Ben Wetherbee | Northern Michigan University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ben Wetherbee
Journal for the History of Rhetoric, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic and its constituent controversies illustrate how the epideictic motives of ... more The COVID-19 pandemic and its constituent controversies illustrate how the epideictic motives of mutual imagination and "showing forth" contribute irrevocably to rhetorical motion. Imagistic representations of disease like the Center for Disease Control's morphological depiction of the SARS-CoV-2 "spike protein" form illustrative metonyms that reduce or "essentialize" complex networks of sociomedical phenomena into tangible shorthand, priming audiences for deliberative action. Images of symptomatic suffering that characterize diseases like polio, measles, and the common cold viscerally orient audiences to bodily suffering, compelling the sort of imaginative, deliberative vision that Aristotle terms phantasia. The spike protein obfuscates human suffering by substituting the euphemistically ineffable realm of microbiology. Journalists and medical communicators, therefore, bear an uncomfortable ethical imperative to represent metonymic suffering, not for its sensationalism or shock value, but for its epideictic capacity to prime or "turn" audiences toward meaningful deliberative action in support of real human well-being.
Rhetoric Review, 2022
Partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-era face-masking has reshuffled traditional stasis hierarchy,... more Partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-era face-masking has reshuffled traditional stasis hierarchy, allowing the middle stases of definition and quality, which emphasize epideictic motives of cultural affirmation, to supersede conjectural questions of medical efficacy. Viral images positioning masks as metonymic approximations of “authoritarianicity” and government overreach illustrate how rightwing masking rhetoric circumvents scientific concerns, instead rooting discourse in questions of cultural essence. Science communicators, in response, must embrace the inherently tropological and epideictic dimensions of the mask and work to recode the symbol as a metonym for citizenship and personal responsibility.
Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America, 2020
This chapter proposes an evolutionary understanding of rhetorical topoi through analogy to Stephe... more This chapter proposes an evolutionary understanding of rhetorical topoi through analogy to Stephen Toulmin's understanding of disciplinary concepts and their evolution.
Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 2019
This article analyzes comedian and TV writer Dan Harmon's famously well-received #MeToo-era apolo... more This article analyzes comedian and TV writer Dan Harmon's famously well-received #MeToo-era apology for sexual misconduct on the set of his sitcom Community, noting how Harmon revises the traditionally individualistic genre of the apology into a statement of advocacy for the collective moral imperative of the #MeToo movement. After discussing #MeToo as a rhetorical situation that justifiably trivializes pleas for individual forgiveness, the article analyzes Har-mon's monologue in relation to scholarship on genre of apologia, contrasting Harmon's with the comparatively indi-vidualistic and unsuccessful apology of Louis C.K and arguing that traditional apologies prove ill-suited to the #Me-Too era. I contend, finally, that male speakers seeking redemption for sexual misconduct should heed Harmon's example of sustained critical self-reflection, pronounced advocacy for victims, and sustained cultivation of an ethos that merits redemption.
Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, 2018
Through an examination of Blade Runner, Alien, and Outland, this paper configures the spaces of d... more Through an examination of Blade Runner, Alien, and Outland, this paper configures the spaces of dystopian film as rhetorical topoi rich in persuasive (if fragmentary) power.
Literacy in Composition Studies, 2017
This response to Brenda Glascott's "Constricting Keywords" reconfigures literacy and rhetoric as ... more This response to Brenda Glascott's "Constricting Keywords" reconfigures literacy and rhetoric as complementary keywords. I position the two terms as overlapping areas on a continuum including individuals' use of language for both outwardly directed communication and inwardly directed self-development.
Henry James Review, Nov 2015
This contribution to the Henry James Review's forum on James and Fredric James uses each author's... more This contribution to the Henry James Review's forum on James and Fredric James uses each author's writings on James to revisit a scholarly conflict between Kenneth Burke and Jameson. I argue for critical synthesis of the two theorists' projects.
Ethos Review, 2015
An analysis of how images of disability circulate as rhetorical topoi in Hollywood film. The essa... more An analysis of how images of disability circulate as rhetorical topoi in Hollywood film. The essay concludes with a specific look at James Cameron’s Avatar.
Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, Jun 2015
A commentary of the role that memes--particularly "binders full of women"--played in the 2012 ele... more A commentary of the role that memes--particularly "binders full of women"--played in the 2012 election cycle, with speculation about the similarities between memes and rhetorical topoi.
Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000: Critical Approaches, Jun 2013
A Bakhtinian/rhetorical commentary on the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. As p... more A Bakhtinian/rhetorical commentary on the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. As part of an effort to view rhetoric and poetics as more of a mutually constituting continuum than a binary, I discuss how the interplay of voices in MST3K allows certain rhetorical relationships and disallows others.
Excursions, May 2013
Stephanie Weaver and I wrote this rhetorical commentary on the hit show Breaking Bad in order to ... more Stephanie Weaver and I wrote this rhetorical commentary on the hit show Breaking Bad in order to explore how “serious” drama fiction can use scientific imagery and discourse for persuasive effect — all while eluding the label of “science fiction.”
JAC, 2012
s "lJsing Student Texts in composition Scholarship" and Julie Lindquist's "Time to Grow Them: Pra... more s "lJsing Student Texts in composition Scholarship" and Julie Lindquist's "Time to Grow Them: Practicing Slow Research in a Fast Field" raise questions about the status of student authorship, and about how sfudents can receive due credit and ethical representation though their collaborations with rhetoric-and-composition scholars. Coauthoring with students presents one possible strategy for meeting both these criteria. The topic of coauthorship between undergraduates and postgraduates receives only secondary attention from Harris, whose primary concern remains "writing that is still clearly the work of s tudents" (68a); there's much to make, though, ofhis brief section on howthose published in college composition and communication have approached coauthorship with those students who are interested in contributing to scholarly discourse. Lindquist's engagement withthe topic of coauthorship. is also secondary-and tacit, since the student interview subjects she discusses are never referred to as coauthors-but her concern with "disciplinary values" and the "affordances" of different modes of collaboration speak to the problems underlying coauthorship between teachers and students in composition. Taken together, in short, the two articles begin to unearthpossibilities for coauthoring with undergraduates-atopic that deserves more attention from rhetoric-and-composition scholars, given our investment in understanding the perspectives of our students.
Reviews by Ben Wetherbee
Enculturation, 2020
A review of bonnie lenore kyburz's book Cruel Auteurism: Affective Mediations toward Film-Composi... more A review of bonnie lenore kyburz's book Cruel Auteurism: Affective Mediations toward Film-Composition, highlighting's the title's challenges to models of academic "rigor" and the resulting tension between analytic scholarship and creative production.
Composition Studies, 2018
Review of Don Bialosotosky's Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality, highli... more Review of Don Bialosotosky's Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality, highlighting the book's strength as a series a performative vignettes, as well as its implications for English studies as a discipline.
Enculturation, 2015
A review of Thomas M. Lessl's Rhetorical Darwinism, highlighting the book's theoretical and histo... more A review of Thomas M. Lessl's Rhetorical Darwinism, highlighting the book's theoretical and historical contributions, as well as its troubling implications for scientific advocacy.
Textbook Contributions by Ben Wetherbee
Inventing Arguments, 3rd ed.
Editor's Introductions by Ben Wetherbee
An introduction to the inaugural volume of The Drover Review. In the introduction, I defend the v... more An introduction to the inaugural volume of The Drover Review. In the introduction, I defend the value of student writing as intellectual work before surveying the volume's contents.
Promotional Materials by Ben Wetherbee
Promotional flyer for undergraduate writing and research journal at the University of Science and... more Promotional flyer for undergraduate writing and research journal at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
MA Thesis by Ben Wetherbee
This thesis examines the rhetoric of film from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. It ... more This thesis examines the rhetoric of film from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. It provides a summary of prior scholarship on film in composition classes and film as rhetoric, and, from that foundation, builds a series of theoretical heuristics on the rhetoric of film. This theoretical section relies mainly on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and on classical rhetorical theory attributed to Aristotle, Cicero, and others. Provided, also, is a close rhetorical reading of the movie Blade Runner, which demonstrates how this theory might be applied to specific films. Finally, this paper discusses the uses of film in rhetoric-based composition curricula, providing two sample writing assignments that integrate film and rhetorical theory.
