Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Sexual Disorientation, Anne Balay

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

She used to wish for a lesbian daughter. Predictably, the joke's on her.

A Name On The Tree, Laura J. Davies

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

What's in a name? For some, family history, arguments, and identity.

Of Peerenting, Trophy Wives, And Effeminate Men: Modern Family's Surprisingly Conservative Remediation Of The Family Sitcom Genre, Christina M. Lavecchia

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Just because the family is modern doesn't mean the family is new.

There Are Two Parts To My Life, Danielle Hunt

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Often, there are tunnels and holes and shovels for fingers. This poem is about the digging process.

Clothes Make The Lesbian, Carrie Kosicki

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Whoever said clothes don't make the (wo)man never went to a junior high dance...

Up In The Air: The Case Against Happy Endings, Michelle Yvonne Burke

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In real life, not all romances are comedies. And occasionally, filmmakers get that.

"And Then I Wrote Queerly Ever After...": A Performance, Madhu Narayan

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Closets come in all shapes and sizes, and coming out takes many different forms.

Editors' Letter: Issue 5 Is Alive!, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Happy fall from your friends at Harlot. We've got some treats for you: A Katrina survivor delves into stories that reveal more than just memories of a New Orleans' past; a student produces a coming out performance through her writing; a photo lover questions whether the love is for the photo or the emotion it consistently conjures; relationships of adulthood are pondered by a movie-goer through the lens of Up in the Air; and sexuality is expressed in a pair of suspenders.

Legends At Work, Post-Katrina, Kate Parker

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Sometimes what's lurking in the depths is scarier than an albino alligator. Supporting agency: The Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston Project

Imag{In}Ing Nostalgia, Mary E. Lord

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Is there an app for pathos? Not yet, but Hipstamatic comes damn close.

Bits And Pieces, Christina West

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

"Yeah, but what does it mean?" A sculptor's candid and charming exploration of how she's frequently asked to communicate the complex.

I'M Not Really A Chaplain; I Just Play One To Pay The Bills, Jodi Kushins

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

She almost missed her calling. A new chaplain's story of how a major career shift has led to rhetorical insights and spiritual play.

How Genders Work: Producing The J.Crew Catalog, Paul Muhlhauser, Kelly Bradbury

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

J.CREW is selling more than just chinos. Two professors' satirical take on what we learn about genders and work through catalog communication.

Harlot Works It, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Welcome to Harlot's fourth issue! With the special theme of "Rhetoric at Work," this collection offers fresh insights into our everyday experiences through a lens of work-related issues.

The Misplaced Rhetoric Of Medicine, John A. Vaughn, M.D.

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For this doctor, practicing rhetoric is a key part of practicing medicine. The communicative bond between doctor and patient, however, is being influenced by other, powerfully persuasive forces.

Understanding The Other Side: An Officer's Roadside Confessions", Warren Williams

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

It's easy to assume that the cop giving you a ticket is simply out to get you. Perhaps too easy? An officer's reflections on the dynamics of the traffic stop ask that you try to see it from another perspective.

Harlot's House, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

From just a concept, Harlot has grown into a space with a character of its own, one that doesn't lie still but continues to move and change and take on the attributes of every new reader, every new creator, every new reviewer, and every new word, image, and sound. It's alive! And it's definitely making good on its reputation as the harlot of the arts. (It doesn't always obey us, either.) This is Harlot's house — we just play here.

Why The Duke Lacrosse Scandal Mattered — Three Perspectives [Reflections On The Duke Lacrosse Case -- Toward An Ethic Of Empathy], Heather Lee Branstetter

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

When a controversial event forces the contemporary American public to engage with important socio-political issues that intersect with constructions of race, gender, and class, the underlying social conditions too often remain unexamined. Our public discourse instead works to sensationalize and polarize discussion of such events; as an effect, participants in the discourse engage in rhetorical strategies that rely on the emotions of indignation, anger, and blame. This essay looks back to the discursive exchanges that arose in response to the Duke lacrosse scandal of 2006. I analyze three "representative" patterns of public response, while also interpreting the cultural conditions that …

Harlot Of The Hearts, Kaitlin Dyer

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This Creative Nonfiction piece, written two years ago and before my promotion to the Harlot editorial board, describes the personal growth I experienced through this project and the wonderful people involved with it during that time. I'm hoping that I can get you to read it without being teased absolutely relentlessly for it, but I know the chances of that are fairly slim. It's worth a shot anyhow, don't you think? Here's to making a fool out of myself.

From "Thank You For Your Support", Brian Russell Hauser

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This excerpt from the first chapter of a memoir-in-progress is an attempt to capture my thoughts and emotions at the moment I realized I was being called to war. I left the U.S. Army to attend graduate school in 1999 only to be involuntarily called back into active military service one year into the War on Terror. Instead of painting a static picture of what I must have felt like when I received the news, I use my mobilization orders (the document itself) as the focus of a sort of running rhetorical critique that allows those thoughts and feelings to …

The Irony Of Youtube: Politicking Cool, Jessie Blackburn

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In an effort to understand how the internet was used to bring the youth voter to the polls on Election Day and why it is not being used to bring that same constituent into the healthcare reform debate, this article examines one of the most intriguing pieces of online political dialogue to circulate YouTube during the last few weeks of the presidential campaign. The widely circulated YouTube video known as "5 Friends" features high-profile celebrities ironically encouraging viewers to see the act of voting as a "trendy," even "hip" behavior. In this article, I refute the assumption that youth voters …

Frank Donoghue On The Last Professors, Frank Donoghue

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Video in four parts; part 1 embedded; original article with all parts/transcripts are listed below as additional files.

In 2008, Frank Donoghue, associate professor of English at The Ohio State University, published The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, a no-holds-barred examination of the history and future of humanistic education in the U.S. Donoghue eschews the commonly touted position that the humanities are in a crisis. Corporate influence, he argues, has had the humanities in a defensive position since at least the late 19th century, and we are now on the ropes. Since its …

Some Change, John Oddo

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This short essay compares the war-time rhetoric of George W. Bush with the rhetoric of Barack Obama. The eerie similarities between the two lead me to question Obama's promise of change.

Who Are You What Are You Why?, Christopher Higgs, Caitlin Newcomer

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

The two of us created "Who Are You What Are You Why?" together, as an experiment predicated on Wittgenstein's statement: "Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information." We began this experiment by separately composing a series of non-contiguous questions and then "mashing" them together to form a virtual dialogue that provides only questions, never answers. What are the effects of composing using recognizable language in unrecognizable configurations? Where is the demarcation between sense and nonsense? How can we form meaning from seeming …

Toward Death And Violence – Rhetorical And Creative Potential; A Reader's Text, Giovana Driussi

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

I wrote this essay for readers, hoping to provoke, inspire, enrage and enjoy. Death and violence have been painful and productive forces in my life, and specifically in my writing. In this essay I share some of these experiences and relate them directly to writing, as well as public, political, rhetorical, and historical topics. My desire is to affect personal and public reflection, and to display rhetorical agency in both spheres, thus demonstrating that such divisions, and most if not all binaries, are social constructs that beg for challenge.

Harlot's Progress, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is an introduction to the second issue of Harlot -- a revealing look at the arts of persuasion.

Comic Fans And Convergence Culture: Community Of Readers In The Master Of Kung Fu, David Edward Beard, Kate Vo Thi-Beard

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As a member of several fan cultures, I have an interest in the processes that fan audiences use to construct and reconstruct the texts they consume. Additionally, I think of the way (written, oral, and musical) texts construct the individuals who constitute their audiences. Examining Master of Kung Fu provided the perfect combination of these two interests. -- David

My fascination with representations of Asians in the media began with The Destroyer book series that I read as a teen. While the character Remo at first resisted his fate, he quickly embraced his identity as the next Master of Sinanju. …

Speaking In Translation: Obama's Interview With Al Arabiya, John C Landreau

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is a response to the Obama interview with Al Arabiya on January 26. I highlight the contrast between Obama's rhetoric now and the war talk that characterized the Bush years.

The Annotated Obama Poster, Ben Mccorkle

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For this piece, I wanted to share some observations about Shepard Fairey's iconic poster given the timeliness of the text, not only in the wake of the 2008 presidential campaign, but also because of the still-pending Fair Use lawsuit against the Associated Press, the recent installation of the poster in the Smithsonian, and the debut of Fairey's "Supply and Demand" exhibition currently on display at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. Additionally, I wanted to comment on the piece in a way that was not only visually interesting -- thus the annotated break-out commentary -- but also in a way that …

I, Barack Hussein Obama: Virtual Crowds And Participatory Politics In The 2009 Inauguration, Elizabeth Losh

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Pundits in the mainstream media have a tendency to chastise Internet users for making their private lives public and for putting the most intimate or mundane details of their personal experiences into digital files for all to gawk at online. As a scholar of rhetoric, my fear is that these practices won't be public enough now that so many people rely on corporate cloud computing to store and share photos, videos, and journal entries, and social network sites often function as the Internet equivalent of gated communities. At the same time corporate copyright regimes are claiming intellectual property rights to …