Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Casey R. Kelly

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.

Blood-Speak: Ward Churchill And The Racialization Of American Indian Identity, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

After publishing a controversial essay on 9/11, Professor Ward Churchill's scholarship and personal identity were subjected to a hostile public investigation. Evidence that Churchill had invented his American Indian identity created vehemence among many professors and tribal leaders who dismissed Churchill because he was not a “real Indian.” This essay examines the discourses of racial authenticity employed to distance Churchill from tribal communities and American Indian scholarship. Responses to Churchill's academic and ethnic self-identification have retrenched a racialized definition of tribal identity defined by a narrow concept of blood. Employing what I term blood-speak, Churchill's opponents harness a biological concept …

Abstinence Cinema: Virginity And The Rhetoric Of Sexual Purity In Contemporary Film, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

Cooking Without Women: The Rhetoric Of The New Culinary Male, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

Casey Kelly's contribution to Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning Of In American Indian Resistance To President Johnson's War On Poverty, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

This essay examines how the ideograph was crafted through dialectical struggles between Euro-Americans and American Indians over federal Indian policy between 1964 and 1968. For policymakers, was historically sutured to the belief that assimilation was the only pathway to American Indian liberation. I explore the American Indian youth movement's response to President Johnson's War on Poverty to demonstrate how activists rhetorically realigned in Indian policy with the Great Society's rhetoric of “community empowerment.” I illustrate how American Indians orchestrated counterhegemonic resistance by reframing the “Great Society” as an argument for a “Greater Indian American.” This analysis evinces the rhetorical significance …

Exoticizing Poverty In Bizarre Foods America, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Détournement, Decolonization, And The American Indian Occupation Of Alcatraz Island (1969–1971), Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

On November 20, 1969, eighty-nine American Indians calling themselves the “Indians of All Tribes” (IOAT) invaded Alcatraz Island. The group’s founding proclamation was addressed to “the Great White Father and All His People,” and declared “We, the Native Americans, reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery” (2). Tongue-in-cheek, the IOAT offered to purchase Alcatraz Island for “twenty-four dollars in glass beads and red clothe.” In this essay, I illustrate how the IOAT engaged in a rhetoric of détournement, or a subversive misappropriation of dominant discourse that disassembles and imitates …

Bizarre Foods: White Privilege And The Neocolonial Palate, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

This essay examines the first season of Storage Wars and suggests the program helps mediate the putative crisis in American masculinity by suggesting that traditional male skills are still essential where knowledge supplants manual labor. We read representations of “men at work” in traditionally “feminine” consumer markets, as a form of masculine recuperation situated within the culture of White male injury. Specifically, Storage Wars appropriates omnivorous consumption, thrift, and collaboration to fit within the masculine repertoire of self-reliance, individualism, and competition. Thus, the program adapts hegemonic masculinity by showcasing male auction bidders adeptly performing feminine consumer practices. Whether the feminine …

Strange/Familiar: Rhetorics Of Exoticism In Ethnographic Television, Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic's Locked Up Abroad, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

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 …

Feminine Purity And Masculine Revenge-Seeking In Taken (2008), Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women's “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system …

True’ Love Waits: The Construction Of Facts In Abstinence-Until- Marriage Discourse, Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Genesis In Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy At The Creation Museum, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Casey R. Kelly

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 …

Shaved Or Saved? Disciplining Women’S Bodies, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl

Casey R. Kelly

Proponents of sexual liberation and abstinence-until-marriage advocates appear to be on opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum; however, both are invested in the regulation of women’s vaginas. We argue that the rhetoric of both communities produces the same disciplinary configuration for the control of women’s bodies. Both communities instruct women that the appearance of a prepubescent and pure vagina is essential to sexual appeal and self-care. Whether sex positive or sex negative, both communities articulate a model of sexual health that negates women’s status as active, desiring subjects. Ultimately, we argue that public scrutiny of women’s vaginas implicitly and overtly …

Rhetorical Counterinsurgency: The Fbi And The American Indian Movement, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

This essay unfolds in three sections. First, I develop a theory ofrhetorical counterinsurgency and explain its refinement within theFBI as a method of threat control and management. Second, I situate rhetorical counterinsurgency within a series of migrating culturalcontexts, including the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and culturalstereotypes of American Indians. These contexts constrained theavailable interpretations of Indian, as well as non-Indian radicalism andjustified the application of techniques of counterinsurgency. Finally,I offer a rhetorical analysis of both the FBI’s use of communicativetactics as a method of counterinsurgency as well as the content of theirrhetorical constructions of AIM. I investigate two disarming …

Orwellian Language And The Politics Of Tribal Termination (1953-1960), Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

From 1953 to 1960, the federal government terminated sovereign recognition for 109 American Indian nations. Termination was a haphazard policy of assimilation that had disastrous consequences for Indian land and culture. Nonetheless, termination cloaked latent motivations for Indian land within individual rights rhetoric that was at odds with Indian sovereignty. Termination highlights the rhetorical features of social control under capitalism portrayed in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which opposing principles are fused and inverted. This essay critiques termination’s Orwellian language to show how ideographs of social liberation are refashioned by the state to subvert Indian sovereignty and popular dissent.

The Post-Nuclear Family And The Depoliticization Of Unplanned Pregnancy In Juno, Knocked Up, And Waitress, Kristen Hoerl, Casey R. Kelly, Kristen Hoerl, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

Depoliticizing Pregnancy And The Post-Nuclear Family In Juno, Knocked Up, And Waitress, Kristen Hoerl, Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

Women's Rhetorical Agency In The American West: The New Penelope, Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly