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Papers by Daniel A Cryer

The Charge for Change, 2023

A growing body of research investigates the identities taken on by people who regularly carry fir... more A growing body of research investigates the identities taken on by people who regularly carry firearms, yet one common identity that carriers adopt – the “sheepdog” – has been frequently mentioned by scholars of gun cultures but not closely analyzed. This paper examines the origins of the “sheepdog ethos” in the work of Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman as a combination of New War and Christian nationalist rhetoric. It argues that one primary purpose of the sheepdog ethos is to cast armed citizenship as a type of care work, defined by feminist scholars as public or private labor that proceeds from motives of love or a sense of duty that is often undervalued. In Grossman’s work, care and love serve as justifications for armed public life, and the sheepdog framework functions as an ethic for carriers. The final section of this essay, then, analyzes the sheepdog ethos from the perspective of an ethic of care, which helps to pinpoint the ways in which the sheepdog ethos is and is not caring. While it is admirably attuned to the real physical work of caring for others, its grounding in identity and moral hierarchy based on people’s capacity for violence creates an unrealistic picture of the causes of violence, inhibits sheepdogs’ attentiveness to those it claims to care for, and inhibits their ability to assess whether their brand of armed care is effective.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2020

In the two decades since Bruno Latour imagined the "gun-citizen" as an emergent combination of hu... more In the two decades since Bruno Latour imagined the "gun-citizen" as an emergent combination of human and object, the number of U.S. civilians carrying firearms daily has increased five-fold. This essay analyzes discourses of "carry culture" and argues that within it good citizenship comprises the twinned acts of submission to the gun and aggression toward othered groups, defining carry culture as fundamentally authoritarian. It further argues that carriers' submission to their weapons is a corrupted form of care, prompting rhetoricians to reconsider what constitutes ethical relations with objects. Viewing guns in these ways reveals carrying, despite gun culture's preoccupation with "freedom," as physically and mentally constricting and puts forth the idea that firearms carried in public are dangerous whether or not they are ever fired.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2018

Recent scholarship at the intersection of new materialism and environmental rhetoric advances our... more Recent scholarship at the intersection of new materialism and environmental rhetoric advances our understanding of human/nonhuman rhetorics, but some of this work retreats from conservation efforts and environmental politics, driving a wedge between scholars of rhetoric and those laboring on conservation's front lines. This essay critiques and builds on Thomas Rickert's and Nathaniel A. Rivers's uses of the notion of "withdrawal" and on Rivers's concept of "deep ambivalence" to argue that rhetoricians should embrace forms of anthropocentrism and human control of the nonhuman. To illustrate how this viewpoint might interact with conservation efforts, this essay examines the work of mid-twentieth-century forester and wildlife researcher Aldo Leopold and further explores the current mission of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, a conservationist organization developing a pluralistic, productive land community. At stake in this essay is an environmental rhetoric that can be both theoretically invigorating and practically compatible with on-the-ground conservation.

English Studies, 2018

Ecocritics, environmental rhetoricians and environmental communication scholars have long laboure... more Ecocritics, environmental rhetoricians and environmental communication scholars have long laboured at the intersection of environmental discourse and narrative. Within the past several years the stakes for such work have risen as research spanning many more fields uncovers the power narratives hold to communicate the realities of global climate change and the urgency of confronting it. Researchers for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication recommend narrative as a key "policy guideline" resulting from "years of psychological research". 1 A recent handbook for authors of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change names six strategies for communication, one of which is to "tell a human story", because "aiming for a narrative structure" makes problems and solutions understandable in ways traditional scientific communication cannot. 2 Other researchers note the role that carefully constructed narratives play in bridging differences between polarised communities. Lorraine Whitmarsh and Adam Corner show that arguments for environmental action can persuade resistant political conservatives when embedded in narratives of waste, conservation and local decision-making. 3 Diego Galafassi et al., show that "social-ecological narratives", which connect social wellbeing with environmental conditions, allow for the "knowledge co-creation" necessary for members of different communities to partner in large-scale sustainability projects. 4