Journal for the History of Rhetoric, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic and its constituent controversies illustrate how the epideictic motives of ... more The COVID-19 pandemic and its constituent controversies illustrate how the epideictic motives of mutual imagination and "showing forth" contribute irrevocably to rhetorical motion. Imagistic representations of disease like the Center for Disease Control's morphological depiction of the SARS-CoV-2 "spike protein" form illustrative metonyms that reduce or "essentialize" complex networks of sociomedical phenomena into tangible shorthand, priming audiences for deliberative action. Images of symptomatic suffering that characterize diseases like polio, measles, and the common cold viscerally orient audiences to bodily suffering, compelling the sort of imaginative, deliberative vision that Aristotle terms phantasia. The spike protein obfuscates human suffering by substituting the euphemistically ineffable realm of microbiology. Journalists and medical communicators, therefore, bear an uncomfortable ethical imperative to represent metonymic suffering, not for its sensationalism or shock value, but for its epideictic capacity to prime or "turn" audiences toward meaningful deliberative action in support of real human well-being.
Rhetoric Review, 2022
Partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-era face-masking has reshuffled traditional stasis hierarchy,... more Partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-era face-masking has reshuffled traditional stasis hierarchy, allowing the middle stases of definition and quality, which emphasize epideictic motives of cultural affirmation, to supersede conjectural questions of medical efficacy. Viral images positioning masks as metonymic approximations of “authoritarianicity” and government overreach illustrate how rightwing masking rhetoric circumvents scientific concerns, instead rooting discourse in questions of cultural essence. Science communicators, in response, must embrace the inherently tropological and epideictic dimensions of the mask and work to recode the symbol as a metonym for citizenship and personal responsibility.
Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America, 2020
This chapter proposes an evolutionary understanding of rhetorical topoi through analogy to Stephe... more This chapter proposes an evolutionary understanding of rhetorical topoi through analogy to Stephen Toulmin's understanding of disciplinary concepts and their evolution.
Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 2019
This article analyzes comedian and TV writer Dan Harmon's famously well-received #MeToo-era apolo... more This article analyzes comedian and TV writer Dan Harmon's famously well-received #MeToo-era apology for sexual misconduct on the set of his sitcom Community, noting how Harmon revises the traditionally individualistic genre of the apology into a statement of advocacy for the collective moral imperative of the #MeToo movement. After discussing #MeToo as a rhetorical situation that justifiably trivializes pleas for individual forgiveness, the article analyzes Har-mon's monologue in relation to scholarship on genre of apologia, contrasting Harmon's with the comparatively indi-vidualistic and unsuccessful apology of Louis C.K and arguing that traditional apologies prove ill-suited to the #Me-Too era. I contend, finally, that male speakers seeking redemption for sexual misconduct should heed Harmon's example of sustained critical self-reflection, pronounced advocacy for victims, and sustained cultivation of an ethos that merits redemption.
Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, 2018
Through an examination of Blade Runner, Alien, and Outland, this paper configures the spaces of d... more Through an examination of Blade Runner, Alien, and Outland, this paper configures the spaces of dystopian film as rhetorical topoi rich in persuasive (if fragmentary) power.
Literacy in Composition Studies, 2017
This response to Brenda Glascott's "Constricting Keywords" reconfigures literacy and rhetoric as ... more This response to Brenda Glascott's "Constricting Keywords" reconfigures literacy and rhetoric as complementary keywords. I position the two terms as overlapping areas on a continuum including individuals' use of language for both outwardly directed communication and inwardly directed self-development.
Henry James Review, Nov 2015
This contribution to the Henry James Review's forum on James and Fredric James uses each author's... more This contribution to the Henry James Review's forum on James and Fredric James uses each author's writings on James to revisit a scholarly conflict between Kenneth Burke and Jameson. I argue for critical synthesis of the two theorists' projects.
