The Senses of Rhetoric

Why College?

2011-12-15T08:30:00.003-05:00

What is college for?

"Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding. Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting. It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have. Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting. . . ."

Gary Gutting, "What Is College For?" New York Times, 15 December 2011.

Cold War Rhetoric

2011-12-11T17:55:00.002-05:00

Ned O'Gorman, Spirits of the Cold War: Contesting World Views in the Classical Age of American Security Strategy (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In spring of 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower sat down with his staff to discuss the state of American strategy in the cold war. America, he insisted, needed a new approach to an urgent situation. From this meeting emerged Eisenhower's teams of "bright young fellows," charged with developing competing policies, each of which would come to shape global politics. In Spirits of the Cold War, Ned O’Gorman argues that the early Cold War was a crucible not only for contesting political strategies, but also for competing conceptions of America and its place in the world. Drawing on extensive archival research and wide reading in intellectual and rhetorical histories, this comprehensive account shows cold warriors debating "worldviews" in addition to more strictly instrumental tactical aims. Spirits of the Cold War is a rigorous scholarly account of the strategic debate of the early Cold War — a cultural diagnostic of American security discourse and an examination of its origins.

Rhetorical Education in Antiquity

2011-12-09T06:45:00.003-05:00

Jeffrey Walker, The Genuine Teachers of This Art: Rhetorical Education in Antiquity (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Genuine Teachers of This Art examines the technê, or "handbook," tradition—which it controversially suggests began with Isocrates—as the central tradition in ancient rhetoric and a potential model for contemporary rhetoric. From this innovative perspective, Jeffrey Walker offers reconsiderations of rhetorical theories and schoolroom practices from early to late antiquity as the true aim of the philosophical rhetoric of Isocrates and as the distinctive expression of what Cicero called "the genuine teachers of this art."

Through a study of the classical rhetorical paideia, or training system, Walker makes a case for considering rhetoric not as an Aristotelian critical-theoretical discipline, but as an Isocratean pedagogical discipline in which the art of rhetoric is neither an art of producing critical theory nor even an art of producing speeches and texts, but an art of producing speakers and writers. Walker grounds his study in pedagogical theses mined from revealing against-the-grain readings of Cicero, Isocrates, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Walker also locates supporting examples from a host of other sources, including Aelius Theon, Aphthonius, the Rhetoric to Alexander, the Rhetoric to Herennius, Quintilian, Hermogenes, Hermagoras, Lucian, Libanius, Apsines, the Anonymous Seguerianus, and fragments of ancient student writing preserved in papyri. Walker's epilogue considers the relevance of the ancient technê tradition for the modern discipline of rhetoric, arguing that rhetoric is defined foremost by its pedagogical enterprise, the project of producing rhetors capable of intelligent, effective, and useful civic engagement through speech and writing.

This groundbreaking vision of the technê tradition significantly revises the standard picture of the ancient history of rhetoric with ramifications for the contemporary disciplinary identity of rhetoric itself.

Peace Now

2011-11-21T18:27:00.004-05:00

Political protest art focus of University Libraries exhibit

Friday, November 11, 2011

An exhibit featuring political protest art from the Thomas W. Benson Collection, will be on display from Nov. 18 to Feb. 1, 2012, in the Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library, Penn State University. The collection captures the intensely political climate and emerging student engagement with war, patriotism and anti-imperialism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The exhibit is open during standard library hours. Call 814-865-3063 to confirm times.

Benson will give a gallery talk at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 29, in the Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library and also on MediaSite Live at www.libraries.psu.edu/mtss. No login required.

The Benson Political Protest Poster Collection began in August 1969, when Thomas W. Benson, then on the faculty of SUNY Buffalo, arrived as visiting professor to spend the year in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Political activity on campus was common though a fairly quiet presence, but the climate on the Berkeley campus changed dramatically in 1969 when the public learned of the 1968 My Lai Massacre, a murder of more than 350 innocent victims by U.S. troops. This massacre, combined with then Governor Ronald Reagan’s anti-University campaign and fiscal cuts, along with President Nixon’s April 1970 Cambodian invasion, fueled emotional demonstrations and strikes by faculty and students.

Benson noted, “The university became a sort of teach-in about the war.” Student design artists and activists banded together and created the Berkeley Political Poster Workshop that designed, printed, and distributed hundreds of political protest posters in support of the anti-war movement.

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library acquired the political protest posters in 2009 as a gift from Benson, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric, Communication Arts and Sciences, Penn State College of the Liberal Arts, and the editor of the series in Rhetoric and Communication for the University of South Carolina Press.

To view the full online Thomas W. Benson Political Protest Digital Collection, go to http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/benson.html online.

Library announcement is here.

Police Attack at UC Berkeley

2011-11-21T10:59:00.003-05:00

Police at the University of California, Berkeley, attacked students with billy clubs as part of the response to the Occupy movement there. The video above is borrowed from You Tube and from a story about the attacks in the Huffington Post.

See also Robert Hass, "Poet-Bashing Police," New York Times, 19 November 2011.

The Future of Nonviolent Protest

2011-11-21T07:44:00.006-05:00

from Bob Ostertag in the Huffington Post:

Yesterday, police at UC Davis attacked seated students with a chemical gas.

I teach at UC Davis and I personally know many of the students who were the victims of this brutal and unprovoked assault. They are top students. In fact, I can report that among the students I know, the higher a student's grade point average, the more likely it is that they are centrally involved in the protests.

This is not surprising, since what is at issue is the dismantling of public education in California. Just six years ago, tuition at the University of California was $5357. Tuition is currently $12,192. According to current proposals, it will be $22,068 by 2015-2016. We have discussed this in my classes, and about one third of my students report that their families would likely have to pull them out of school at the new tuition. It is not a happy moment when the students look around the room and see who it is that will disappear from campus. These are young people who, like college students everywhere and at all times, form some of the deepest friendships they will have in their lives. . . .

Bob Ostertag, "Militarization of Campus Police," Huffington Post, 19 November 2011.

photo: AP Photo/The Enterprise, Wayne Tilcock

Rhetoric in Society 4 Conference

2011-11-11T12:45:00.002-05:00

Call for Papers

Rhetoric in Society 4

“Contemporary Rhetorical Citizenship:

Purposes, Practices, and Perspectives”

Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication
Section of Rhetoric
University of Copenhagen
January 15-18, 2013

Greetings all,

This is the first bulletin of the fourth biennial Rhetoric in Society Conference to be held January 15-18, 2013 at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

With this bulletin, we want to invite you to do two things: mark your calendars and start thinking about how you might contribute to the conference with your scholarship.

Below, we introduce the theme of the conference and provide basic information about the various presentation formats.

Within a few weeks, we will contact you again with more information about the conference program, key-note speakers, and how to submit an abstract.

In the planning of the conference we wish to promote discussion among conference attendees. One way is to set time aside for discussion in all meetings, another is to allow for regular breaks, and a third way is to arrange social gatherings suitable to networking and amicable conversation. We hope you will come and be part of the discussion!

Theme

The theme for this fourth conference on Rhetoric in Society is “Contemporary Rhetorical Citizenship: Purposes, Practices, and Perspectives”.

With the concept of rhetorical citizenship we want to draw critical attention to the ways in which being a citizen in a modern democratic state is in many respects a discursive phenomenon. Citizenship is not just a condition such as holding a passport, it is not just behavior such as voting; citizenship also has a communicative aspect: Some perform citizenship when they watch a political debate on TV or discuss a program about homeless people with their colleagues over lunch - or when, one day, they don’t duck behind the fence but engage their cranky neighbor in conversation about her views on city street lighting. Others enact citizenship when they engage in political debates on Facebook or Twitter or join their friends in coming up with the most poignant wording for a protest sign the day before a street demonstration. And for others still, “rhetorical citizenship” is a distant ideal far from the realities of their everyday life; because the legal citizenship, literacy, and media access that such a conception of citizenship often presupposes aren’t within their reach, their experience with rhetorical citizenship is one of exclusion.

Rhetoric, with its double character as academic discipline and practice, stands in a unique position to engage the linguistic and discursive aspects of collective civic engagement. Drawing on and in collaboration with neighboring fields of inquiry such as political science, discourse studies, linguistics, media studies, informal logic, practical philosophy and social anthropology, scholars of rhetoric are able to study actual communicative behavior as it circulates in various fora and spheres – from face to face encounters to mediated discourse. With our diverse theoretical and methodological backgrounds we hold many keys to pressing concerns such as the alleged polarization and coarsening of the ‘tone’ in public debate, the turning away from political engagement toward smaller spheres of interest, and the general difficulty in making politics work constructively in many parts of the world, not least the EU.

We invite attendees – scholars, teachers, students, and citizens across a range of disciplinary traditions – to extend our knowledge of the social roles of rhetoric through theoretical and critical study, and to consider our roles as public intellectuals: how are we to name, describe, criticize, analyze, and, indeed, undertake or teach rhetorical action on matters of communal concern whether locally, nationally, or internationally?

We invite papers that help address questions such as, e.g.:

* How is rhetorical citizenship to be defined and developed as a critical frame for studying rhetoric in society?

* What conditions must obtain for rhetorical citizenship to be possible and thrive?

* What rhetorical processes and maneuvers can be observed in practitioners of rhetorical citizenship?

* How is rhetorical citizenship instantiated across genres, settings, and cultural or geographical settings?

* How is rhetorical citizenship experienced differently, even controversially, depending on power differentials and social or regional constraints?

* How can rhetorical history and pedagogy serve as a resource for contemporary theory, practice and critique of rhetorical citizenship?

* What disciplinary connections need to be made or reinvigorated for fruitful interdisciplinary work on rhetorical citizenship?

* What are potentials and pitfalls for sound and dynamic public rhetorical engagement?

* What is good and what is poor rhetorical citizenship?

Your contribution to the conference

Please consider submitting a panel, individual, poster and/or special session proposal that speaks to the conference theme.

In addition to the specified length requirements (see below), please include in an abstract: the title of the paper, name(s) of presenter(s), the nature of the material for analysis/the ‘case’, the guiding research question and/or overall argument as well as identification of the theoretical and/or methodological basis of the inquiry.

Panel proposals, individual proposals, and special format proposals will all be placed in sessions of 60 - 90 minutes. Generally, 30 minutes will be set aside for each presentation to be used in this manner: 15-20 minutes for the presentation and 5-10 minutes for questions and discussion with the audience. After each presentation a few minutes should be set aside to allow audience members to leave the room and go to a different session.

Submission options

1) Panel proposals

Panels should consist of 3-4 presentations and preferably a respondent. A panel will have a 90-minute slot of which 20-30 minutes should be set off for discussion. Proposals should include a 250 word abstract for each individual presentation. Proposals should be no more than 1250 words in total.

Panel organizers are strongly encouraged to invite a respondent to initiate and lead discussion after the presentations.

Individual proposals

Individual presentations will be given a slot of 30 minutes of which 5-10 minutes should be set off for discussion and time to allow audience members to change rooms. Proposals should include a 250 word abstract.

Individual papers will be grouped according to topic and/or theoretical approach by the conference planners. Once the program is ready, we encourage presenters on each session to exchange papers two weeks in advance of the conference in order to participate in a common discussion of the papers toward the end of the session.

