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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry
Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The American approach to legal hermeneutics emerged from the covenant theology of the Puritans. American civil religion understands the Constitution to be based in natural laws: a secularized conception of God-given rights. To change the text would collapse the epistemological framework of the nation. When a nation sees its constitution as a sacred text, then the answer to contemporary problems cannot be to change that text; rather, it must be to return to the text with an even more fundamentalist hermeneutic. Both gun rights advocate Charlton Heston, and gun control advocate Barak Obama, argued their cases using a fundamentalist hermeneutic, …
Terrorism, Trauma, And Memory: Constructing National Identity At The 9/11 Museum And The Oklahoma City National Memorial And Museum, Caroline L. Whittenburg
Terrorism, Trauma, And Memory: Constructing National Identity At The 9/11 Museum And The Oklahoma City National Memorial And Museum, Caroline L. Whittenburg
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis undertakes an analysis of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the 9/11 Museum in New York City, New York, focusing on the construction of an idealized citizen that is mobilized as a defense against terrorist threats. Employing rhetorical field methods, I focus on how these spaces work symbolically and materially to shape visitors’ sense of national identity. I pay careful attention to how message construction relates to whether the terrorist threat is framed as internal or external, and how that influences what it means to be American. This argument is grounded through …