Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

[Introduction To] A Revolution In Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric, Jane S. Sutton, Mari Lee Mifsud

Bookshelf

A Revolution in Tropes is a groundbreaking study of rhetoric and tropes. Theorizing new ways of seeing rhetoric and its relationship with democratic deliberation, Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud explore and display alloiōsis as a trope of difference, exception, and radical otherness. Their argument centers on Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric through particular tropes of similarity that sustained a vision of civic discourse but at the same time underutilized tropes of difference. When this vision is revolutionized, democratic deliberation can perform and advance its ends of equality, justice, and freedom. Marie-Odile, N. Hobeika, and Michele Kennerly join Sutton and Mifsud …

[Introduction To] Rhetoric And The Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory And Contemporary Communication, Mari Lee Mifsud

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Rhetoric and the Gift, taking as its starting point the Homeric idea of the gift and Aristotle’s related rhetorical theory, explores rhetoric not only at the level of the artful response but at the level of the call and response. Mari Lee Mifsud takes up a number of questions crucial to thinking about contemporary communication: What does it mean that communication is a system of exchange with others? How are we to deal with questions of ethics in an economic system of power and authority? Can exchange ever be truly generous, and can communication, then, ever be free? Is …

The Peters Projection And The Latitude And Longitude Of Recolonization, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1973, German historian Arno Peters unveiled the “Peters projection,” a map that challenged the Eurocentric Mercator style by redrawing the so-called “Third World” to appear more prominent on the global landscape. The projection sparked intense debate among cartographers about the overt use of ideology in mapping, while simultaneously championed by international groups (from the UN to church organizations) as a corrective against the marginalization of developing nations. This essay addresses how the Peters map became a rhetorical emblem for an internationalist identity within the contentious spatial conceptions constraining the Cold War. Ultimately, the Peters projection, despite its radicalism, constituted …

On Being A Simple Judge: Exploring Rhetorical Citizenship In Aristotelian And Homeric Rhetorics, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

If we want to make the argument that rhetoric matters to citizenship and that the two - rhetoric and citizenship - are mutually benefitted by their exchanges, then we need to deal with this charge of citizens as simpletons that rings through the rhetorical tradition. We need to go to these other places. In juxtaposition with an approach relegating classical conceptions of agency and audience as outdated and over, I wish in this essay to avoid such a negative approach, or perhaps I should say such a "negating" choice. I wish to take being simple as a citizen judge creatively. …

Training Speech Center Consultants: Moving Forward With A Backward Glance, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The commitment to a student-staffed speech center is at least twofold: though critical space allocation decisions as well as equipment purchase and placement required for successful operation are necessary and necessarily draw attention, the same kind of concentrated and thorough reflection is needed in considerations of staff training. Peer consulting, to be effective, calls for training that is intensive and extensive, theoretical and applied, but it should also prepare student consultants to faithfully reflect the nature, scope and state of the rhetorical art. Speech center consultants are better prepared to meet a greater variety of requests for assistance if they …

Spirits Of The Cold War: Contesting Worldviews In The Classical Age Of American Security Strategy. By Ned O’Gorman, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In February 1952, Congressman O. K. Armstrong of Missouri was invited to give a keynote speech at a convention called the Conference on Psychological Strategy in the Cold War, where he declared a maxim that, by that time, likely did not raise many eyebrows: “Our primary weapons will not be guns, but ideas . . . and truth itself.” Rep. Armstrong spoke from experience—a few months before, he had made national headlines at a peace treaty signing in San Francisco by blindsiding Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko with a map locating every secret Gulag prison camp. Calling the Soviet …

Review Of Digital Detroit: Rhetoric And Space In The Age Of The Network, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1971, rogue Wayne State geographer William Bunge (placed on a federal list of dangerous intellectuals) published Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution, a radical polemic about how everyday citizens of a Detroit ghetto could challenge oppression and become geographers of their own neighborhoods. Forty years later, Jeff Rice (formerly a Wayne State professor himself) revisits Detroit geography, but this time largely from his laptop (and without, I hope, the same kind of federal harassment). For while Bunge’s Fitzgerald and Jeff Rice’s Digital Detroit share similar terrain, as well as a love for the city in all its contradictions, …

“‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.”: The Power Of Place And The Rhetorical Life Of A Cold War Map, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1951, the American Federation of Labor produced a map of the Soviet Union showing the locations of 175 forced labor camps administered by the Gulag. Widely appropriated in popular magazines and newspapers, and disseminated internationally as propaganda against the U.S.S.R., the map, entitled “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.,” would be cited as “one of the most widely circulated pieces of anti-Communist literature.” By contextualizing the map’s origins and circulation, as well as engaging in a close analysis of its visual codes and intertextual relationships with photographs, captions, and other materials, this essay argues that the Gulag map became an evidentiary weapon in …

The Nicest Kids In Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'N' Roll, And The Struggle For Civil Rights In 1950'S Philadelphia (Book Review), Nicole Maurantonio

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

More than fifty years have elapsed since the popular television program American Bandstand first appeared in homes across the United States, and still mere mention of the show continues to conjure images of teenagers, black and white, boppin’ to the sounds of emerging musical talents from Jackie Wilson to Dusty Springfield. This very image, and the potent memory of a racially integrated youth demographic dancing together in harmony, Matthew F. D elmont argues in The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia, is precisely the problem. …

Towards An Alloiostrophic Rhetoric, Jane Sutton, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This essay offers the exigence and outlines a strategy for theorizing "alloiostrophic rhetoric" and the practices and possibilities if such a theory. In brief, alloiostrophic rhetoric is on that turns towards difference, diversity, and the other. We explore such questions as the following. Why is a theory of alloiostrophic rhetoric needed? What are its primary characteristics? How might alloiostrophic rhetoric be performed?

As the preposition towards in our title indicates, this essay is, by necessity, a sketch. The necessity arises, in part, from the scarce historical resources of this trope, alloiostrohos, and in part from a received tradition--dominated …

Wil Linkugel And Gifting 101, Mari Boor Tonn

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Wil Linkugel was many things, among them a fabled storyteller. Given the chance to get in the last word—a comment I trust would yield his winning, wide grin—I return his favor by beginning with my own Wil origins tale. With his beloved wit, he might dryly point out that I am a starring fıgure in places in the Wil Linkugel narrative. But, in truth, he plays both the leading roles and a vast cast of supporting ones throughout—in the truest meanings of such words. With a dutiful spoiler alert, the basic plotline of the brief essay that follows is this: …

Richard Edes Harrison And The Cartographic Perspective Of Modern Internationalism, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Air-age globalism was a discursive phenomenon throughout the development of World War II that accounted for the rapid “shrinking” of the world through air technologies and the internationalization of American interests. Cartography became air-age globalism’s primary popular expression, and journalistic cartographers such as Richard Edes Harrison at Fortune magazine introduced new mapping projections and perspectives in response to these global changes. This essay argues that Harrison’s mapping innovations mediate a geopolitical shift in America toward a modern, image-based internationalism. Through recastings of “vision” and “strategy,” Harrison’s work offers an opportunity to assess the rhetorical tensions between idealism and realism in …

Standing By: Police Paralysis, Race, And The 1964 Philadelphia Riot, Nicole Maurantonio

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Although considerable scholarship has explored the riots of the 1960s as the culmination of tensions simmering throughout the tumultuous decade, this article examines Philadelphia’s 1964 riot and the ways that local newspapers attempted to frame the violence. By urging Philadelphians to view the riot as the outcome of an ineffectual police department, which was ill-equipped to confront black “hoodlums,” journalists privileged frames of police paralysis and marginalization. The circulation of these two frames alone, however, cannot explain the eventual demise of the city’s Police Advisory Board. This study argues that the imagery of police standing idly by while the streets …

Imaging Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon And The Future Of The City (Book Review), Nicole Maurantonio

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Time capsules are artifacts that at face value appear antithetical to the enterprise of history. Capturing frozen moments in time, time capsules flatten the dynamic and contingent nature of the past. Yet, as the contributors to Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City argue, the artifact is simply an entry point opening up larger questions of the complex relationships between past, present, and future. In this case, the “time capsule” is a single text, famed city planner Edmund Bacon’s 1959 essay, “Philadelphia in the Year 2009.” When read with the benefit of twenty-first- century hindsight, Bacon’s essay, …

Jane Addams: Spirit In Action By Louise W. Knight, Mari Boor Tonn

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The common temptation to perceive greatness as imprinted at birth, however, is skillfully disabused in Louise Knight’s meticulous, insightful,and often poignant biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, which traces the complicated odyssey of a well-heeled idealist—initially conflicted by her material privilege, disappointed by gender-codes confining her ambitions, and haunted by familial ghosts and duties—into the pantheon of U.S. political idols. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Knight weaves into Addams’s arresting tale her early baptism into public speaking, writings that shaped her expression in public forums, rhetorical strategies she employed, and platform failures as well as successes. A prolific speaker, …

