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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Genesis In Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy At The Creation Museum, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl
Genesis In Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy At The Creation Museum, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl
Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication
This essay analyzes the argumentative structure of the "Answers in Genesis" ministry's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Founded by a $27 million grant, the 70,000 square-foot museum appropriates the stylistic and authoritative signifiers of natural history museums, complete with technically proficient hyperreal displays and modern curatorial techniques. In this essay, we argue that the museum provides a culturally authoritative space in which Young Earth Creationists can visually craft the appearance that there is an ongoing scientific controversy over matters long settled in the scientific community (evolution), or what scholars call a disingenuous or manufactured controversy. We analyze the displays and …
Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic's Locked Up Abroad, Casey R. Kelly
Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic's Locked Up Abroad, Casey R. Kelly
Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication
This essay examines the reformulation of colonial ideologies in National Geographic Channel's Locked Up Abroad, a documentary program that chronicles the narratives of Westerner travelers incarcerated in foreign nations. An analysis of Locked Up Abroad evinces neocolonialism in contemporary media culture, including: the historic association between dark-skin and savagery, the backwardness of the non-Western world, and the Western imperative to civilize it. The program's documentary techniques and framing devises sustain an Otherizing gaze toward non-Western societies, and its portrayals elide a critical analysis of colonialism in its present forms. I advocate for neocolonial criticism to trace how NatGeo remains haunted …