Leslie Hahner - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Leslie Hahner

Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2020

This essay analyzes how far-right paratexts enunciate and circulate frameworks of interpretation ... more This essay analyzes how far-right paratexts enunciate and circulate
frameworks of interpretation that situate the film, Black Panther, as
a Trumpian homage. Such rubrics travel through an
interconnected media ecosystem and use the film to promote the
views of the far-right, adoration for Donald Trump, and a
postracial, neoliberal worldview. Analysis of these paratexts
demonstrates how white supremacy relies on a wealth of
circulated logics that can be deployed thru novel texts and
considers the implications of contemporary media environments
for ideological formations.

Feminist Formations, 2012

In the last decade , hundreds of advocates in blogs, magazines , and social networking sites hav... more In the last decade , hundreds of advocates in blogs, magazines , and social networking sites have promoted modesty as an empowering style. By dressing and acting modestly, girls and young women are promised the capacity to effectively deflect sexual objectification. Popular feminist critics have responded to these efforts by labeling modesty as a postfeminist advocacy that simply employs the language of feminism to promote aims that injure girls and young women and the goals of feminist projects.
Reading both discourses that encourage modesty and feminist criticisms of modesty, the article suggests that these discussions use the figure of the autonomous subject to generate a division between modesty and feminisms that limits the capacity for young people's agency. It argues that modesty might be productively read as an outgrowth
of aesthetic-based feminist claims that equate empowerment with autonomous individual choice. As such, the connections between these discursive communities - especially the limits and possibilities of aesthetic resistance tactics - provide critical guidance for collaborative dialogue

Quarterly Journal of Speech , 2017

Book review

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2008

Drawing primarily on discourses and events from the period surrounding World War I, this essay ex... more Drawing primarily on discourses and events from the period surrounding World War I, this essay examines the methods deployed by Camp Fire Girls and Girls Scouts to recruit the daughters of immigrants and, upon joining, acculturate these new members to the American way of life. The argument begins by analyzing those discourses describing the so-called ‘‘new immigrant’’ from southern and eastern Europe as a threat to national unity. Turning to the ways in which the new immigrant problem was gendered through the rhetorical construction of a ‘‘girl problem,’’ this author argues that the advocates describing the girl problem leveraged the presumed cultural rift between foreign-born parents and their new-world children in order to induce the daughters of the foreign-born
to perform as American. The essay closely analyzes the discourses of two groups committed to the project of Americanizing the daughters of immigrants: the Camp Fire Girls and Girl Scouts. The article contends that these groups, the two most popular of the period, Americanized the daughter of the foreign-born by using recruitment tactics that
invited her to dissociate from an old-world ethnicity, deploying legendary heroines refiguring the girl’s American belonging, and engineering patriotic regimens habituating her to American customs. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates how these groups rhetorically refigured the cultural and social belonging of their members in order to assuage public concerns about national unity.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2009

The public circulation of temporal discourse fashions the way in which subjects experience and va... more The public circulation of temporal discourse fashions the way in which subjects experience and value their time. At the turn of the twentieth century, experts in systematic management mandated that wage-earning women must be prodded into efficient labor in order to increase the overall yield of industry. Against this regime of time, the narrator of The
Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself (1905) subverted the temporal protocols governing her by re-deploying efficient labor for her own agenda. Analysis of this work highlights the ways in which time is disproportionately articulated to different subjects, the means employed to discipline the corporeal enactment of time, and
the potential for subjects to resist this orthodoxy

Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2015

Argumentation & Advocacy, 2014

This essay analyzes the riot kiss photograph tacken by Rich Lam after game seven of the 2011 Stan... more This essay analyzes the riot kiss photograph tacken by Rich Lam after game seven of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver and its subsequent life as a visual internet meme. Noting how this image and its reproductions both operated as memes, I argue that the riot kiss photograph's rapid circulation across numerous participatory sites exposed the diverse argument frames employed to create arguments about this image and simultaneously marked the ambiguity of commonplace readings. Public recognition of such instability motivated the continued invention of arguments about this image through reproduction and creative manipulation, ¡dissect the various claims fashioned about the original photograph and the ways in which the ambiguity of the frameworks for those claims motivated the creative manipulation of the photograph. This essay contributes to argumentation theory by offering an opening foray into understanding memes as forms of visual argument.

Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2014

This essay analyzes three pedagogical manuals on publicity design published by the National Commi... more This essay analyzes three pedagogical manuals on publicity design published by the National Committee of Patriotic Societies (NCPS) during the First World War. The NCPS represented dozens of nationalistic organizations dedicated to the mission of preparedness. This essay argues that in its publicity guidebooks, the NCPS suggested that propaganda designed with a Republican aesthetic could wed the working class to the war effort. Such advice was predicated on the psychological notion that affective experiences conditioned audiences for further persuasive appeals. Examination of these manuals thus highlights the importance of psychological theories of affect to the aesthetics of propaganda.