Ethos Review, 2015
An analysis of how images of disability circulate as rhetorical topoi in Hollywood film. The essa... more An analysis of how images of disability circulate as rhetorical topoi in Hollywood film. The essay concludes with a specific look at James Cameron’s Avatar.
Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, Jun 2015
A commentary of the role that memes--particularly "binders full of women"--played in the 2012 ele... more A commentary of the role that memes--particularly "binders full of women"--played in the 2012 election cycle, with speculation about the similarities between memes and rhetorical topoi.
Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000: Critical Approaches, Jun 2013
A Bakhtinian/rhetorical commentary on the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. As p... more A Bakhtinian/rhetorical commentary on the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. As part of an effort to view rhetoric and poetics as more of a mutually constituting continuum than a binary, I discuss how the interplay of voices in MST3K allows certain rhetorical relationships and disallows others.
Excursions, May 2013
Stephanie Weaver and I wrote this rhetorical commentary on the hit show Breaking Bad in order to ... more Stephanie Weaver and I wrote this rhetorical commentary on the hit show Breaking Bad in order to explore how “serious” drama fiction can use scientific imagery and discourse for persuasive effect — all while eluding the label of “science fiction.”
JAC, 2012
s "lJsing Student Texts in composition Scholarship" and Julie Lindquist's "Time to Grow Them: Pra... more s "lJsing Student Texts in composition Scholarship" and Julie Lindquist's "Time to Grow Them: Practicing Slow Research in a Fast Field" raise questions about the status of student authorship, and about how sfudents can receive due credit and ethical representation though their collaborations with rhetoric-and-composition scholars. Coauthoring with students presents one possible strategy for meeting both these criteria. The topic of coauthorship between undergraduates and postgraduates receives only secondary attention from Harris, whose primary concern remains "writing that is still clearly the work of s tudents" (68a); there's much to make, though, ofhis brief section on howthose published in college composition and communication have approached coauthorship with those students who are interested in contributing to scholarly discourse. Lindquist's engagement withthe topic of coauthorship. is also secondary-and tacit, since the student interview subjects she discusses are never referred to as coauthors-but her concern with "disciplinary values" and the "affordances" of different modes of collaboration speak to the problems underlying coauthorship between teachers and students in composition. Taken together, in short, the two articles begin to unearthpossibilities for coauthoring with undergraduates-atopic that deserves more attention from rhetoric-and-composition scholars, given our investment in understanding the perspectives of our students.
Enculturation, 2020
A review of bonnie lenore kyburz's book Cruel Auteurism: Affective Mediations toward Film-Composi... more A review of bonnie lenore kyburz's book Cruel Auteurism: Affective Mediations toward Film-Composition, highlighting's the title's challenges to models of academic "rigor" and the resulting tension between analytic scholarship and creative production.
Composition Studies, 2018
Review of Don Bialosotosky's Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality, highli... more Review of Don Bialosotosky's Mikhail Bakhtin: Rhetoric, Poetics, Dialogics, Rhetoricality, highlighting the book's strength as a series a performative vignettes, as well as its implications for English studies as a discipline.
Enculturation, 2015
A review of Thomas M. Lessl's Rhetorical Darwinism, highlighting the book's theoretical and histo... more A review of Thomas M. Lessl's Rhetorical Darwinism, highlighting the book's theoretical and historical contributions, as well as its troubling implications for scientific advocacy.
Inventing Arguments, 3rd ed.
An introduction to the inaugural volume of The Drover Review. In the introduction, I defend the v... more An introduction to the inaugural volume of The Drover Review. In the introduction, I defend the value of student writing as intellectual work before surveying the volume's contents.
This thesis examines the rhetoric of film from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. It ... more This thesis examines the rhetoric of film from both theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. It provides a summary of prior scholarship on film in composition classes and film as rhetoric, and, from that foundation, builds a series of theoretical heuristics on the rhetoric of film. This theoretical section relies mainly on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and on classical rhetorical theory attributed to Aristotle, Cicero, and others. Provided, also, is a close rhetorical reading of the movie Blade Runner, which demonstrates how this theory might be applied to specific films. Finally, this paper discusses the uses of film in rhetoric-based composition curricula, providing two sample writing assignments that integrate film and rhetorical theory.