Faculty Publications
Our Faculty Publication Bookshelf
Click the books below to get a synopsis and information on where you can buy them
Adventures in Shondaland: Identity Politics and the Power of Representation
Edited by Rachel Alicia Griffin and Michaela D. E. Meyer
Innovator Award for Edited Collection from the Central States Communication Association (CSCA)
Shonda Rhimes is one of the most powerful players in contemporary American network television. Beginning with her break-out hit series Grey’s Anatomy, she has successfully debuted Private Practice, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, The Catch, For The People, and Station 19. Rhimes’s work is attentive to identity politics, “post-” identity politics, power, and representation, addressing innumerable societal issues. Rhimes intentionally addresses these issues with diverse characters and story lines that center, for example, on interracial friendships and relationships, LGBTIQ relationships and parenting, the impact of disability on familial and work dynamics, and complex representations of womanhood. This volume serves as a means to theorize Rhimes’s contributions and influence by inspiring provocative conversations about television as a deeply politicized institution and exploring how Rhimes fits into the implications of twenty-first century television.
Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Everyday
Julia Corbett
Have you ever wondered about society's desire to cultivate the perfect lawn, why we view some animals as "good" and some as "bad," or even thought about the bits of nature inside everyday items - toothbrushes, cell phones, and coffee mugs? In this fresh and introspective collection of essays, Julia Corbett examines nature in our lives with all of its ironies and contradictions by seamlessly integrating personal narratives with morsels of highly digestable science and research.
The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times
Joshua M. Scacco and Kevin Coe
American democracy is in a period of striking tumult. The clash of a rapidly changing socio-technological environment and the traditional presidency has led to an upheaval in the scope and standards of executive leadership. Yet research on the presidency, although abundant, has been slow to adjust to changing realities associated with digital technologies, diverse audiences, and new elite practices. Meanwhile, journalists and the public continue to encounter and shape emerging presidential efforts in deeply consequential ways.
Joshua Scacco and Kevin Coe bring needed insight to this complex situation by offering the first comprehensive framework for understanding contemporary presidential communication in relation to the current socio-technological environment. They call this framework the "ubiquitous presidency." Scacco and Coe argue that presidents harness new opportunities in the media environment to create a nearly constant and highly visible presence in political and nonpolitical arenas. They do this by trying to achieve longstanding presidential goals, namely visibility, adaptation, and control. However, in an environment where accessibility, personalization, and pluralism are omnipresent considerations, the strategies presidents use to achieve these goals are very different from what we once knew.
Using this novel framework as a conceptual anchor, The Ubiquitous Presidency undertakes one of the most expansive analyses of presidential communication to date. Scacco and Coe employ a wide variety of approaches--ranging from surveys and survey-experiments, to large-scale automated content and network analyses, to qualitative textual analysis--to uncover new aspects of the intricate relationship between the president, news media, and the public. Focusing on the presidency since Ronald Reagan, and devoting particular attention to the cases of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the book uncovers remarkable shifts in communication that test the institution of the presidency and, consequently, democratic governance itself.
Right to Mourn
Suhi Choi
"At once personal, historical, and political, this book explores, with compassion and insight, the complex terrain of memory and memorialization in contemporary Korea. Choi uncovers the struggle, both individual and collective, to remember the atrocities of war long suppressed by an authoritarian government; what she discovers and elaborates is an 'empathetic mourning,' a grieving for those lost, which is itself a performative act of resistance, a claiming of the right to mourn. This book is a powerful foray into the formidable landscape of memory politics after war."
-Alison Landing, Professor of History and Cultural Studies, George Mason University
Editor Emory O. Jackson, the Birmingham World, and the Fight for Civil Rights in Alabama, 1940-1975
Kimberley Mangun
This cultural biography tells the story of Birmingham World editor Emory O. Jackson. During his 35-year career in Alabama, he waged numerous sustained civil-rights campaigns for the franchise, equal educational opportunities, and justice for the victims of police brutality and bombings. The semiweekly newspaper was central to his advocacy. Jackson wrote editorials and columns that documented injustices and urged legislative and legal action in an effort to secure civil rights for Black Alabamians. His body of work, grounded in protest and passion, was part of the long tradition of the Black Press as an instrument to agitate for social and political change. Jackson also was a frequent speaker at NAACP branches, colleges, and churches. He was known as a commanding, even fiery, speaker who stressed first-class citizenship. Issues explored in the book demonstrate an assertion of constitutional rights in post-World War II America and a remarkable resilience. Editor Emory O. Jackson, the Birmingham World, and the Fight for Civil Rights in Alabama, 1940-1975 is the first scholarly analysis of his work and as such contributes to scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and the nation.
Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term
Robin E. Jensen
Named Outstanding Book of 2017
"This book was fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the richness of the rhetorical analysis as she explored the rhetorical complexity of infertility. By understanding the role of 'Kairos' throughout centuries of rhetorical artifacts, she gave us a richness to her analysis. I also enjoyed the historical perspective that helps us understand just how complex the term infertility really is."
Cybersecurity Discourse in the United States: Cyber-Doom Rhetoric and Beyond
Sean T. Lawson
This book examines the role of cyber-doom rhetoric in the U.S. cybersecurity debate.
For more than two decades, fear of "cyber-doom" scenarios―i.e. cyberattacks against critical infrastructure resulting in catastrophic physical, social, and economic impacts―has been a persistent feature of the U.S. cybersecurity debate. This is despite the fact that no cyberattack has come close to realizing such impacts. This book argues that such scenarios are part of a broader rhetoric of cyber-doom within the U.S. cybersecurity debate, and takes a multidisciplinary approach that draws on research in history, sociology, communication, psychology, and political science. It identifies a number of variations of cyber-doom rhetoric, then places them into a larger historical context, assesses how realistic the fears expressed in such rhetoric are, and finally draws out the policy implications of relying on these fears to structure our response to cybersecurity challenges. The United States faces very real cybersecurity challenges that are, nonetheless, much less dramatic than what is implied in the rhetoric. This book argues that relying on cyber-doom rhetoric to frame our thinking about such threats is counterproductive, and encourages us to develop ways of thinking and speaking about cybersecurity beyond cyber-doom.
Participatory Critical Rhetoric
Danielle Endres and Michael Middleton
Named Outstanding Book of the Year
This book addresses how participatory critical rhetoric furthers understanding of the significant role that rhetoric plays in everyday life through expanding the archive of rhetorical practices and texts, emplacing rhetorical critics in direct conversation with rhetors and audiences at the moment of rhetorical intervention, and highlighting marginalized voices that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork
Edited by Samantha Senda-Cook, Aaron Hess, Michael K. Middleton, and Danielle Endres
Readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork compiles foundational articles highlighting the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism. Presenting a wide variety of approaches, the volume begins with a section establishing the starting points for the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism and then examines five topics: Space and Place; Public Memory; Publics and Counterpublics; Advocacy and Activism; and Science, Technology and Medicine. Within these sections, readers evaluate a full spectrum of methods, from interviews, to oral histories, to participant observation. This volume is invaluable for advanced undergradute and graduate students of rhetorical criticism, rhetorical fieldwork, and qualitative methods looking for a comprhensive overview of the development of rhetorical fieldwork.
Gestures of Concern
Chris Ingraham
“Chris Ingraham is a lively and engaging writer. While crafting beautiful prose he exhibits remarkable patience with trivial—often ephemeral—objects. Thus, he gives us ample opportunity to appreciate their public relevance and the role they play in helping to constitute public life in the internet age. And all of this he draws under the aegis of ‘gestures of concern’—a gem of a concept that makes a significant contribution to rhetoric, political theory, and public sphere theory.”
— Ted Striphas, author of The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control
LEGOfied: Building Blocks as Media
Edited by Nicholas Taylor and Chris Ingraham
LEGOfied: Building Blocks as Media provides a multi-faceted exploration of LEGO fandom, addressing a blindspot in current accounts of LEGO and an emerging area of interest to media scholars: namely, the role of hobbyist enthusiasts and content producers in LEGO's emergence as a ubiquitous transmedia franchise. This book examines a range of LEGO hobbyism and their attendant forms of mediated self-expression and identity (their “technicities”): artists, aspiring Master Builders, collectors, and entrepreneurs who refashion LEGO bricks into new commodities (sets, tchotchkes, and minifigures). The practices and perspectives that constitute this diverse scene lie at the intersection of multiple transformations in contemporary culture, including the shifting relationships between culture industries and the audiences that form their most ardent consumer base, but also the emerging forms of entrepreneurialism, professionalization, and globalization that characterize the burgeoning DIY movement.