3) Special format proposals

Special format sessions of 60-90 minutes are invited. Special format proposals are meant to encourage panels that are unusual in format, especially those that invite the active participating of both presenters and audiences. Consider such formats as debates, a series of short position papers designed to generate discussion, roundtables, screenings of rhetorical performances followed by discussion, workshops or other special formats. In addition to explaining the nature of the special format, the technical requirements needed to carry it through, and the estimated time need, proposals for such sessions should adhere to the formal requirements of ‘regular’ panels, i.e., analytical focus, theory, and explain the role of the participants, and the goals and aims of the session. The word limit is 350 words.

Poster proposals

A poster is a visual artefact of ‘poster’ size that represents a scholarly project on the conference theme in a visual/graphic manner. Posters will be exhibited in designated areas throughout the conference area, and there will be time set aside for conference participants to study the posters and discuss them with the presenters in an informal manner. Posters may present work not otherwise presented at the conference.

Submit your proposal

Proposals should be submitted to the conference website by March 1, 2012. We will notify you when we are ready to accept submissions.

In upcoming bulletins we will provide information about when and how to submit proposals.

Conference website

The conference website for RiS4 2013 is still under construction but can be found at this URL: <http://rhetoricinsociety.hum.ku.dk>rhetoricinsociety.hum.ku.dk

Why not bookmark the website today, so that you can easily return and stay abreast as it develops and provides information on how to submit proposals, how to register for the conference, where to stay, etc.?

academic committee

Hilde van Belle, Lessius University, Antwerp, Belgium

Robert Ivie, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA/Honorary Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Jens Kjeldsen, University of Bergen, Norway/Södertörn University, Sweden (RSE)

Marie Lund Klujeff, Aarhus University, Denmark (RSE)

Kendall Phillips, Syracuse University, USA (RSA)

Organizing committee

Mette Bengtsson, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Mark Herron, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Christian Kock, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Rasmus Rønlev, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Lisa S. Villadsen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Can the Government Create Jobs?

2011-10-31T17:51:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman in the Times, on the rhetoric of job creation:

A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe “that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.” . . .

Paul Krugman, "Bombs, Bridges, and Jobs," New York Times, 31 October 2011.

Apple Picking

2011-10-28T16:30:00.002-04:00

Picking apples. Camden County, New Jersey.

Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, photographer. October 1938.

FSA-OWI collection, Library of Congress.

fsa 8b17177 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b17177

In our course in American Rhetoric in the New Deal Era, 1932-1945, we have recently read John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle, which describes a strike in California apple orchards in the period.

Another October

2011-10-28T16:19:00.002-04:00

Migratory field worker, leader of the cotton strike of October 1938, which took place just before the election. Kern County, California.

Lange, Dorothea, photographer. November 1938. Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) Collection, Library of Congress.

Digital ID - fsa 8b32701 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b32701

Tree Topping

2011-10-27T09:55:00.003-04:00

Tree Topping. A worker topping an elm tree on Fisher Plaza, on the Penn State campus this week. October 24, 2011. Photo taken with my iPhone.

Occupy Education?

2011-10-24T19:14:00.001-04:00

Tenured Radical on Occupy Wall Street and education:

Today’s lesson is: thanks to the absence of leadership from the political class; the failure to nurture an empowering dialogue between high school and college teachers that might have a broad impact on education policy; the domination of university Boards of Trustees by the 1%; and Wall Street’s destructive attempts to transform education into a tradable commodity, educators are increasingly drawn to the Occupy Wall Street movement. There could not be more chaos in the education world than there is now. . . .

Democracy Does Matter

2011-10-18T18:16:00.002-04:00

Kern Conference on Visual Communication - call for papers

2011-10-18T11:14:00.001-04:00

The 5^th William A. Kern Conference

on Visual Communication

Rochester Institute of Technology

May 3-5, 2012

When Images Cause Trouble:

Visual Communication,

Controversy, and Critical Engagement

Call for Papers

When do images cause trouble? One purpose of this conference is to discuss recent controversies in visual communication, including photojournalism, social media, advertising, and the visual arts, invoking issues of privacy, security, censorship, freedom of expression, and religious belief. In addition, as concerns over the power of images are not new, we would seek to historicize and contextualize current debates with historical perspectives, including, as an illustrative example, iconoclasm and the Protestant reformation in Europe –particularly Puritan image smashing in England during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Following in the tradition of Kern conferences, we plan a rich program of interdisciplinary scholarship and conversation.

We invite submissions that address this theme from multiple points of view. How does work in visual communication, visual culture, visual rhetoric, and related fields shed light on controversial issues that surround the production and consumption of images? How can we understand current events in a historical perspective? What are the roles of regulation, oversight, government, and grass roots organizations in thinking seriously about images? What roles do technologies of surveillance play? How can we think about the ethics of representation?

Individual papers, visual presentations, panels and workshop proposals are welcomed.

Send extended abstracts (500 – 2500 words) via email to Jonathan Schroeder (jesgla@rit.edu).

Submission deadline: January 15, 2012

Jonathan E. Schroeder

William A. Kern Professor of Communications

Rochester Institute of Technology

Rochester, New York 14623

St. John's College

2011-10-17T07:48:00.001-04:00

New York Times on education, St. John's College, and Sarah Benson --

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Sarah Benson last encountered college mathematics 20 years ago in an undergraduate algebra class. Her sole experience teaching math came in the second grade, when the first graders needed help with their minuses.

And yet Ms. Benson, with a Ph.D. in art history and a master’s degree in comparative literature, stood at the chalkboard drawing parallelograms, constructing angles and otherwise dismembering Euclid’s Proposition 32 the way a biology professor might treat a water frog. Her students cared little about her inexperience. As for her employers, they did not mind, either: they had asked her to teach formal geometry expressly because it was a subject about which she knew very little. . . .

Alan Schwarz, "Seeing Value in Ignorance, College Expects Its Physicists to Teach Poetry," New York Times, 17 October 2011.

Inequality

2011-10-16T12:07:00.002-04:00

Nicholas D. Kristof on Occupy Wall Street -

The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

Nicholas D. Kristof, "America's 'Primal Scream,'" New York Times, 16 October 2011.

Sims Like Old Times

2011-10-14T08:33:00.003-04:00

Did Herman Cain take his 9-9-9 tax plan from Sim City? This brings a whole new dimension to the notion of role of the think tank in American politics. According to the Huffington Post,

WASHINGTON -- In Herman Cain's America, the tax code would be very, very simple: The corporate income tax rate would be 9 percent, the personal income tax rate would be 9 percent and the national sales tax rate would be 9 percent.

But there's already a 999 plan out there, in a land called SimCity. . . . (more)

"Herman Cain 999 Plan: Did It Come from SimCity?" Huffington Post, 13 October 2011.

The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

2011-10-11T20:47:00.002-04:00

David W. Blight, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” He delivered this speech just three years after the Virginia Civil War Commission published a guide proclaiming that “the Centennial is no time for finding fault or placing blame or fighting the issues all over again.”

David Blight takes his readers back to the centennial celebration to determine how Americans then made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. Amid cold war politics and civil rights protest, four of America’s most incisive writers explored the gulf between remembrance and reality. Robert Penn Warren, the southern-reared poet-novelist who recanted his support of segregation; Bruce Catton, the journalist and U.S. Navy officer who became a popular Civil War historian; Edmund Wilson, the century’s preeminent literary critic; and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist—each exposed America’s triumphalist memory of the war. And each, in his own way, demanded a reckoning with the tragic consequences it spawned.

Blight illuminates not only mid-twentieth-century America’s sense of itself but also the dynamic, ever-changing nature of Civil War memory. On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the war, we have an invaluable perspective on how this conflict continues to shape the country’s political debates, national identity, and sense of purpose.

David Brooks on Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-11T07:52:00.001-04:00

If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.
This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite.
Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. . . .

David Brooks, "The Milquetoast Radicals," New York Times, 11 October 2011.

Amending Senate Debate Rules

2011-10-11T07:48:00.002-04:00

On Thursday, Republicans tried to get around that limit with a multitude of “motions to suspend the rules,” which violate the concept of cloture and could keep debate going even after a supermajority votes to move on. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, decided that he had had enough and prompted a majority to vote to end this practice. It will now be out of order to try to suspend the rules once 60 senators have voted to end debate.
Any change that chips away at the gridlock in the Senate should be encouraged. Over the last three or four years, Senate Republicans have made a mockery of the minority party’s protections, routinely filibustering virtually every bill, blocking nominations and spending hours on political stunts designed to stymie and embarrass President Obama and the Democrats. . . .

"Chipping Away at Gridlock in the Senate," Editorial, New York Times, 11 October 2011.

Voter Fraud

2011-10-10T07:24:00.001-04:00

It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. . . .

Editorial, New York Times, 10 October 2011.

What They Want - What We Need

2011-10-08T22:25:00.002-04:00

"Protesters Against Wall Street," editorial, New York Times, 9 October 2011

The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening. . . . No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

Debit Card Fraud

2011-10-08T07:44:00.002-04:00

Lloyd Constantine, "Debit Card Fees Are Robbery," New York Times, 8 October 2011.

Banks that charge customers to use debit cards are trying to rationalize one of the largest illegal transfers of wealth from consumers to banks in American history.

Naomi Klein at Wall Street

2011-10-07T18:02:00.003-04:00

Here's Naomi Klein's speech to Occupy Wall Street, reprinted in The Nation:

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.” . . .

Naomi Klein, "Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now," The Nation, 6 October 2011.

Cheering for Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-07T15:24:00.006-04:00

Paul Krugman on Occupy Wall Street:

. . . It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.
Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.
And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests as “class warfare.”
But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.
And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.

Paul Krugman, "Confronting the Malefactors," New York Times, 7 October 2011.

What's on your list? The media may be concerned that Occupy Wall Street has no obvious leader or spokesperson, and that it has no coherent message, all of which make it hard for the news to create a story. But see Tod Gitlin's The Whole World Is Watching, in which he tells how SDS foundered on its interaction with the media's hunger for stars.'

A variety of writers on the left are offering lists of suggested objectives for the Occupy Wall Street movement to support -- that in itself is an accomplishment, as it has reached the level of visibility and energy that good thinkers are being drawn to offer shaping messages. Something like this happens in the run-up to an important Presidential speech -- op-ed writers offer hypothetical drafts. If the movement has already reached a point where concerned citizens can project longings in its direction, that's something. Not the whole story, and not enough, but something interesting from a rhetorical perspective.