La Rhétorique De La Persuasion Dans Le Penser De Royal Mémoire De Guillaume Michel, Dit De Tours, Lidia Radi

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

En 1518, chez Jehan de la Garde et Pierre le Brodeur, paraît un recueil ayant pour titre Le Penser de Royal Mémoire, composé d´une douzaine de pièces dont la plupart sont des épîtres. La taille de chacune de ces compositions varie selon son propos, et aussi selon la fonction qu´elle remplit dans la structure de l´oeuvre. Chaque pièce a un caractère à la fois didactique et épidictique. La plupart sont adressées au jeune roi François 1^er, pour l´inciter à se lancer dans la croisade proclamée par le pape Léon X, avec qui il signe un nouveau Concordat^{2 …}

Communicative Violence In Romantic Relationships, Christina L. Moore

Honors Theses

Verbal abuse occurs in college relationships, but this form of abuse lacks a clear definition and definitive characteristics. I studied the dialogue that surrounds verbal abuse. I was interested in how verbal abuse was discussed instead of the specific details of the experiences. Verbal abuse was purposely studied separately from physical abuse. Prior research and legal statutes were reviewed before conducting this study. Through the use of focus groups, one-on-one interviews and key informant interviews a broader perspective of verbal abuse was gained. The six salient themes to emerge were (1) how to protect one’s identity, (2) characteristics of the …

Lines Of Nation, Lines Of Flight : Retroping Immigration Policy, Jessica Thaller

Honors Theses

This thesis studies the rhetoric of U.S. immigration policy, specifically as related to Mexican immigration to the United States. Using Kent Ono and John Sloop’s theory of discourse, it examines the rhetoric employed in the Secure Fence Act (SFA) of 2006 and its turns towards wartime rhetoric, immigrant dehumanization, and immigrant deviance. It then contradicts these turns to those seen in the rhetoric of Hometown Associations (HTAs), “outlaw” discourses that operate by systems of logic different from the dominant logic of the SFA. HTAs emphasize family/cultural connections, unique financial considerations, and the liminal existence of the immigrant. More importantly, they …

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.

On Rhetoric As Gift/Giving, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I explore the possibilities of rhetoric as gift. I begin with the Homeric gift economy and the rhetorical resources of this economy. My use of "economy" here is not reducible to a monetary exchange system, but rather a more general system of practices orchestrating cultural identity and relations. As Georges Bataille suggests, studying a general economy may hold the key to all the problems posed by every discipline (1991, 10). For Bataille everything from geophysics to political economy, by way of sociology, history and biology, to psychology, philosophy, art, literature, and poetry has an essential connection with …

Constructing Muammar Al-Gaddafi, Kristin Kushlan

Honors Theses

Rhetoricians such as Robert Ivie and George Lakoffhave examined the use of language of opposition to create and control various enemies during the War on Terror, but they have also ignored or overlooked numerous cases. This paper will examine one such case, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose reciprocal violence eventually succumbed to the oppressor's global economic power. This case study will explore how the U.S. government rhetorically constructed Gaddafi in order to control both his identity within American society (as either an enemy or an ally), as well as the counter-violence that Gaddafi supposedly enacted against Western systems of power. …

Complicating "Female Suicide Bombers" : Violence, Agency And Gender In The Rhetoric Of Shahida, Chelsea Rock

Honors Theses

Since 2002, popular Western news media has become fixated with the "advent" of the Palestinian female suicide bomber when a woman named Wafa Idris detonated herself on a busy Jaffa Road in Israel. Questions about gender, domesticity, violence, subjectivity, and technology arise as researchers, journalists and others confront culturally conceived notions about women and their roles in both Islamic and Western societies. Proposing a broader concept of violence that is cognizant of women's violent histories and struggles over agency, this essay suggests that analyses of women and violence are incomplete without critically thinking about the "female suicide bomber"--or shahida--within their …