Women's Studies in Communication, 2017

In 2014, the independent horror film It Follows debuted, garnering rave reviews from those who de... more In 2014, the independent horror film It Follows debuted, garnering rave reviews from those who deemed the film subversive. In our view, this subversive potential could be generated from the ways the film explicitly references and counters rape culture. Yet so many critical responses to this film fail to even acknowledge that It Follows portrays or addresses sexual violence. We argue that while the film offers ample opportunity for the audience to grapple with the horrors of sexual violence, critical responses suggest that audiences do not overcome the entrenched violence of rape culture. Taking a novel path, this article first details the elements of the film that attempt to overturn horror film conventions and then analyzes critical responses to It Follows. We contend that critics use a variety of tactics to disavow rape in this film and thereby indicate the limits of filmic subversion.

Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2012

The essay analyzes how Paranormal Activity (Schneider, Blum, & Peli, 2009) and Paranormal Activit... more The essay analyzes how Paranormal Activity (Schneider, Blum, & Peli, 2009) and Paranormal Activity 2 (Peli, Goldsman, & Williams, 2010) render consumption as a site of abjection. Our analysis begins by noting two prominent interpretations of the films: as genre-changing minimalist works and as soothing morality tales in which overleveraged suburbanites are punished. Putting these readings into conversation, we maintain that these films entrench audiences in the grip of consumption – the drive that fuels consumerism and materialism. Using Julia Kristeva's work on abjection, we argue that the films' much-praised minimalist style positions consumption as abject, as that which both disgusts and attracts audience members but offers no release from the dizzying drive for more. We maintain that these films display consumption as an urge for possession that cannot be stabilized or sublimated. They accomplish this end by using stylistic strategies that violate horror conventions and ask the audience to become enraptured with consuming the films. Ultimately, we use this analysis to suggest how abjection is theoretically enriched when it is coupled with an understanding of the contemporary movements of style.

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2014

This essay analyzes the international discourses and practices of yarn bombing-affixing knitted a... more This essay analyzes the international discourses and practices of yarn bombing-affixing knitted and crocheted works on public objects. Yarn bombing has recently become a nearly universally celebrated form of street art. The authors argue that acclaim for yarn bombing fashions an aesthetic regime that situates guerrilla needlework as an exceptional contribution to the urban landscape, while simultaneously policing alternate expressions of public art. By examining how yarn bombing's privileged style is related to modalities of gender, race, class, and capital, the authors supplement scholarly understandings of the politics of exceptionalism by highlighting the sovereign work of aesthetics.

Books by Leslie Hahner

As demonstrated by the 2016 presidential election, memes have become the suasory tactic par excel... more As demonstrated by the 2016 presidential election, memes have become the suasory tactic par excellence for the promotional and recruitment efforts of the Alt-right. Memes are not simply humorous shorthands or pithy assertions, but play a significant role in the machinations of politics and how the public comes to understand and respond to their government and compatriots. Using the tools of rhetorical criticism, the authors detail how memetic persuasion operates, with a particular focus on the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. Make America Meme Again reveals the rhetorical principles used to design Alt-right memes, outlining the myriad ways memes lure mainstream audiences to a number of extremist claims. In particular, this book argues that Alt-right memes impact the culture of digital boards and broader public culture by stultifying discourse, thereby shaping how publics congeal. The authors demonstrate that memes are a mechanism that proliferate white nationalism and exclusionary politics by spreading algorithmically through network cultures in ways that are often difficult to discern. Alt-right memes thus present a significant threat to democratic praxis, one that can begin to be combatted through a rigorous rhetorical analysis of their power and influence. Make America Meme Again illuminates the function of networked persuasion for scholars and practitioners of rhetoric, media, and communication; political theorists; digital humanists; and anyone who has ever seen, crafted, or proliferated a meme.

Pledging allegiance, singing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” wearing a flag pin—these are all markers... more Pledging allegiance, singing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” wearing a flag pin—these are all markers of modern patriotism, emblems that announce the devotion of American citizens. Most of these nationalistic performances were formulized during the early twentieth century and driven to new heights by the panic surrounding national identity during World War I. In To Become an American Leslie A. Hahner argues that, in part, the Americanization movement engendered the transformation of patriotism during this period. Americanization was a massive campaign designed to fashion immigrants into perfect Americans—those who were loyal in word, deed, and heart. The larger outcome of this widespread movement was a dramatic shift in the nation’s understanding of Americanism. Employing a rhetorical lens to analyze the visual and aesthetic practices of Americanization, Hahner contends that Americanization not only tutored students in the practices of citizenship but also created a normative visual metric that modified how Americans would come to understand, interpret, and judge their own patriotism and that of others.