Ecofeminism and Rhetoric

2011-10-06T07:57:00.005-04:00

Douglas A. Vakoch, Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

contents, from the publisher:

Foreword
Glynis Carr, Bucknell University

Preface
Douglas A. Vakoch, California Institute of Integral Studies and SETI Institute

Chapter 1. “The rhetorics of critical ecofeminism: Conceptual connection and reasoned response”
Jeffrey Bile, Spalding University

Chapter 2. “Into the wild: An ecofeminist perspective on the human control of canine sexuality and reproduction”
Karla Armbruster, Webster University

Chapter 3. “Gender representations in orangutan primatological narratives: Essentialist interpretations of sexuality, motherhood and women”
Stacey K. Sowards, University of Texas at El Paso

Chapter 4. “Invitational rhetoric: Alternative rhetorical strategy as ecofeminist practice for transformation of perception and use of energy in the residential built environment from the Keweenaw to Kerala”
Merle Kindred, Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development

Chapter 5. “Ecofeminist ethics and digital technology: A case study of Microsoft Word”
Julia E. Romberger, Old Dominion University

Afterword
Patrick D. Murphy, University of Central Florida

Epilogue: “Unwrapping the enigma of ecofeminism: A solution to the illusion of incoherence”
Jeffrey A. Lockwood, University of Wyoming

Politics of Child Care

2011-10-04T07:59:00.002-04:00

Natalie M. Fouseckis, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940-1971 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

During World War II, as women stepped in to fill jobs vacated by men in the armed services, the federal government established public child care centers in local communities for the first time. When the government announced plans to withdraw funding and terminate its child care services at the end of the war, women in California protested and lobbied to keep their centers open, even as these services rapidly vanished in other states.
Analyzing the informal networks of cross-class and cross-race reformers, policymakers, and educators, Demanding Child Care: Women's Activism and the Politics of Welfare, 1940–1971 traces the rapidly changing alliances among these groups. During the early stages of the childcare movement, feminists, Communists, and labor activists banded together, only to have these alliances dissolve by the 1950s as the movement welcomed new leadership composed of working-class mothers and early childhood educators. In the 1960s, when federal policymakers earmarked child care funds for children of women on welfare and children described as culturally deprived, it expanded child care services available to these groups but eventually eliminated public child care for the working poor.
Deftly exploring the possibilities for partnership and the limitations among these key parties as well as the structural forces impeding government support for broadly distributed child care, Fousekis helps to explain the barriers to a publicly funded comprehensive child care program in the United States.

The National Woman's Party

2011-10-04T07:45:00.003-04:00

Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman's Party, 1913-1920 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Between 1913 and 1920, the National Woman’s Party (NWP) waged a campaign to write women’s voting rights into the U.S. Constitution. Unlike the more moderate campaign strategies adopted by other woman suffrage organizations of the Progressive Era, the NWP remained committed to militant agitation—that is, holding political party leaders responsible for social change and doing so through nontraditional means of protest. Some of these militant strategies included heckling President Wilson, protesting silently outside the White House gates, and publicly burning his speeches in “Watch Fires.”
Such militancy resulted in institutional acts of social control including censorship, arrests, beatings, and force-feedings. And yet, by the end of the woman suffrage movement, the NWP had earned the endorsements of every major political party, as well as of prominent politicians (including Wilson), and had found its name splashed across the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. One Times article even referred to the NWP as the “suffrage leaders.” Exploring the ways in which the militant NWP negotiated institutional opposition and secured such a prominent position in national politics drives the analysis offered in this manuscript.
In light of the NWP’s militant identity and its demonstrated political viability, Belinda A. Stillion Southard treats the party’s campaign for woman suffrage as an example of how a relatively powerless group of women constituted themselves as “national citizens” through rhetoric. To this end, she uses volumes of NWP discourse, including correspondence, photographs, protests, and publications, to situate the NWP in the historical and ideological forces of the period, particularly as they are inflected by meanings of nationalism, citizenship, and social activism. In addition to this project’s historical focus, this study features the critical concept of political mimesis to help explain the ways in which the NWP mimicked political rhetorics and rituals to simultaneously agitate and accommodate members of the political elite.
Taking root in Aristotle’s notion of mimesis as the process of representation and drawing upon more postmodern theories that link mimesis to identity-formation, this study demonstrates that the NWP’s mimetic strategies took multiple forms, including parody and appropriation. Through the rhetoric of political mimesis, the NWP militantly inserted itself into U.S. politics while it also earned the political legitimacy needed to assert women’s citizenship rights. Ultimately, the strength of political mimesis as a strategy of social change was demonstrated by the ways in which the NWP’s rhetoric circulated within national and international political discourse and solicited a response from political leaders, the U.S. news media, and NWP supporters.

Who Occupies Wall Street?

2011-10-02T08:41:00.001-04:00

Nicholas Kristoff of the Times has some suggestions for the Occupy Wall Street protests - here is his list:

So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:
¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax, but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.
¶Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.
¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.

Nicholas D. Kristoff, "The Bankers and the Revolutionaries," New York Times, 2 October 2011.

Media History in the U.S.

2011-10-02T08:00:00.004-04:00

Janice Peck and Inger L. Stoller, eds., A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication Since World War II (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2011).

contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction: Moments of Danger and Challenges to the “Selective Tradition” in U.S. Communication History
Janice Peck 1

Chapter 2: Politics as Patriotism: Advertising and Consumer Activism During World War II
Inger L. Stole 13

Chapter 3: The Revolt against Radio: Postwar Media Criticism and the Struggle for Broadcast Reform
Victor Pickard 35

Chapter 4: “Our union is not for sale”: The Postwar Struggle for Workplace Control in the American Newspaper Industry
James F. Tracy 57

Chapter 5: “Things will never be the same around here”: How See It Now Shaped Television News Reporting
Dinah Zeiger 83

Chapter 6: “We can remember it for you wholesale”: Lessons from the Broadcast Blacklist
Carol A. Stabile 105

Chapter 7: Foreign Correspondents, Passports and McCarthyism
Edward Alwood 133

Chapter 8: “Love that AFL-CIO”: Organized Labor’s Use of Television, 1950-1970
Nathan Godfried 15

Chapter 9: The Postwar “TV Problem” and the Formation of Public Television in the U.S.
Laurie Ouellette 179

Chapter 10: Lockouts, Protests, and Scabs: A Critical Assessment of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Strike
Bonnie Brennen 207

Chapter 11: The Reporters’ Rebellion: The Chicago Journalism Review, 1968-1975
Steve Macek 231

Chapter 12: Oprah Winfrey and the Politics of Race in Late Twentieth Century America
Janice Peck 253

Chapter 13: Public Radio, This American Life and the Neoliberal Turn
Jason Loviglio 283

Chapter 14: “Sticking it to the man”; Neoliberalism: Corporate Media and Strategies of Resistance in the 21^st Century
Deepa Kumar 307

Chapter 15: Contesting Democratic Communications: The Case of Current TV
James F. Hamilton 331

Chapter 16: Critical Media Literacy: Critiquing Corporate Media with Radical Production
Bettina Fabos 355

Where is liberal rhetoric?

2011-09-25T21:41:00.001-04:00

Michael Kazin in the Times:

SOMETIMES, attention should be paid to the absence of news. America’s economic miseries continue, with unemployment still high and home sales stagnant or dropping. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and their fellow citizens is wider than it has been since the 1920s.
And yet, except for the demonstrations and energetic recall campaigns that roiled Wisconsin this year, unionists and other stern critics of corporate power and government cutbacks have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession. . . .

Michael Kazin, "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" New York Times, 25 September 2011.

VIDEO: The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To Hear

2011-09-23T17:35:00.002-04:00

VIDEO: The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To Hear

ElizabethWarren.com

Human Rights Rhetoric

2011-09-12T12:02:00.004-04:00

Wendy S. Hesford, Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

From the publisher:

Spectacular Rhetorics is a rigorous analysis of the rhetorical frameworks and narratives that underlie human rights law, shape the process of cultural and legal recognition, and delimit public responses to violence and injustice. Integrating visual and textual criticism, Wendy S. Hesford scrutinizes “spectacular rhetoric,” the use of visual images and rhetoric to construct certain bodies, populations, and nations as victims and incorporate them into human rights discourses geared toward Westerners, chiefly Americans. Hesford presents a series of case studies critiquing the visual representations of human suffering in documentary films, photography, and theater. In each study, she analyzes works addressing a prominent contemporary human rights cause, such as torture and unlawful detention, ethnic genocide and rape as a means of warfare, migration and the trafficking of women and children, the global sex trade, and child labor. Through these studies, she demonstrates how spectacular rhetoric activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations, consolidates identities through the politics of recognition, and configures material relations of power and difference to produce and, ultimately, to govern human rights subjects.

Model T Bliss, Ithaca

2011-09-08T18:18:00.005-04:00

Paul Carter, "Ithaca, New York. Interior of a shack in which a man lived for twenty-five years. His wife would not let him live with her. She was mad at him for having backed a Model T Ford over her on their honeymoon." (1936 June).

Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. LC-USF341- 011053-B. fsa 8c51333 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c51333

Political Poster Collection

2011-09-05T08:22:00.006-04:00

A collection of political posters -- most of them from Berkeley in May 1970 -- is now online at the Penn State Libraries. I collected the posters at the time, and donated them to Penn State a couple of years ago, where they have been under development as a special collection, thanks to James Quigel, Head of Historical Collections and Labor Archives in the Special Collections Library, and the staff of the Libraries. Ellysa Cahoy at the Libraries has also been important to its development, and tells me the collection will soon be mounted on Flickr, as the Library's first-ever interactive on-line exhibit.

Thomas W. Benson Political Protest collection

Making Chastity Sexy

2011-09-05T07:56:00.005-04:00

Christine J. Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Even though they are immersed in sex-saturated society, millions of teens are pledging to remain virgins until their wedding night. How are evangelical Christians persuading young people to wait until marriage? Christine J. Gardner looks closely at the language of the chastity movement and discovers a savvy campaign that uses sex to “sell” abstinence. Drawing from interviews with evangelical leaders and teenagers, she examines the strategy to shift from a negative “just say no” approach to a positive one: “just say yes” to great sex within marriage. Making Chastity Sexy sheds new light on an abstinence campaign that has successfully recast a traditionally feminist idea—“my body, my choice”—into a powerful message, but one that Gardner suggests may ultimately reduce evangelicalism’s transformative power. Focusing on the United States, her study also includes a comparative dimension by examining the export of this evangelical agenda to sub-Saharan Africa.

Security and Liberal Reform

2011-08-15T08:32:00.007-04:00

Katherine Henry, Liberalism and the Culture of Security: The Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Reform (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Figures of protection and security are everywhere in American public discourse, from the protection of privacy or civil liberties to the protection of marriage or the unborn, and from social security to homeland security. Liberalism and the Culture of Security traces a crucial paradox in historical and contemporary notions of citizenship: in a liberal democratic culture that imagines its citizens as self-reliant, autonomous, and inviolable, the truth is that claims for citizenship—particularly for marginalized groups such as women and slaves—have just as often been made in the name of vulnerability and helplessness.

Katherine Henry traces this turn back to the eighteenth-century opposition of liberty and tyranny, which imagined our liberties as being in danger of violation by the forces of tyranny and thus in need of protection. She examines four particular instances of this rhetorical pattern. The first chapters show how women’s rights and antislavery activists in the antebellum era exploited the contradictions that arose from the liberal promise of a protected citizenry: first by focusing primarily on arguments over slavery in the 1850s that invoke the Declaration of Independence, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fiction and Frederick Douglass’s “Fourth of July” speech; and next by examining Angelina Grimké’s brief but intense antislavery speaking career in the 1830s.

New conditions after the Civil War and Emancipation changed the way arguments about civic inclusion and exclusion could be advanced. Henry considers the issue of African American citizenship in the 1880s and 1890s, focusing on the mainstream white Southern debate over segregation and the specter of a tyrannical federal government, and then turning to Frances E. W. Harper’s fictional account of African American citizenship in Iola Leroy. Finally, Henry examines Henry James’s 1886 novel The Bostonians, in which arguments over the appropriate role of women and the proper place of the South in post–Civil War America are played out as a contest between Olive Chancellor and Basil ransom for control over the voice of the eloquent girl Verena Tarrant.