Social Hierarchy In Leaderless Groups, Angie B. White

Honors Theses

The idea of social rank-ordering (indicative of status. dominance. or potential leadership capacity) was first extensively researched by Robert F. Bales in the early I 950's. Bales shaped group communication around the principle that groups inevitably evolve into unequal power structures and develop a hierarchy of participation and status (Bales et. al, 1951 ). This hierarchy is evident in many different areas of life, such as social interactions, socio-economic status, and task-related rank, and the idea of dominance is established early on in life. From 1961, when Gellert observed dyads of 4- to 6- year-old children and found that a …

The Effects Of Instant Messenger On The Undergraduate Experience, Kimberly Schaefer

Honors Theses

The use of Instant Messenger (IM) by American undergraduate students has grown rapidly over the past decade. As a result, IM has come to play an important role in the collegiate experience and daily life of today's undergraduate students. This study explores the effects of IM's growing popularity upon the academic efforts, relationships, and daily living habits of undergraduate students through an analysis of data obtained from surveys and focus groups at a small private university. The research concludes that students perceive IM to be a distraction, decreasing productivity; however, these disadvantages do not affect student IM-use, and IM is …

The Rhetoric Of Pedagogy And The Pedagogy Of Rhetoric, Jennifer G. Moore

Honors Theses

"There is a serious crisis in education. Students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach. More than ever before in the recent history of this nation, educators are compelled to confront the biases that have shaped teaching practices in our society and to create new ways of knowing, different for the sharing of knowledge (hooks 12)."

Drawing from the work of such writers as bell books, Paolo Friere, and Gilles Deleuze, this thesis explores limitations and constraints of traditional pedagogy, then brings this critique to bear upon the traditional pedagogy of rhetoric. Drawing from …

Technology And The 'Self', Ryan Rinn

Honors Theses

This project examines the relationship between technology and the self. Based largely on Gergen's (1991, 2000) descriptions of technological immersion and the saturated self, I discuss the ways that modem technologies have come to be a part of self-construction. Survey and focus group data from 63 university students are used to examine types of technological use, talk about technological experience, and self-construction. This paper describes the contradictory ways participants talk about technology, and defines nine themes of self emergence in participant discussion: 1) connection, 2) over-connection, 3) ease/laziness, 4) multitasking, 5) profile stalking, 6) loss of physical presence, 7) empowerment, …

Illuminating A Space For Women And Rhetoric, Lindsey M. Fox

Honors Theses

My overarching concerns are for the place and power of women in rhetoric and democracy. This concern developed during my study of classical rhetoric, when I noticed an obvious absence of women in rhetoric. For example, John Poulakos and Takis Poulakos state that any "ordinary person" could play a role on the political stage in Athens (34). This reference to "ordinary people" is proof that women were made invisible because, as George A. Kennedy explains, in classical Athens, democracy was only for "an assembly of all adult male citizens" (16). Male citizens, then, were actually rather extra-ordinary. Because democracy …

Wisdom To Know The Difference: The Rhetoric Of Pat Nixon, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Henriette Wyeth Hurd painted the official portrait of Patricia Nixon. The woman depicted is serene, almost sad. She appears fragile, yet brave. Above all, the face that gazes from the canvas understands--the wisdom in her eyes reflects that sense of tribulation bequeathed by experience. Both the painting and the subject reflect "calm at the center." It is an insightful portrayal of the American first lady known to the world as "Pat."

A Certain Comfort: Betty Ford As First Lady, Nichola D. Gutgold, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Her White House stay was short-lived, but the lessons of Betty Ford's experience remain vividly instructive. By accident of a national political crisis which catapulted her to the rank of the first lady in 1974, Mrs. Ford's tenure lasted a brief two years until her husband, Gerald R. Ford lost his bid for reelection. During that time, she developed a relationship of candor with the press and public. She spoke her mind on social and moral issues that were at the forefront of public debate. The positions she took were not always popular with the majority of Americans, many of …

Auto-Ethnography As A Communicative And Therapeutic Means Of Addressing Eating Disorders, Julie Irvin

Honors Theses

Under the premise that human beings are natural storytellers, narratives are an essential part of our lives and the way we shape and form our stories impacts our daily activities. When life struggles transpire, we typically make sense of our world through narratives, which is why therapists sometimes draw upon narrative therapy. By exploring different types of narratives-the basic genre of a life-story, testimonio, literary narrative, ethnography, and auto-ethnography-the mode that presents itself as a viable means of intrapersonal communication, possibly producing change, is auto-ethnography. Examining the need for narrative within the conditions of eating disorders, the question arises as …