E. Hartelius, Jessica H. Lu, D. Pfister, Carly S. Woods
{"title":"Digitality, Diversity, and The Future of Rhetoric and Public Address","authors":"E. Hartelius, Jessica H. Lu, D. Pfister, Carly S. Woods","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0253","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The pandemic and economic catastrophes of 2020 and the forms of resistance that surged against racist systemic and physical violence indicate, we contend, that studying public address in the present moment requires attention to the mutual contingency of rhetoric and digitality. Relying on interdisciplinary literatures and a global perspective, we direct such attention along three vectors: platforms, commons, and methods. We indicate how theorizing rhetoric and digitality transforms critical and historical traditions. In expanding the purview of the public address tradition while retaining the tradition's hermeneutic potential, we emphasize the need to challenge disciplinary terms and the desirability of expanded analytical methods. We submit that by not attending sufficiently to the advent and diffusion of digital media technologies, public address scholarship misses opportunities to shape ongoing conversations about how rhetoric mediates public affairs; and that insofar as struggles for racial justice are bound up with, not just mediated by, digitality, the prospects of diversifying rhetoric's professoriate increase when research on this topic is central rather than peripheral.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42722467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"My Sanctified Imagination: Carter G. Woodson and a Speculative (Rhetorical) History of African American Public Address, 1925–1960","authors":"Andre E. Johnson","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1925, Herbert Wichelns published The Literary Criticism of Oratory. By many accounts, the essay would become the founding document of the academic study of rhetoric and public address. However, in that same year, historian Carter G. Woodson published Negro Orators and Their Orations, which focused on the study of the African American oratorical tradition. In this essay, by way of speculative history and using my sanctified imagination, I wonder what an alternative or speculative history would look like if we can conceive Woodson as challenging the dominant (exclusively white) notions of public address and rhetorical praxis. By paying particular attention to Woodson's introduction in Negro Orators and Their Orations, I submit that not only would we have been introduced to the richness and power of the African American public address tradition earlier but, more importantly, who we start to see as scholars and what we call scholarship would be different as well.I examine this by first, offering an examination of Woodson's text, paying close attention to the introduction, where Woodson develops his theory of oratory. Second, I examine the African American rhetoric and public address scholarship between 1925 and 1960. Finally, I offer a speculative history of what could have been and what we can still do if we would include some of these voices and their scholarship in the public address canon.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47213283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patricia G. Davis, B. Inabinet, Christina L. Moss, Carolyn Walcott
{"title":"Decolonizing Regions","authors":"Patricia G. Davis, B. Inabinet, Christina L. Moss, Carolyn Walcott","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0349","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The case of Southern regionalism shows both the problems with current treatments of regionalism—illustrative of the problem of colonialist perspectives more generally—and the path forward. That path forward involves rethinking whose ancestors count as members of a place, the issue of whose voices are centered, memory and trauma, and counterpublics. The authors advise (1) embracing the field's interest in local identities and identity movements—therefore, interrogating rhetoric as symbol systems carried in intergenerational, relational identity; (2) pushing further against colonialism, as the world is more layered by global systems of trauma and memory; and (3) admitting that nation-building rhetoric is an imperfect paradigm compared to resistive counterpublic discourse.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49061523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creating Equitable Opportunities: The Thoughts of Two Administrator Rhetoricians","authors":"K. Wilson, Kent A. Ono","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0169","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this article, the authors draw on their personal experiences as mid-career administrators and scholars of color to consider both the structures that limit, and opportunities for equity and social justice in, academic institutions. Although the primary logics that shape academic institutions serve to marginalize certain types of scholars and scholarship, they argue that institutions also contain gaps and contradictions where resistance is possible and from which alternative structures can be built. They identify and define three critical practices—storytelling, structural transformation, and allyship—that administrators can use to create a more equitable academy. The authors discuss why they believe it is important to invest in administrative and professional association service, where they have witnessed the gaps that make transformation possible, and how they have implemented critical administrative praxes.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44737939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Putting The \"Public\" In Rhetoric & Public Affairs","authors":"Anna M. Young, J. Mercieca","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0379","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:We argue that part of Rhetoric & Public Affairs' future should center public-facing scholarship in rhetorical studies. We begin by chronicling some of the work colleagues are doing to bridge expert and lay publics: podcasts, popular and trade press interviews, social media content development and management, and activist engagements. Centering public-facing scholarship creates several notable shifts: (1) it changes the \"so what?\" for traditional scholarship by inviting scholars to think about audiences outside of journal readership; (2) it opens space for different stylistic conventions in scholarly writing; and (3) it indicates that nonexpert audiences are valuable as readers. We note the considerable barriers to entry to public scholarship including gatekeeping, framing public scholarship for tenure, and training. We contend that Rhetoric & Public Affairs could lead other journals through an updated definition of impact that takes into account contemporary modes of circulation and sharing, should accept pieces written for nonexpert readers in rhetoric, and should consider, if possible, making available for public reading one scholarly article every month or every quarter.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45378697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Do We Mean by Academic Labor (in Rhetorical Studies)?","authors":"Seth Kahn, Amy Pason","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0109","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Authors define their approach to academic labor scholarship and activism. They note challenges to engaging with labor in scholarship and practice and call for normalizing discourse about class and labor in relation to the university. The authors suggest directions for future scholarship and activism in local institutions and professional associations.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49030929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rebooting Rhetoric and Public Address","authors":"Corrigan, Stuckey","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This introduction provides a brief context for the rebooting of the journal, including a history of the journal and the controversy that led to its reimagining, and offers brief synopses of the individual essays included within.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44788452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Radical Rhetoric: Toward a Telos of Solidarity","authors":"Noor Ghazal Aswad","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0207","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Transnational rhetorical scholarship has yet to enact meaningful solidarity with the subaltern. \"Inclusionary\" efforts have actively excluded what I term the \"radical subject,\" the subject revolting against repressive hegemonic forces to achieve liberatory change in society. Without privileging the radical subject and a critique of freedom over a critique of domination, hegemonic narratives continue uninterrupted. This paper turns toward the Syrian revolution to illustrate how critical rhetoric does not stretch far enough for the radical subject. I propose a radical rhetorical paradigm that centers the radical subject's lived knowledge as determining meaning. This approach realizes the wisdom in relinquishing skepticism during the critical reasoning process by placing the radical subject as the starting point in inquiry in contested spaces where negotiation over meaning is ongoing. It acknowledges the radical subject's testimony as born of the epistemic relevance of social location and the boundedness of knowledge. The radical rhetorical approach consecrates the epistemologies of the radical subject as inculcating the imperative for action on behalf of the oppressed.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45938345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhetoric for Earthly Coexistence: Imagining an Ecocentric Rhetoric","authors":"Barnett","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0365","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:What obligations do scholars of rhetoric and public address have to understand, address, and sustain the conditions of earthly coexistence? Only if the field of rhetoric embraces a genuinely ecological notion of rhetoric, the author argues, and only if we collectively commit to addressing the ecological dimensions of our various objects of study, can we truly give back to the earth in ways that honor all that it has given, and continues to give, to us. Toward that end, this essay outlines several dimensions of an \"ecocentric rhetoric.\"","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42874058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of the Critic","authors":"J. Murphy, Michael Lechuga","doi":"10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.24.1-2.0051","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:We discuss the role of critics in rhetorical studies. Working from different, yet often synchronous, perspectives, we try to thrash out the relationships of critics to texts, the responsibilities of critics in their current context, the ways that critics craft authority, and more.","PeriodicalId":45013,"journal":{"name":"Rhetoric & Public Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48119273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}