Workers' Gospel

2011-08-15T07:45:00.004-04:00

Erik S. Gellman and Jerod Roll, The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In this exceptional dual biography and cultural history, Erik S. Gellman and Jarod Roll trace the influence of two southern activist preachers, one black and one white, who used their ministry to organize the working class in the 1930s and 1940s across lines of gender, race, and geography. Owen Whitfield and Claude Williams, along with their wives, Zella Whitfield and Joyce Williams, drew on their bedrock religious beliefs to stir ordinary men and women to demand social and economic justice in the eras of the Great Depression, New Deal, and Second World War.
Williams and Whitfield preached a working-class gospel rooted in the American creed that hard, productive work entitled people to a decent standard of living. Gellman and Roll detail how the two preachers galvanized thousands of farm and industrial workers for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. They also link the activism of the 1930s and 1940s to that of the 1960s and emphasize the central role of the ministers' wives, with whom they established the People's Institute for Applied Religion.
This detailed narrative illuminates a cast of characters who became the two couples' closest allies in coordinating a complex network of activists that transcended Jim Crow racial divisions, blurring conventional categories and boundaries to help black and white workers make better lives. In chronicling the shifting contexts of the actions of Whitfield and Williams, The Gospel of the Working Class situates Christian theology within the struggles of some of America's most downtrodden workers, transforming the dominant narratives of the era and offering a fresh view of the promise and instability of religion and civil rights unionism.

Critical Rhetorics of Race

2011-08-14T10:06:00.006-04:00

Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, editors, Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

According to many pundits and cultural commentators, the U.S. is enjoying a post-racial age, thanks in part to Barack Obama's rise to the presidency. This high gloss of optimism fails, however, to recognize that racism remains ever present and alive, spread by channels of media and circulated even in colloquial speech in ways that can be difficult to analyze.

In this groundbreaking collection edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, scholars seek to examine this complicated and contradictory terrain while moving the field of communication in a more intellectually productive direction. An outstanding group of contributors from a range of academic backgrounds challenges traditional definitions and applications of rhetoric. From the troubling media representations of black looters after Hurricane Katrina and rhetoric in news coverage about the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres to cinematic representations of race in Crash, Blood Diamond, and Quentin Tarantino’s films, these essays reveal complex intersections and constructions of racialized bodies and discourses, critiquing race in innovative and exciting ways. Critical Rhetorics of Race seeks not only to understand and navigate a world fraught with racism, but to change it, one word at a time.

Shooting Nature

2011-08-14T09:58:00.003-04:00

Ronald B. Tobias, Film and the American Moral Vision of Nature: Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

With his square, bulldoggish stature, signature rimless glasses, and inimitable smile — part grimace, part snarl — Theodore Roosevelt was an unforgettable figure, imprinted on the American memory through photographs, the chiseled face of Mount Rushmore, and, especially, film. At once a hunter, explorer, naturalist, woodsman, and rancher, Roosevelt was the quintessential frontiersman, a man who believed that only nature could truly test and prove the worth of man. A documentary he made about his 1909 African safari embodied aggressive ideas of masculinity, power, racial superiority, and the connection between nature and manifest destiny. These ideas have since been reinforced by others — Jesse “Buffalo” Jones, Paul Rainey, Martin and Osa Johnson, and Walt Disney. Using Roosevelt as a starting point, filmmaker and scholar Ronald Tobias traces the evolution of American attitudes toward nature, attitudes that remain, to this day, remarkably conflicted, complex, and instilled with dreams of empire.

Contesting Public Space in New York

2011-07-21T08:44:00.002-04:00

Benjamin Shepard and Gregory Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City's Public Spaces (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Focusing on the liberating promise of public space, The Beach Beneath the Streets examines the activist struggles of communities in New York City—queer youth of color, gardeners, cyclists, and anti-gentrification activists—as they transform streets, piers, and vacant lots into everyday sites for autonomy, imagination, identity formation, creativity, problem solving, and even democratic renewal. Through ethnographic accounts of contests over New York City’s public spaces that highlight the tension between resistance and repression, Benjamin Shepard and Gregory Smithsimon identify how changes in the control of public spaces—parks, street corners, and plazas—have reliably foreshadowed elites’ shifting designs on the city at large. With an innovative taxonomy of public space, the authors frame the ways spaces as diverse as gated enclaves, luxury shopping malls, collapsing piers, and street protests can be understood in relation to one another. Synthesizing the fifty-year history of New York’s neoliberal transformation and the social movements which have opposed the process, The Beach Beneath the Streets captures the dynamics at work in the ongoing shaping of urban spaces into places of repression, expression, control, and creativity.

Tourist Ethics

2011-07-21T07:28:00.002-04:00

Dean McCannell, The Ethics of Sightseeing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Is travel inherently beneficial to human character? Does it automatically educate and enlighten while also promoting tolerance, peace, and understanding? In this challenging book, Dean MacCannell identifies and overcomes common obstacles to ethical sightseeing. Through his unique combination of personal observation and in-depth scholarship, MacCannell ventures into specific tourist destinations and attractions: “picturesque” rural and natural landscapes, “hip” urban scenes, historic locations of tragic events, Disney theme parks, beaches, and travel poster ideals. He shows how strategies intended to attract tourists carry unintended consequences when they migrate to other domains of life and reappear as “staged authenticity.” Demonstrating each act of sightseeing as an ethical test, the book shows how tourists can realize the productive potential of their travel desires, penetrate the collective unconscious, and gain character, insight, and connection to the world.

Culture and Rhetoric

2011-07-18T09:11:00.008-04:00

Christian Meyer and Felix Girke,eds., The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011).

contents, from the publisher:

Introduction
Felix Girke and Christian Meyer

PART I: INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Chapter 1. The Dance of Rhetoric: Dialogic Selves and Spontaneously Responsive Expressions
John Shotter

Chapter 2. Co-opting Intersubjectivity: Dialogic Rhetoric of the Self
John W. DuBois

Chapter 3. Echo Chambers and Rhetoric. Sketch of a Model of Resonance Theory
Pierre Maranda

Chapter 4. Discourse beyond Language: Cultural Rhetoric, Revelatory Insight, and Nature
Donal Carbaugh and David Boromisza-Habashi

Chapter 5. The Spellbinding Aura of Culture. Tracing its Anthropological Discovery
Bernhard Streck

Chapter 6. Tenor in Culture
Ivo Strecker

PART II: EMERGENCE

Chapter 7. Attending the Vernacular. A Plea for an Ethnographical Rhetoric
Gerard A. Hauser

Chapter 8. Enhoused Speech: The Rhetoric of Foi Territoriality
James F. Weiner

Chapter 9. Transcultural Rhetoric and Cyberspace
Filipp Sapienza

Chapter 10. Jesuit Rhetorics: Translation Versus Conversion in Early-Modern Goa
Alexander Henn

Chapter 11. Evoking Peace and Arguing Harmony. An Example of Transcultural Rhetoric in Southern Ethiopia
Felix Girke and Alula Pankhurst

PART III: AGENCY

Chapter 12. In Defense of the Orator. A Classicist Outlook on Rhetoric Culture
Franz-Hubert Robling

Chapter 13. Rhetoric, Anti-Structure, and the Social Formation of Authorship
James Thomas Zebroski

Chapter 14. Attention & Rhetoric: Prolepsis and the Problem of Meaning
Todd Oakley

Chapter 15. Emergence, Agency and the Middle Ground of Culture: A Meditation on Mediation
Stephen A. Tyler

Remembering the AIDS Quilt

2011-07-12T09:16:00.002-04:00

Charles E. Morris III, ed., Remembering the AIDS Quilt (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

A collaborative creation unlike any other, the Names Project Foundation's AIDS Memorial Quilt has played an invaluable role in shattering the silence and stigma that surrounded the epidemic in the first years of its existence. Designed by Cleve Jones, the AIDS Quilt is the largest ongoing community arts project in the world. Since its conception in 1987, the Quilt has transformed the cultural and political responses to AIDS in the U.S. Representative of both marginalized and mainstream peoples, the Quilt contains crucial material and symbolic implications for mourning the dead, and the treatment and prevention of AIDS. However, the project has raised numerous questions concerning memory, activism, identity, ownership, and nationalism, as well as issues of sexuality, race, class, and gender. As thought-provoking as the Quilt itself, this diverse collection of essays by ten prominent rhetorical scholars provides a rich experience of the AIDS Quilt, incorporating a variety of perspectives, critiques, and interpretations.

Debating the Economy

2011-07-11T07:01:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman on the economic debate:

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. . . . The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.

Paul Krugman, "No, We Can't? Or Won't?" New York Times, 11 July 2011.

Robert Frank's "The Americans"

2011-07-05T07:44:00.003-04:00

Jonathan Day, Robert Frank's "The Americans": The Art of Documentary Photography (Intellect Books; distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In the mid-1950s, Swiss-born New Yorker Robert Frank embarked on a ten-thousand-mile road trip across America, capturing thousands of photographs of all levels of a rapidly changing society. The resultant photo book, The Americans, represents a seminal moment in both photography and in America's understanding of itself. To mark the book’s fiftieth anniversary, Jonathan Day revisits this pivotal work and contributes a thoughtful and revealing critical commentary. Though the importance of The Americans has been widely acknowledged, it still retains much of its mystery. This comprehensive analysis places it thoroughly in the context of contemporary photography, literature, music, and advertising from its own period through the present.

Visual Anthropology

2011-07-05T07:36:00.002-04:00

Marcus Banks and Jay Ruby, ed., Made to Be Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Made to be Seen brings together leading scholars of visual anthropology to examine the historical development of this multifaceted and growing field. Expanding the definition of visual anthropology beyond more limited notions, the contributors to Made to be Seen reflect on the role of the visual in all areas of life. Different essays critically examine a range of topics: art, dress and body adornment, photography, the built environment, digital forms of visual anthropology, indigenous media, the body as a cultural phenomenon, the relationship between experimental and ethnographic film, and more.

The first attempt to present a comprehensive overview of the many aspects of an anthropological approach to the study of visual and pictorial culture, Made to be Seen will be the standard reference on the subject for years to come. Students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, visual studies, and cultural studies will greatly benefit from this pioneering look at the way the visual is inextricably threaded through most, if not all, areas of human activity.

Ponzi Gas?

2011-06-26T12:39:00.004-04:00

The New York Times publishes a story today with some evidence that the natural gas fracking rush is a giant and corrupt financial bubble in the making -- with risks of doing enormous damage to investors and the economy, and at the same time leaving behind enormous environmental damage in unproductive and abandoned wells. Is this a Ponzi scheme?

“Money is pouring in” from investors even though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. “Reminds you of dot-coms.”
“The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work,” an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.

Get-rich-quick mining and drilling schemes have been a feature of American life for a couple of centuries at least -- are we at it again?

Ian Urbina, "Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush," New York Times, 26 June 2011.

Lawrence W. Rosenfield

2011-06-25T11:44:00.006-04:00

Larry Rosenfield died yesterday in Minneapolis.

