the prevalence of white racism in the United States was not uncommon …