New Mexico Historical Review, 2015

Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric

American Literary Realism, 2012

This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of t... more This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of the twentieth century’s most versatile environmental communicators. Drawing on scholarship in environmental rhetoric, rhetorical genre theory, citizenship theory and ecofeminism, I argue that throughout his career Leopold offered evolving rhetorical versions of himself as ideals of ecological behavior to be emulated by his readers. The chapters analyze Leopold’s ethos as it was constructed in his early-career writings in the New Mexico Game Protective Association Pine Cone, a wildlife protection broadsheet; in the Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States, his first book; in reports and articles he wrote during the Wisconsin deer irruption debates of the early 1940s; in the essays of A Sand County Almanac, his best known work; and in its current manifestation on the property of the Aldo Leopold Foundation in central Wisconsin. By focusing on these key rhetorical moments in Leopo...

Selected Conference Presentations by Daniel A Cryer

In his 1997 book Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, Robert Connors tells th... more In his 1997 book Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, Robert Connors tells the now well known story of how the 'modes' -Narration, Description, Exposition, and Persuasion -came into being, gained prominence as tools for teaching writing, and eventually fell out of favor. Currently, genre-based approaches to teaching writing are seen as pedagogically sound in the same way, and for some of the same reasons, that modal approaches were ascendant a century ago. (For clarity's sake: A genre-based approach offers a series of assignment sequences each culminating in a different major genre, so that when students have finished the course they've learned not only the conventions of several genres, but the importance of the concept of genre to writing generally.) Yet there are enough similarities between a modal and a genre-based approach to teaching writing that we should seriously question why we think the latter is superior to the former. Given the reality of Freshman English at many large schoolswhere students of widely varying levels of preparation are taught mostly by graduate teaching assistants and part-time instructors, also with widely varying levels of preparation -it's not hard to imagine a genre-based curriculum being interpreted by many as the same kind of formalism that the modal approach implies. It can be difficult for instructors to communicate and for students to gain a nuanced sense of genre, but such a sense is critical if genre-based curricula are to be more than old products in new packaging. In this paper I'll explore current genre theory to review how scholars feel we should think about and teach genres, and I'll compare these theories to the field of narrative studies, which I believe offers important insights into a genre-based approach to teaching writing. Finally, I will describe some of my own techniques for teaching

The Charge for Change, 2023

A growing body of research investigates the identities taken on by people who regularly carry fir... more A growing body of research investigates the identities taken on by people who regularly carry firearms, yet one common identity that carriers adopt – the “sheepdog” – has been frequently mentioned by scholars of gun cultures but not closely analyzed. This paper examines the origins of the “sheepdog ethos” in the work of Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman as a combination of New War and Christian nationalist rhetoric. It argues that one primary purpose of the sheepdog ethos is to cast armed citizenship as a type of care work, defined by feminist scholars as public or private labor that proceeds from motives of love or a sense of duty that is often undervalued. In Grossman’s work, care and love serve as justifications for armed public life, and the sheepdog framework functions as an ethic for carriers. The final section of this essay, then, analyzes the sheepdog ethos from the perspective of an ethic of care, which helps to pinpoint the ways in which the sheepdog ethos is and is not caring. While it is admirably attuned to the real physical work of caring for others, its grounding in identity and moral hierarchy based on people’s capacity for violence creates an unrealistic picture of the causes of violence, inhibits sheepdogs’ attentiveness to those it claims to care for, and inhibits their ability to assess whether their brand of armed care is effective.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2020

In the two decades since Bruno Latour imagined the "gun-citizen" as an emergent combination of hu... more In the two decades since Bruno Latour imagined the "gun-citizen" as an emergent combination of human and object, the number of U.S. civilians carrying firearms daily has increased five-fold. This essay analyzes discourses of "carry culture" and argues that within it good citizenship comprises the twinned acts of submission to the gun and aggression toward othered groups, defining carry culture as fundamentally authoritarian. It further argues that carriers' submission to their weapons is a corrupted form of care, prompting rhetoricians to reconsider what constitutes ethical relations with objects. Viewing guns in these ways reveals carrying, despite gun culture's preoccupation with "freedom," as physically and mentally constricting and puts forth the idea that firearms carried in public are dangerous whether or not they are ever fired.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2018