Larry was an inspirational teacher and a major scholar in rhetorical studies. He earned the B.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Cornell University and went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin, Hunter College, Queens College, Penn State University, and the University of New Hampshire.

I will post an obituary here when it becomes available.

From Betsy Hall: "Larry will have a memorial this coming Tuesday at 11:30 A.M. at Tifereth Israel in Lincoln Nebraska. The funeral home is Butherus Funeral Home in Lincoln. An obituary may be in Sunday's Lincoln Journal. He will be buried on Sunday, July 3rd at West Lawn Cemetery in Johnson City, NY (outside Binghamton) at 11:00 A.M. All are welcome."

The following obituary appeared online at the Butherus, Maser & Love Funeral Home:

Lawrence William (Larry) Rosenfield, 72, a retired professor of speech communication and rhetoric, died Friday, June 24, 2011, at his home in Lincoln, where he had lived since 2005.

He was born August 11, 1938, in Binghamton, N.Y., to Sam and Nettie (Feinberg) Rosenfield and grew up in Hancock, N.Y., where his parents owned a general dry goods store.

He spent a long career in university teaching and scholarship, beginning in 1963 at the University of Wisconsin, continuing at Hunter College and Queens College of the City University of New York in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and a visiting appointment at Penn State University in the 1980s, and ending at the University of New Hampshire from 1998 to 2005.

He graduated from Hancock Central School in 1956 and then attended Cornell University on a National Merit Scholarship, participating in intercollegiate forensic debate as a member and vice president of the Cornell Debate Association and graduating in 1960 with high honors. He went on to complete a master’s degree at the University of Illinois and then returned to Cornell, where he earned a Ph.D. in speech and drama in 1963.

In 1999 the National Communication Association presented him with its Lifetime Teaching Excellence Award.

Preceded in death by his parents; a sister, Edna Rosenfield; and a brother, Jerry Rosenfield, he is survived by his wife, Sylvia Hermanson, of Lincoln; a brother, Arthur Rosenfield, of Randolph, N.J.; and numerous cousins around the country.

Services are at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 28, 2011, at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

A graveside service is scheduled for 11 a.m., Sunday, July 3, 2011, at Westlawn Cemetery in Johnson City, N.Y.

A panel to remember Larry's work is is being organized for the November 2011 meeting of the National Communication Association.

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

2011-06-25T11:27:00.006-04:00

Bonnie Johnson Shurman, a dear friend and former student and colleague, died on June 2, 2011. Bonnie earned the Ph.D. in speech communication at SUNY Buffalo and taught for some years at Penn State in the 1970s.

Here is an obituary from Palo Alto online:

Bonnie Johnson Shurman
Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011
Oak Island, North Carolina

Bonnie Johnson Shurman, age 67, of Oak Island, formerly of Palo Alto, Calif., passed away Thursday, June 2, 2011, in Southport, N.C.

She was born in Baytown, Texas, to the late Buck and Osie McDaniel. A loving wife, mom and grandmother, she celebrated each day of her life with joy and was cherished by her many friends, fellow church members and family.

A university professor for almost two decades and then another two decades as a visionary/strategic planner in corporate and consulting settings, Bonnie left Silicon Valley after a life-changing Acute Leukemia terminal diagnosis. Her miracle remission allowed her to follow her spirit to discern God's purpose for her life and enroll in the Episcopal Divinity School in Boston Massachusetts.

Her years at EDS were ones of tranquility, love, learning and inspiration. Bonnie lived for many more years infused with joy and grace and surrounded by her family and friends' constant love and support. While we are in sorrow, we also rejoice that Bonnie has let go of her earthly body to join her loving God. As Bonnie said in her Lenten sermon at St. Phillips, "Remember that we are love, and to love we shall return."

She is survived by her husband, Daniel; son, Ron and fiancée Amber; daughter, Jennifer and husband Scott; and her much-loved grandchildren, Zac, Lucas, Abi and Landen; and many dear friends.

Friends and family are invited to a memorial service to celebrate Bonnie's life on Friday, June 10, at 2 p.m. at St. Phillips Episcopal Church, Southport, N.C. Reception in the Parish hall to immediately follow the service.

Bonnie's family requests that in lieu of flowers that a donation may be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You may offer online condolences at www.peacocknewnamwhite.com Peacock-Newnam & White Funeral and Cremation Service, Southport, NC.

other links:
http://peacocknewnamwhite.com/?p=2318
Terry Winograd eulogy

Italian American Filmmakers

2011-06-23T10:34:00.003-04:00

Jonathan J. Cavallero, Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers : Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers explores the different ways in which Italian American directors from the 1920s to the present have responded to their ethnicity. While some directors have used film to declare their ethnic roots and create an Italian American "imagined community," others have ignored or even denied their background. Jonathan J. Cavallero examines the films of Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Nancy Savoca, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino with a focus on what the films reveal about each director's view on Italian American identities. Whereas Capra's films highlight similarities between immigrant characters and WASP Americans, Scorsese accepts his ethnic heritage but also sees it as confining. Many of Coppola's films provide a nostalgic treatment of Italian American identity, with little criticism of the culture's more negative aspects. And while Savoca's movies reveal her artful ability to recognize how ethnic, gender, and class identities overlap, Tarantino's films exhibit a playfully postmodern engagement with Italian American ethnicity.
Cavallero's exploration of the films of Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino demonstrates how immigrant Italians fought prejudice, how later generations positioned themselves in relation to their predecessors, and how the American cinema, usually seen as a cultural institution that works to assimilate, has also served as a forum where assimilation was resisted.

"This book makes a significant contribution to the limited academic literature on Italian American filmmakers. The description and analysis is first-rate and convincing, and its subject matter will appeal to the general public as well as to scholars, researchers, and students in many disciplines."--Frank Tomasulo, coeditor of More than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance

Eloquentia Perfecta

2011-06-23T10:27:00.002-04:00

Here's an interesting e-mail from the Rhetoric Society of America --

June 23, 2011
RSA AFFILIATE FEATURED IN AMERICA MAGAZINE

One of RSA's oldest affiliate organizations is the Jesuit Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, organized by RSA former president Pat Bizzell (Holy Cross) and some of her colleagues at the other 27 Jesuit universities. The members are involved in recovering a Jesuit tradition in rhetoric and in using that rediscovery to reinvigorate undergraduate studies around the study and practice of rhetoric. The conference is featured in an article by Kevin Clarke in the May 16, 2011 issue of America magazine. If you would like to know more about this affiliate organization, look at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12858 .

The Situationist Beach

2011-06-17T07:30:00.003-04:00

McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (New York: Verso, 2011).

Patrick Leigh Fermor

2011-06-14T10:29:00.003-04:00

Patrick Leigh Fermor died "last Friday at his home in Worcestershire," according to the New York Times.

Fermor was 96 at the time of his death.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was the author of many wonderful travel books, including A Time of Gifts, an account, written many years later, of his journey on foot (and boat, horse, and automobile) from London to Constantinople in 1933-35, starting when he was 18 years old.

Another book, Between the Woods and the Water, describes the next leg of the journey, taking up after A Time of Gifts; he never published an account of the final leg of the journey.

In World War II, Fermor led a group that kidnapped the German general in command of Crete.

Rhetoric of Falun Gong in China

2011-06-07T07:28:00.003-04:00

Xiao Ming, The Cultural Economy of the Falun Gong in China: A Rhetorical Perspective (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Emerging in China in the early 1990s, Falun Gong is viewed by its supporters as a folk movement promoting the benefits of good health and moral cultivation. To the Chinese establishment, however, it is a dissident religious cult threatening political orthodoxy and national stability. The author, a Chinese national once involved in implementing Chinese cultural policies, examines the evolving relationship between Falun Gong and Chinese authorities in a revealing case study of the powerful public discourse between a pervasive political ideology and an alternative agenda in contention for cultural dominance.

Posited as a cure for culturally bound illness with widespread symptoms, the Falun Gong movement's efficacy among the marginalized relies on its articulation of a struggle against government sanctioned exploitation in favor of idealistic moral aspirations. In countering such a position, the Chinese government alleges that the religious movement is based in superstition and pseudoscience. Aided by her insider perspective, the author deftly employs Western rhetorical methodology in a compelling critique of an Eastern rhetorical occurrence, highlighting how authority confronts challenge in postsocialist China.

The author, writing under the pseudonym Xiao Ming, was a Chinese diplomat and official of the Ministry of Culture before coming to the United States. A graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh, she now teaches communication at a private college in Pennsylvania.

Hubert Humphrey at 100

2011-05-27T18:30:00.002-04:00

Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention, 1948:

“To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights,” he thundered from the convention podium, “I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

qtd in Rick Perlstein, "America's Forgotten Liberal," New York Times, 27 May 2011.

Speaking Hermeneutically

2011-05-16T10:45:00.003-04:00

John Arthos, Speaking Hermeneutically: Understanding in the Conduct of a Life (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), series in Rhetoric / Communication.

from the publisher:

John Arthos discovers and promotes an organic reciprocity between rhetoric as a humanist practice and hermeneutics as a theoretical comportment. Although these two traditions have a long and rewarding collaboration, it is only now that we begin to realize their potential for radically remaking the way we think and speak as social animals. Arthos marries the performative competencies of rhetorical practice with the circularity of hermeneutic understanding in a way that redefines the syntax of a humanist education in the twenty-first century. As a counter to the linear, technical rationalism that permeates common culture and educational praxis, Speaking Hermeneutically shows how a hermeneutically inflected rhetoric can lead to refashioning habits of thought and speech, the constitution of personal identity, the conventions of social engagement, and the deliberative practices that form the basis of public institutions. Arthos adapts the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur to a series of classic rhetorical texts and landmark political moments, modeling the revitalized interchange of traditions in a way that will be accessible to scholars and students in both fields of inquiry.

John Arthos is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and the John and Christine Warner Chair at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He is also the author of The Inner Word in Gadamer's Hermeneutics.

Roots of new media

2011-05-06T07:22:00.002-04:00

Sheila C. Murphy, How Television Invented New Media (Rutgers University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers. Yet it is also an abstraction and an often misunderstood science whose critical influence on the development, history, and diffusion of new media has been both minimized and overlooked. How Television Invented New Media adjusts the picture of television culturally while providing a corrective history of new media studies itself.
Personal computers, video game systems, even iPods and the Internet built upon and borrowed from television to become viable forms. The earliest personal computers, disguised as video games using TV sets as monitors, provided a case study for television's key role in the emergence of digital interactive devices. Sheila C. Murphy analyzes how specific technologies emerge and how representations, from South Park to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, mine the history of television just as they converge with new methods of the making and circulation of images. Past and failed attempts to link television to computers and the Web also indicate how services like Hulu or Netflix On-Demand can give rise to a new era for entertainment and program viewing online. In these concrete ways, television's role in new and emerging media is solidified and finally recognized.

In the Land of Cotton

2011-05-04T07:32:00.004-04:00

Karen L. Cox, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

From the late nineteenth century through World War II, popular culture portrayed the American South as a region ensconced in its antebellum past, draped in moonlight and magnolias, and represented by such southern icons as the mammy, the belle, the chivalrous planter, white-columned mansions, and even bolls of cotton.
In Dreaming of Dixie, Karen Cox shows that the chief purveyors of this constructed nostalgia for the Old South were outsiders of the region, especially advertising agencies, musicians, publishers, radio personalities, writers, and filmmakers playing to consumers' anxiety about modernity by marketing the South as a region still dedicated to America's pastoral traditions. Cox examines how southerners themselves embraced the imaginary romance of the region's past, particularly in the tourist trade as southern states and cities sought to capitalize on popular perceptions by showcasing their Old South heritage. Only when television emerged as the most influential medium of popular culture did views of the South begin to change, as news coverage of the civil rights movement brought images of violence, protest, and conflict in the South into people's living rooms. Until then, Cox argues, most Americans remained content with their romantic vision of Dixie.

Republicans and the Social Compact

2011-04-18T07:20:00.002-04:00

Is the Republican Party trying to repeal the New Deal? An editorial in today's New York Times:

Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.

"The New Republican Landscape," New York Times, 18 April 2011.

Fracking PA

2011-04-17T07:36:00.003-04:00

Governor Tom Corbett wants Pennsylvania to be the Texas of the next oil and gas boom, based on the exploitation of the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation under Pennsylvania. He has said he will veto any attempt to tax the industry, which is alleged to be responsible for toxifying underground water reserves, and for breaking up roads all over Pennsylvania. He is also attempting to evade environmental regulations that might identify and prevent damage to the environment.

Now a new Congressional study on the environmental dangers of fracking -- the hydraulic fracturing system used to extract gas from underground shale.

WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.

Ian Urbina, "Chemicals Were Injected into Wells, Report Says," New York Times, 17 April 2011.

Return of the Maine Mural

2011-04-11T12:37:00.002-04:00

See "Maine Mural Projection Artists Discuss 'Photo-Bombing,'" Huffington Post, 11 April 2011.

Digital Griots

2011-04-11T11:15:00.001-04:00

Adam J. Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011).

LionSearch

2011-04-09T10:00:00.000-04:00

New search function unlocks Libraries' resources

The University Libraries will test a powerful new search function on March 21 that will allow users to find all library resources -- books, articles, newspapers, databases and more -- from a single search box. Called LionSearch, the new service is designed to mimic open Web search methods. Entering a search term in LionSearch will return, nearly instantaneously, a list of relevant physical and digital materials from the Libraries’ collections. LionSearch can be accessed from the Libraries’ homepage, www.libraries.psu.edu, and will debut initially in beta mode. Students, faculty and other users are encouraged to test the functionality of the service and leave feedback.

Penn State is one of a handful of universities around the world pioneering this service for their library collections. This simple and fast way of retrieving information will enhance the research process for students and unlock the wealth of resources available at Penn State.

"New search function unlocks Libraries' resources"

Net Neutrality -- Once There Was an Internet

2011-04-08T17:26:00.001-04:00

The House of Representatives has voted to end Net Neutrality --

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives approved a measure on Friday that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from regulating how Internet service providers manage their broadband networks, potentially overturning a central initiative of the F.C.C. chairman, Julius Genachowski. . . .

Edward Wyatt, "House Votes against 'Net Neutrality,'" New York Times, 8 April 2011.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Society: vanityfair.com

2011-04-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

Joseph Stiglitz, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," Vanity Fair, May 2011

. . . a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead. . . . <more>

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Society: vanityfair.com

Academic Research and State Propaganda in Britain

2011-04-03T18:25:00.003-04:00

D. D. Guttenplan reports in the New York Times on how British research funding for humanist scholars is being used to force them into doing the political work of the current government.

"Two historians have accused the British government of pressuring researchers to study Prime Minister David Cameron's 'Big Society' or lose their funding."

D. D. Guttenplan, "Academic Freedom, With Strings Attached?" New York Times, 3 April 2011.

The Memory Purge in Maine

2011-04-02T10:56:00.004-04:00

Peter Catapano on the memory purge in Maine:

Last weekend, on the order of Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, a 36-foot-wide, 11-panel mural, pictured in part below, was removed from the lobby of the state’s Department of Labor building in Augusta. The mural, which depicts scenes from Maine’s labor history, was completed with a $60,000 federal arts grant. (The artist, Judy Taylor, has expressed her dismay at the removal, but should probably send a thank-you note to the governor for the exposure.) LePage, who has been in office for about two months, claimed he removed the mural because of complaints from “some business owners” that it was too pro-union. (A spokesperson for the governor said it was “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”) . . . [more]

Peter Catapano, "The Mural Vanishes," New York Times, 1 April 2011.

image from Reuters, via New York Times

see also "Buddhas of Bamiyan," Wikipedia

The Cost of Freedom (of Information): In Defense of William Cronon - Inside Higher Ed

2011-03-30T07:41:00.002-04:00

Barbara Fister at Inside Higher Ed on the Wisconsin Republican e-mail search:

I am a huge fan of open government and of the Freedom of Information Act. The right of the people to request information from public officials is an important tool for journalism, research, and activism. That’s why, as I read responses to a political group’s request for e-mail correspondence from a state employee, my knee does not begin to jerk convulsively. I don’t think, “e-mail!? That’s outrageous! how dare you invade an individual’s privacy?” Not only do I know better than to think a work account is in any respect private or personal, but I remember how outraged I felt when I learned that top officials of the Bush White House used unofficial e-mail accounts to avoid their official correspondence being part of the record. (And I must say I am impressed that there’s a Wikipedia article on this very topic.)
All that said, I am appalled that officials of the Republican Party in Wisconsin have decided to use a public records law to peer into a University of Wisconsin history professor’s e-mail to see if he’s said anything they consider inappropriate and to find out if he can be attacked for violating the university’s policies. (An aside: as a born-and-bred Sconnie who spent my childhood hanging around the UW campus and playing tag in the basement hallways of the capital building, I am baffled and dismayed by recent events and wonder how it can possibly have happened in my home state; as a connoisseur of headlines, “Wisconsin Gets Weirder” is a keeper.) . . .

The Cost of Freedom (of Information): In Defense of William Cronon - Inside Higher Ed

The Intimidation Spreads

2011-03-29T16:44:00.002-04:00

E-mail trolling linked to freedom of information requests is apparently becoming a method of intimidation for some Republicans.

A free enterprise think tank in Michigan -- backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles -- has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in the study of labor relations, seeking all their emails regarding the union battle in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, TPM has learned. . . . [more]

Evan McMorris-Santoro, "Conservative Think Tank Seeks Michigan Seeks Michigan Profs' Emails about Wisconsin Union Battle . . . and Maddow," Talking Points Memo, 29 March 2011.

Academic Freedom in Wisconsin

2011-03-28T16:18:00.002-04:00

Editorial in the New York Times, today:

The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state’s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors. . . .

"A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin," editorial, New York Times, 28 March 2011.

Is This the New McCarthyism?

2011-03-28T15:28:00.002-04:00

Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment. . . .

Paul Krugman, "William Cronon and the American Thought Police," New York Times, 28 March 2011.

Wisconsin's Republican Progressives

2011-03-28T15:24:00.002-04:00

Professor William Cronon in the New York Times:

NOW that a Wisconsin judge has temporarily blocked a state law that would strip public employee unions of most collective bargaining rights, it’s worth stepping back to place these events in larger historical context.
Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to reverse civic traditions that for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements not just of their state, but of their own party as well. . . .

William Cronon, "Wisconsin's Radical Break," New York Times, 22 March 2011.

It did not take long for Wisconsin Republicans to launch a McCarthyite attack on Professor Cronon.

Bob Herbert, "Losing Our Way"

2011-03-26T08:25:00.003-04:00

Bob Herbert's last New York Times column:

Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone. . . .

Bob Herbert, "Losing Our Way," New York Times, 26 March 2011.

Where the Action Is - Inside Higher Ed

2011-03-25T07:47:00.000-04:00

Russ Olwell, "Where the Action Is," Inside Higher Ed, 25 March 2011.

When asked what they want to do when they grow up, few little kids answer, "I want to teach at a regional public university." They want to be astronauts, fighter pilots, spies or generals (OK, those were my choices at that age). In Ph.D. programs, graduate students are encouraged to seek work and accept positions at the kind of research institutions where they do their doctoral work, whether they are wealthy private institutions or top flagship public institutions. The only step off the research track imaginable is the private liberal arts college, where selective admissions and small classes promise an ideal teaching setting.

Where the Action Is - Inside Higher Ed

Brit Celeb Deplores U.S. Political Polarization

2011-03-24T16:34:00.000-04:00

Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker:

Harken, please, to Charles Dickens, in “American Notes for General Circulation,” his account of his one and only visit to the United States. It’s 1842. Dickens, just thirty and already world-famous, is on a train out of Boston, his first American railway trip.

Brit Celeb Deplores U.S. Political Polarization

Superficial & Sublime? by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books

2011-03-24T11:00:00.001-04:00

A great bad review; a wonderful and hilarious gem by Wills, but it also evokes terror in the heart of any author.

This book, which was featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, comes recommended by some famous Big Thinkers. It is written by well-regarded professors (one of them the chairman of the Harvard philosophy department). This made me rub my eyes with astonishment as I read the book itself, so inept and shallow is it. . . .

Superficial & Sublime? by Garry Wills | The New York Review of Books

Embattled Public Radio by Bill McKibben | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

2011-03-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

National Public Radio has taken a beating over the last two weeks: first its chief executive was forced to resign amid a scandal caused by a right-wing frame-up, and then, on Thursday, the GOP-dominated House voted to cut off all federal funding to NPR. For the moment, that bill seems unlikely to get far in the Senate, but it suggests just how much public radio has been undermined in recent weeks and months. What’s almost as disturbing as the persistent right-wing attacks on an institution respected and relied upon by the broad public is NPR’s seeming unwillingness to stand up for itself. . . .

Embattled Public Radio by Bill McKibben | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

Robert Darnton on a National Digital Library

2011-03-24T08:01:00.003-04:00

Robert Darnton on the Google decision, in the Times:

ON Tuesday, Denny Chin, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the settlement between Google, which aims to digitize every book ever published, and a group of authors and publishers who had sued the company for copyright infringement. This decision is a victory for the public good, preventing one company from monopolizing access to our common cultural heritage.
Nonetheless, we should not abandon Google’s dream of making all the books in the world available to everyone. Instead, we should build a digital public library, which would provide these digital copies free of charge to readers. Yes, many problems — legal, financial, technological, political — stand in the way. All can be solved. . . . [read more]

Robert Darnton, "A Digital Library Better Than Google's," New York Times, 24 March 2011.

A Fish Named Badger

2011-03-22T15:46:00.004-04:00

Stanley Fish in the Times:

In over 35 years of friendship and conversation, Walter Michaels and I have disagreed on only two things, and one of them was faculty and graduate student unionization. He has always been for and I had always been against. I say “had” because I recently flipped and what flipped me, pure and simple, was Wisconsin. . . . We are all badgers now. . . .

Stanley Fish, "We're All Badgers Now," New York Times, 22 March 2011.

Hush Harbor Rhetoric

2011-03-21T10:30:00.002-04:00

Vorriss L. Nunley, Keepin' It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011).

from the publisher:

In Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric, Vorris L. Nunley investigates the role of the hush harbor (a safe place for free expression among African American speakers) as a productive space of rhetorical tradition and knowledge generation. Nunley identifies the barbershop as an important hush harbor for black males in particular and traces the powerful cultural trope and its hidden tradition of African American knowledge through multiple texts. From Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” to the recent Barbershop movies and the provocative rhetoric of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Nunley’s study touches on a range of time periods and genres.

Nunley’s introduction connects African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric (AAHHR) to everyday considerations of what may or may not be spoken in public and how African American speakers manage numerous hidden transcripts. In the first three chapters, Nunley charts different iterations of hush harbors and their function in the context of residual and emergent rhetorical traditions. He investigates public sphere theory and its application (and misapplication) to black civil society and hush harbors and connects AAHHR to nommo, the power of the word. In chapters 4 and 5, Nunley examines the ubiquity of the hush harbor trope in African American culture and considers barbershops as pedagogical sites, using literature, poetry, philosophy, and film to make his case. In chapter 6, he analyzes the Barbershop movie in detail, arguing that the movie’s commodified, neoliberal version of AAHHR did not represent a hush harbor, although that was ostensibly the aim.

Keepin’ It Hushed concludes with a presentation of a hush harbor pedagogy in chapter 7 and a distinctive analysis of hush harbor oriented speeches by then-Senator Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Rhetoricians and readers interested in African American life and culture will appreciate the cogent analysis in Nunley’s volume.

NPR Funding - Up for a Vote Today

2011-03-17T14:28:00.002-04:00

Here's an e-mail just received from my local NPR station --

Dear Friends of WPSU,

The House of Representatives will be voting mid-afternoon today on a bill, H.R. 1076, that would prohibit local stations, like WPSU, from using federal funds to purchase radio programming. The ostensible target of this proposed legislation is NPR which produces public radio's most popular daily news programming. However, this bill would also prohibit stations from using federal funds to purchase other highly valued public radio fare like Car Talk, Living on Earth, and Prairie Home Companion. It does not allow the use of federal funds to buy any programs at all.

The bill is a direct threat to the viability of smaller public stations, especially in rural areas, who might not have sufficient non federal discretionary dollars to acquire these programs. It is also a misguided attempt to stifle an important and highly valued public service.

NPR has made some very public misteps in the past year. For that they rightly deserve criticism. However, they have also been the target of unethical attacks by individuals with the very narrow and specific agenda of destroying NPR.

That will not happen. NPR will survive, with or without federal funding. However, local public radio stations are directly threatened by this action. This bill undermines their autonomy as locally controlled public service entities, and their ability to generate needed support for their operations.

Below is contact information for the federal representatives elected from the WPSU broadcast area. I am asking you to please contact your legislator today, and share your concerns on this matter. Our representatives need to hear that constituents will support them in opposing House Bill H.R. 1076.

Rep. Kelley - (202) 225-5406
http://wpsu.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=7f20e5976689cba8ab948781c&id=e85c118e1a&e=a14db4a4e5

Rep. Thompson - (202) 225-5121
http://wpsu.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=7f20e5976689cba8ab948781c&id=0ffd30d6d3&e=a14db4a4e5

Rep. Shuster - (202) 225-2431
http://wpsu.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7f20e5976689cba8ab948781c&id=b4fb160bd0&e=a14db4a4e5

Thank you for your support of public broadcasting.
Ted Krichels, General Manager, Penn State Public Broadcasting

Appropriations committee hearing focuses on proposed cuts

2011-03-17T07:33:00.001-04:00

From Penn State Newswire:

In the face of a proposed state budget that would see funding for Pennsylvania's public universities cut by more than 50 percent, Penn State President Graham Spanier, along with the leaders of Temple University, Lincoln University and the University of Pittsburgh, appeared before the state Senate Appropriations Committee March 16 to make the case for continued state support for the commonwealth's state-related institutions.

Sen. Jake Corman, chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee, asked the university leaders about the effects such a broad cut would have on their institutions. Overall, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's budget proposes more than $660 million in cuts to institutions of higher education. The cuts proposed for Penn State alone represent a decrease of $182 million, or 52.4 percent, in state funding.

The proposed appropriation cut would represent a decrease of about 17 percent of Penn State's overall instructional budget; the money is largely used to help offset to cost of tuition for Pennsylvania residents. Spanier reminded the committee that state-related universities have not contributed to the current budget deficit, since state appropriations have remained stagnant for the past decade even as other areas of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania spending continued to rise.

"We're all very mindful of the state's current budget situation, and we do expect to be part of the solution," Spanier said. "I'm not sure it's fair to say, however, that we are part of the problem in this respect: our appropriations in actual dollars have been flat over the last decade. We have not contributed to the state's deficit because our appropriation has not increased since 2000."

The presidents all said that they would not turn to tuition increases to primarily deal with appropriation cuts, yet the reductions would result in some level of higher tuition for in-state students, potentially pushing the cost of education at Pennsylvania's state-related universities out of reach for some students and families already stressed by student-loan debt. At Penn State, Spanier said the proposed cut would result in program cuts, layoffs, salary freezes and other measures.

"It is not true that any of us would unduly raise tuition, even under the most dire circumstances, as the principal way of remedying a shortfall in our appropriation," Spanier said. "Of course tuition would need to increase, but we could not put that great a burden on the backs of our current and prospective students."

Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, called the scope of the proposed cuts "stunning."

"The proposed cuts are deep, they are disproportionate, and they are damaging to some of the most productive institutions in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania," he said. "I do think that this proposal ought to be a concern for everybody who cares about the next generation of Pennsylvanians and for everybody who cares about the shape of Pennsylvania's economy as we move into an increasingly competitive century."

Spanier said Penn State agricultural research and Cooperative Extension would be particularly hard-hit by a $29 million cut to their appropriation. In agriculture alone, he said, the workforce would be cut by about 440 positions, or 50 percent. That would surely mean a severe cutback in the breadth of services currently provided by Cooperative Extension to the state's agriculture industry.

"These are not made-up numbers, these are not numbers designed to shock people; these are actual projections. We've had to get very specific in the last few days because if this budget goes forward as it is now on July 1, we have to operate with a balanced budget just as the commonwealth does, and the numbers are very dramatic. Agriculture is just in one of the colleges of our University. There are ripple effects that would go out across the entire institution with appropriation reductions of the sort that we are looking at."

"We are prepared to do our fair share. We have never said differently. But I don't believe that a decrease in our appropriation at this level would constitute anyone's idea of what is a fair share for some of the state's greatest resources -- our public institutions of higher education."

Sen. John Rafferty Jr. asked about the impact on the state's economy if the proposed cuts were to stand. Penn State alone generates about $17 billion in direct and indirect economic activity in Pennsylvania every year. Spanier said the cuts would affect the University's ability to continue that output. Penn State brings in about $800 million in research funding annually, much of which comes from outside of the state, through grants.

"Each $1 million of research funding creates about 30 jobs within Pennsylvania," he said. "From an economic development standpoint, we make significant contributions."

In addition to jobs created by the influx of research funding, the majority of Penn State's graduates, and the graduates of the other state-related institutions, work in Pennsylvania when they graduate, and many who leave eventually return, contributing further to the state's economic well being.

"On the programmatic side, we are the principal producers of college graduates -- 18,000 graduates a year from Penn State, the majority of them taking jobs in Pennsylvania. Our contribution to the tax base, our contribution to economic development, our research activity with 750 different companies throughout the commonwealth -- these are all things that could be affected and could really erode the investment that the state has made in Penn State and in all of our public institutions historically."

Between the four state-related institutions about 150,000 students are educated each year.

Sen. Lisa Boscola said that while she supports many of the cuts proposed by the governor's budget, the reductions proposed for higher education are unfair and disproportionate. Boscola asked the panel about the percentage of students who stay in Pennsylvania after graduating from a state-related institution. Boscola said it is her hope that the final budget will find ways to keep more graduates in Pennsylvania.

Spanier said more students would stay if employment opportunities were available. He also said many return later in life. "Many of the students who at age 22 leave Pennsylvania to work elsewhere do ultimately come back after they've gotten some experience. That number is almost completely dependent on what job opportunities are out there for them. To the extent that the Universities can contribute to the economic strength of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we will keep even more of those graduates," he said.

Corman said the March 16 hearing represents a beginning to the Senate Appropriation Committee's budget discussions. He said he expects to stay in contact with the leaders of the commonwealth's state-related universities as the June 30 budget deadline approaches.

"It isn't new for higher education to take the brunt of budgetary problems. I don't know another line item in the budget that has (remained stagnant) over the last 8 years," Corman said. "This proposal has sort of shocked the commonwealth in a lot of ways ... I think by finally elevating higher education to this level, now the public is going to get engaged and hopefully put higher education at a higher level of priority for our budget."

The legislature will continue its hearings with other recipients of state funding and will work in the coming months to finalize the state budget.

Pro-Terrorist Republican Congressman? Holding Hearings on Terrorism?

2011-03-08T22:36:00.003-05:00

From the New York Times:

For Representative Peter T. King, as he seizes the national spotlight this week with a hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims, it is the most awkward of résumé entries. Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.

Scott Shane, "For Lawmaker Examining Terror, a Pro-I.R.A. Past," New York Times, 8 March 2011.

Devastating appropriation cut advanced for Penn State

2011-03-08T17:12:00.001-05:00

from Penn State Live (8 March 2011):

Penn State and other Pennsylvania public universities are slated for the most dramatic appropriation cut in the history of American higher education, based on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's budget proposal released today (March 8) by Gov. Tom Corbett.

The budget cuts Penn State's appropriation by 52.4 percent, a devastating reduction of $182 million. This includes a 50 percent cut in Penn State's educational appropriation, a 50 percent cut in its Agricultural Research and Cooperative Extension appropriations, the loss of all federal stimulus dollars, a reduction for the Pennsylvania College of Technology, and the total elimination of medical assistance funding for the Penn State Hershey Medical Center.

The proposed appropriation represents the most severe funding cut in Penn State’s 157-year history and suggests a redefinition of Penn State’s role as Pennsylvania’s land-grant institution.

"A funding gap this large is going to fundamentally change the way we operate, from the number of students we can educate, to the tuition we must charge, to the programs we offer and the services we can provide, to the number of employees and the research we undertake," said President Graham Spanier.

According to university officials, a cut of this magnitude jeopardizes the University’s mission of providing access and opportunity to students at 24 campuses. It would undermine support of the Commonwealth’s agricultural industry and force a complete redefinition of the state's Cooperative Extension Service and the agricultural research upon which it depends. It would affect the University's ability to sustain dozens of programs that support economic development in the Commonwealth.

The University currently receives less than 8 percent of its annual operating budget from the state, a figure that has eroded significantly over the last two decades. Under the governor’s proposal, that figure will fall to 4 percent.

This budget proposal comes on the heels of a decade of stagnant state appropriations that in some years also were reduced again through mid-year rescissions.

Cuts in higher education budgets are being proposed in many states, but never has a single institution's budget been slated for a reduction of more than 50 percent in a given year. The University would have a matter of only a few weeks to manage such a catastrophic cut.

"A reduction of this magnitude would necessitate massive budget cuts, layoffs and tuition increases, with a devastating effect on many students, employees and their families," said Al Horvath, senior vice president for Finance and Business. "While we have for many months been planning for a potential state funding cut, we could not have envisioned one so damaging to the future of the University and the Commonwealth."