Recent scholarship at the intersection of new materialism and environmental rhetoric advances our... more Recent scholarship at the intersection of new materialism and environmental rhetoric advances our understanding of human/nonhuman rhetorics, but some of this work retreats from conservation efforts and environmental politics, driving a wedge between scholars of rhetoric and those laboring on conservation's front lines. This essay critiques and builds on Thomas Rickert's and Nathaniel A. Rivers's uses of the notion of "withdrawal" and on Rivers's concept of "deep ambivalence" to argue that rhetoricians should embrace forms of anthropocentrism and human control of the nonhuman. To illustrate how this viewpoint might interact with conservation efforts, this essay examines the work of mid-twentieth-century forester and wildlife researcher Aldo Leopold and further explores the current mission of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, a conservationist organization developing a pluralistic, productive land community. At stake in this essay is an environmental rhetoric that can be both theoretically invigorating and practically compatible with on-the-ground conservation.

English Studies, 2018

Ecocritics, environmental rhetoricians and environmental communication scholars have long laboure... more Ecocritics, environmental rhetoricians and environmental communication scholars have long laboured at the intersection of environmental discourse and narrative. Within the past several years the stakes for such work have risen as research spanning many more fields uncovers the power narratives hold to communicate the realities of global climate change and the urgency of confronting it. Researchers for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication recommend narrative as a key "policy guideline" resulting from "years of psychological research". 1 A recent handbook for authors of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change names six strategies for communication, one of which is to "tell a human story", because "aiming for a narrative structure" makes problems and solutions understandable in ways traditional scientific communication cannot. 2 Other researchers note the role that carefully constructed narratives play in bridging differences between polarised communities. Lorraine Whitmarsh and Adam Corner show that arguments for environmental action can persuade resistant political conservatives when embedded in narratives of waste, conservation and local decision-making. 3 Diego Galafassi et al., show that "social-ecological narratives", which connect social wellbeing with environmental conditions, allow for the "knowledge co-creation" necessary for members of different communities to partner in large-scale sustainability projects. 4

New Mexico Historical Review, 2015

Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric

American Literary Realism, 2012

This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of t... more This dissertation explores the changing, multifaceted ethos of Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), one of the twentieth century’s most versatile environmental communicators. Drawing on scholarship in environmental rhetoric, rhetorical genre theory, citizenship theory and ecofeminism, I argue that throughout his career Leopold offered evolving rhetorical versions of himself as ideals of ecological behavior to be emulated by his readers. The chapters analyze Leopold’s ethos as it was constructed in his early-career writings in the New Mexico Game Protective Association Pine Cone, a wildlife protection broadsheet; in the Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States, his first book; in reports and articles he wrote during the Wisconsin deer irruption debates of the early 1940s; in the essays of A Sand County Almanac, his best known work; and in its current manifestation on the property of the Aldo Leopold Foundation in central Wisconsin. By focusing on these key rhetorical moments in Leopo...

In his 1997 book Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, Robert Connors tells th... more In his 1997 book Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy, Robert Connors tells the now well known story of how the 'modes' -Narration, Description, Exposition, and Persuasion -came into being, gained prominence as tools for teaching writing, and eventually fell out of favor. Currently, genre-based approaches to teaching writing are seen as pedagogically sound in the same way, and for some of the same reasons, that modal approaches were ascendant a century ago. (For clarity's sake: A genre-based approach offers a series of assignment sequences each culminating in a different major genre, so that when students have finished the course they've learned not only the conventions of several genres, but the importance of the concept of genre to writing generally.) Yet there are enough similarities between a modal and a genre-based approach to teaching writing that we should seriously question why we think the latter is superior to the former. Given the reality of Freshman English at many large schoolswhere students of widely varying levels of preparation are taught mostly by graduate teaching assistants and part-time instructors, also with widely varying levels of preparation -it's not hard to imagine a genre-based curriculum being interpreted by many as the same kind of formalism that the modal approach implies. It can be difficult for instructors to communicate and for students to gain a nuanced sense of genre, but such a sense is critical if genre-based curricula are to be more than old products in new packaging. In this paper I'll explore current genre theory to review how scholars feel we should think about and teach genres, and I'll compare these theories to the field of narrative studies, which I believe offers important insights into a genre-based approach to teaching writing. Finally, I will describe some of my own techniques for teaching