University officials report that no one in state government reached out to them with any advance notice of such a possibility, nor was there any prior discussion about the potential impact of such a cut.

Penn State has mobilized a team of University leaders to look at operational cuts. "We must consider the welfare of our students and the quality of their education, not to mention our long-term funding stability," said Steve Garban, chairman of Penn State's Board of Trustees. "As we work to handle a potential funding cut, we’ll be guided by our goals of quality and access, and we’ll seek to avoid having our students and their families shoulder this entire burden through increased tuition -- although tuition will rise."

"We are eager to explore with elected officials whether they support this proposal and whether they see this as the first step toward the complete elimination of public higher education in Pennsylvania," said John Surma, CEO of US Steel, who serves as vice chair of Penn State's Board of Trustees and chair of its Budget Subcommittee.

Administrators plan to deal with the cuts as equitably as possible, but significant downsizing in academic and administrative units will be under consideration. Scaling back plans for critical facility needs, such as major maintenance and capital improvements, will be undertaken; changes to the University’s health care programs will be revisited to create additional savings; salary increases for employees will likely again be frozen; and more across-the-board budget reductions for academic and administrative units will have to be instituted.

"We are committed to finding every possible way to reduce expenses and maintain quality,” added Spanier. "We face difficult choices and this will be an extremely challenging year -- one that quite possibly will change the face of higher education in the Commonwealth."

The governor’s budget proposal is the first step in the appropriation process. Penn State will continue to press its case for support with the General Assembly and the governor over the next several weeks.

"I want to thank Penn Staters for their continued support and for all of their efforts that allow Penn State to be the most student-centered research university in the nation," added Spanier. "I deeply appreciate the commitment we feel from our 96,000 students, our 47,000 faculty and staff, and our 514,000 alumni. I vow to challenge the level of this reduction aggressively and welcome the support that is already pouring in."

Blaming the Teacher

2011-03-07T16:29:00.002-05:00

Why Blame the Teachers?

Diane Ravitch, "It Started with 'No Child Left Behind," New York Times, 7 March 2011.

"A historic strain of anti-intellectualism in American thought has merged with fiscal conservatism, producing the present campaign to dismantle the teaching profession. It echoes a deeply-ingrained American belief that anyone can teach, no training or experience necessary.

Although politicians and corporate leaders claim they want to reform education, it is impossible to see how the campaign against teachers will advance that goal. No high-performing nation in the world is reducing the status and rights of the teaching profession. . . ." [read more]

Is College the Answer?

2011-03-07T16:18:00.003-05:00

Paul Krugman in the Times:

But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.
So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen. . . . [more]

Paul Krugman, "Dollars and Degrees," New York Times, 7 March 2011.

Martin Luther King's rhetoric

2011-03-07T15:53:00.003-05:00

Wolfgang Mieder, "Making a Way Out of No Way": Martin Luther King's Sermonic Proverbial Rhetoric (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

from the publisher:

"In barely forty years of life Martin Luther King (1929-1968) distinguished himself as one of the greatest social reformers of modern times: civil rights leader, defender of nonviolence in the struggle of desegregation, champion of the poor, anti-war proponent, and broad-minded visionary of an interrelated world of free people. His many verbal and written communications in the form of sermons, speeches, interviews, letters, essays, and several books are replete with Bible proverbs as «Love your enemies», «He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword», and «Man does not live by bread alone» as well as folk proverbs as «Time and tide wait for no man», «Last hired, first fired», «No gain without pain», and «Making a way out of no way». He also delighted in citing quotations that have become proverbs, to wit «No man is an island», «All men are created equal», and «No lie can live forever». King recycles these bits of traditional wisdom in various contexts, varying his proverbial messages as he addresses the multifaceted issues of civil rights. His rhetorical prowess is thus informed to a considerable degree by his effective use of his repertoire of proverbs which he frequently uses as leitmotifs or amasses into set pieces of fixed phrases to be employed repeatedly."

Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

2011-03-04T18:22:00.000-05:00

From today's New York Times, on the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration, a consideration of his inaugural address.

"Lincoln Addresses the Nation," New York Times, 4 March 2011.

Drinking Frackwater

2011-02-27T08:26:00.002-05:00

The New York Times on the hazards of fracking:

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself. . . . [more]

Ian Urbina, "Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers," New York Times, 27 February 2011.

The Shock Doctrine in Madison, Wisconsin

2011-02-25T07:49:00.002-05:00

Paul Krugman in the Times:

In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions — an offer the governor has rejected.
What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside. . . . [more]

Paul Krugman, "Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.," New York Times, 25 February 2011.

Techno Politics

2011-02-22T11:11:00.004-05:00

John Allen Hendricks and Lynda Lee Kaid, eds., Techno Politics in Presidential Campaigning: New Voices, New Technologies, and New Voters (Routledge, 2010).

Confessional Politics

2011-02-14T09:03:00.004-05:00

Bryan T. Kaylor, Presidential Campaign Rhetoric in an Age of Confessional Politics (Lexington Books, 2011).

from the publisher:

"When a Bible-quoting Sunday School teacher, Jimmy Carter, won the 1976 presidential election, it marked the start of a new era of presidential campaign discourse. The successful candidates since then have followed Carter's lead in publicly testifying about their personal religious beliefs and invoking God to justify their public policy positions and their political visions. With this new confessional political style, the candidates have repudiated the former perspective of a civil-religious contract that kept political leaders from being too religious and religious leaders from being too political. Presidential Campaign Rhetoric in the Age of Confessional Politics analyzes the religious-political discourse used by presidential nominees from 1976-2008, and then describes key characteristics of their confessional rhetoric that represent a substantial shift from the tenets of the civil-religious contract. This new confessional political style is characterized by religious-political rhetoric that is testimonial, partisan, sectarian, and liturgical in nature. In order to understand why candidates have radically adjusted their God talk on the campaign trail, important religious-political shifts in American society since the 1950s are examined, which demonstrate the rhetorical demands evangelical religious leaders have placed upon our would-be national leaders. Brian T. Kaylor utilizes Michel Foucault's work on the confession_with theoretical adjustments_to critique the significant problems of the confessional political era. With clear analyses and unsettling relevance, Kaylor's critique of contemporary political discourse will rouse the interest and concern of engaged citizens everywhere."

Politics of Knowledge

2011-02-08T07:20:00.002-05:00

Two interesting articles in the New York Times today on the politics of intellectual inquiry:

Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey of more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.

"On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray from Lesson Plan," New York Times, 8 February 2011.

A social psychologist has argued that there is a hostile climate for non-liberals among his colleagues.

John Tierney, "Social Scientist Sees Bias Within," New York Times, 8 February 2011.

Crisis and Ideology

2011-02-07T07:23:00.003-05:00

Editorial from the New York Times:

As states groan and stumble through the recession, some politicians are trying to exploit their financial crises for ideological purposes. . . . [read more]

"Their Real Agenda," New York Times, 7 February 2011.

Rhetorical Questions of Health and Medicine

2011-02-04T14:23:00.002-05:00

Joan Leach and Deborah Dysart Gale, eds., Rhetorical Questions of Health and Medicine (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010).

President Barack Obama - speech at Penn State University, 3 February 2011

2011-02-03T17:54:00.001-05:00

President Barack Obama, "Winning the Future with Clean Energy," speech at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 3 February 2011.

President Obama in State College, PA

2011-02-03T09:32:00.005-05:00

President Obama is paying a visit today to Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. He was to have come yesterday, but when it became clear that yesterday's big winter storm was going to be a problem, the visit was re-scheduled for today.

President Obama will visit engineering and technology projects at the University, and apparently speak both about a major government grant to Penn State to develop energy innovation at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and about the larger issues of energy innovation, climate change, and jobs.

According to the White House announcement, the President will speak about the Better Building Initiative.

A presidential visit brings tremendous local interest and also, we are warned, a day of traffic delays and parking problems.

What will he say?

I found myself wondering if President Obama would review the history of energy technologies in Pennsylvania -- the stripping of the forests to make charcoal for iron smelters; the re-planting of the forests; the coal industry, which fueled industrial development, especially big steel; the discovery of oil and the development of the petroleum industry--which eventually moved to the West. The history of energy and Pennsylvania is a complex one -- and would of course include the story of Three Mile Island (I don't think we will hear about that today); and now the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale deposits -- bringing what some worry is another round of environmental destruction, breaking up local roads and polluting wells.

Well, he can't, and probably won't, touch on most of this. And of course, in the middle of all this, the President is dealing with Egypt, two wars, the economy.

I'm looking forward to an interesting speech. It's a big day for Penn State and State College, Pennsylvania.

An American Fatwa? Or just old fashioned McCarthyism?

2011-02-02T10:12:00.005-05:00

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, has released the following statement about threats to an American professor stemming from TV commentator Glenn Beck. The statement appears on the AAUP web site.

One expects heated public rhetoric in times of war. But evidence is increasing that American politics is indeed itself war by other means. From Web sites to blogs to television talk shows people are castigated—and even threatened—for the views they hold. This trend undermines the character of our public life and leaves some citizens frightened to speak their minds. Because faculty members have long contributed to democratic debate by expressing their views in the public sphere, it is especially notable and worrisome when they become targets of what nearly amount to an American Fatwa—public suggestions that they merit violent retribution in punishment for their comments on issues of concern. The virulent attacks on Frances Fox Piven are a particularly disturbing example.

Dr. Piven is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In recent weeks she has been subjected to an onslaught of denunciations, including death threats posted on theblaze.com, a website maintained by a company owned by radio and television commentator Glenn Beck.

In his television programs, Mr. Beck has referred to Professor Piven dozens of times, describing her as “an enemy of the Constitution” intent on bringing about the “collapse of our economic system.” Responding to an article that Professor Piven published in the January 10 issue of The Nation saying that unemployed people should be staging mass protests, Mr. Beck asked in his January 17 television show, “Is that not inciting violence? Is that not asking for violence?” Public demonstrations can of course be entirely peaceful. Even civil disobedience is typically nonviolent. Mr. Beck’s remarks are unjustified.

Mr. Beck has—even more outrageously—linked Professor Piven’s support for social movements to terrorism, and a December 31, 2010, headline in theblaze.com declared, “Frances Fox Piven Rings in the New Year by Advocating Violent Revolution.”

Amid these relentless tirades, Professor Piven has herself begun to receive threats of violence.

The American Association of University Professors, since our founding in 1915, has championed the vigorous exchange of ideas both within and outside the academic community. We do not dispute the right of individuals and commentators to strenuously question or protest the writings of academics. Nor can any professor claim immunity from criticism, however acid and from whatever quarter. But it is despicable to threaten physical harm to Professor Piven for expressing her views.

No news organization or commentator can justify or should tolerate threats to do physical harm to a professor or to any author. We join others in strongly urging those who are critical of Professor Piven’s writings to advance their positions in ways that foster responsible criticism and debate.

—Cary Nelson
AAUP President

High school biology teachers reluctant to endorse evolution in class

2011-01-30T08:04:00.002-05:00

From Penn State Live:

Thursday, January 27, 2011

University Park, Pa. -- The majority of public high school biology teachers are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say.

"Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's classrooms," write Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at Penn State, in the Jan. 28 issue of Science. . . . more