Leland G Spencer | University of South Carolina (original) (raw)
Articles by Leland G Spencer
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2024
Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious co... more Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious communication, LGBTQ studies, and feminist rhetoric.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2023
Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious co... more Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious communication, LGBTQ studies, and feminist rhetoric. Timothy S. Forest is an associate professor in Modern British/European History at the University of Cincinnati. He received his BA in British history and international relations from McGill University, and his MA and PhD in British imperial history at the University of Texas-Austin. He has had several articles on the topic of bio-imperialism and settler colonialism, focusing on the Scots and the Irish in the Victorian era, published in journals in Australia and Canada. His first manuscript, entitled Planting Thistles in Western Canadian Gardens: Scottish Islanders, State-Led Colonization, and the (Re)making of Imperialism in the Victorian Age, is under contract with UBC Press. His second manuscript, involving Irish colonies in prairie North America, is being finalized for publication
Auto/biography
Through an analysis of Lacy Crawford’s 2020 memoir Notes on a Silencing, this essay forwards a th... more Through an analysis of Lacy Crawford’s 2020 memoir Notes on a Silencing, this essay forwards a theory of injury epistemology and highlights how epistemic violence attends sexual violence. We define injury epistemology as the ways in which being injured can lead one to feminist knowledge or understanding.
Review of Communication, 2023
Communication scholars are uniquely positioned to engage in complex, interdisciplinary research t... more Communication scholars are uniquely positioned to engage in complex, interdisciplinary research that integrates insights from different fields alongside a key expertise in the role of human symbol use. Viewing symbolizing as one of many central elements in complex social problems, we argue that communication scholars benefit when they begin from an interdisciplinary posture in conducting their research. We take as a case study the example of gaslighting. We show how research on gaslighting from philosophy, psychology, and sociology profits from the addition of insights from the field of communication and propose directions for future research on gaslighting that incorporate communication into robust interdisciplinary projects.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2023
Political women who lead with firmness get castigated as heartless. Margaret Thatcher represents ... more Political women who lead with firmness get castigated as heartless. Margaret Thatcher represents that stereotype, most concisely captured in the sobriquet "Iron Lady." We argue that the film The Iron Lady and the Netflix series The Crown offer versions of Thatcher that critique Thatcher's supposed failures of femininity. Rather than centering their framing of Thatcher on the harms of her policies, these texts excoriate her for her parenting and her inappropriately masculine style. We conclude by asking how we might remember public figures in ways that offer critical analyses of policies without resorting to sexist tropes.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2022
In 2019, Joy Ladin published The Soul of the Stranger, a book that offers a transgender critical ... more In 2019, Joy Ladin published The Soul of the Stranger, a book that offers a transgender critical reading of the Torah along with Ladin's personal reflections as a transgender member of a Jewish community with a background in Torah observance. This essay offers an analysis of The Soul of the Stranger, arguing that Ladin constructs a transgender Jewish tradition in the text. Ladin disavows the ostensible incompatibility of trans and Jewish experiences by showing how her reading of Genesis and Jonah accords with rather than departs from traditional rabbinic approaches to Jewish texts in two key ways: by reinterpreting apparent binaries in the creation narratives and by explaining biblical figures' trans-related experiences. Ladin's reimagining of foundational Jewish texts forecloses transphobic Torah interpretations by refusing to allow potential detractors to set the terms of the conversation. By appealing to Jewish tradition and, thereby, simultaneously constituting it, Ladin imagines and creates a trans-inclusive Judaism framed on its own terms rather than in opposition to voices of exclusion.
Southern Communication Journal, 2022
Asexuality describes a range of identities characterized by a lack of attraction toward sexual re... more Asexuality describes a range of identities characterized by a lack of attraction toward sexual relationships or activities, and its opposite is allosexuality. In this essay, we offer a rhetorical theorization of allonormativity. For us, allonormativity describes the constitutive practices whereby social structures expect and privilege sexual and romantic attraction and relationships-to the exclusion and erasure of asexual and aromantic people. We then apply the concept to the case of asexual Latter-day Saints. Using a close reading of data from interviews and online posts, we reveal how allonormativity constrains the lives of asexual Latter-day Saints from three sources: religious leadership, families, and asexual Latter-day Saints themselves. We briefly consider asexuals' rhetorical strategies in response to allonormativity before concluding with a call to denaturalize presumptions of allosexuality in queer and trans communication research, within and beyond contexts of religious communication.
Southern Communication Journal, 2022
Philosophers have theorized epistemic violence as a form of harm committed against people primari... more Philosophers have theorized epistemic violence as a form of harm committed against people primarily in their capacities as knowers. In this essay, we apply a modal materialist perspective to understand epistemic violence as a rhetorical process that is made possible through binary, hierarchy, and perfecting tendencies of language. Taken together, such tendencies form a script in which interlocutors are divided into "rational" actors, who are legitimated to define knowledge in particular contexts, pitted against "irrational" actors, who are made enemies of knowledge and excluded from knowledge-creating processes. We then apply this script in a reading of two narratives about transphobia by philosopher Veronica Ivy that discuss forms of epistemic violence. We show how such violence is underwritten by our script at the rhetorical level, concluding with three counter-rhetorical strategies to epistemic violence: fomenting empathy, dislodging supremacist power structures, and practicing radical listening.
QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2021
Western Journal of Communication
The April 2018 issue of National Geographic, dubbed "The Race Issue," began with an editorial tha... more The April 2018 issue of National Geographic, dubbed "The Race Issue," began with an editorial that acknowledged the magazine's racist history. Although the editorial and the issue it introduced enjoyed popular reception as an apology for the magazine's racism, I argue the apparent apology instead functions as a half-performative that, while effective in some respects, otherwise works to mask ongoing racist representations. The magazine's half-performative apology contributes to the normalization of whiteness in U.S. culture, even while the magazine profits from the cultural capital it gains for (partially) apologizing for racism. I call for the rigorous analysis of nonperformative and half-performative apologies and the construction of better, more genuine apologies.
Communication Theory
Gaslighting is defined as a dysfunctional communication dynamic in which one interlocutor attempt... more Gaslighting is defined as a dysfunctional communication dynamic in which one interlocutor attempts to destabilize another's sense of reality. In this article, we advance a model of gaslighting based in an epistemic rhetoric perspective. Our model directs attention to the rhetorics used to justify competing knowledge claims, as opposed to philosophical models that tend to rely on objective truth-value. We probe the discursive manifestations of gaslighting in logocentric, ethotic, or pathemic terms. We then apply our model to explain sexist and racist gaslighting that derives power from normatively instantiated discourses of rape culture and White supremacy. Specifically, our analysis identifies the appeal structures used to legitimate such gaslighting in response to disclosures of sexual violence and testimony about racial injustice.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2021
National Geographic magazine’s January 2017 special issue focused on gender around the world, inc... more National Geographic magazine’s January 2017 special issue focused
on gender around the world, including the magazine’s first explicit
discussion of gender identity and transgender lives. I argue that the
issue enacts a colonizing rhetoric of new discovery to address
gender identity, whereby the magazine obscures past and
present understandings of gender identity from cultures around
the globe to position itself (and the United States) as especially
innovative and progressive. I name the phenomenon of talking
about the present in ways that forecast a brighter tomorrow by
deflecting other pasts and presents futurespective kainotēs.
Women's Studies in Communication, 2021
Dominant paradigms of epistemology conventionally separate the rational from the emotional. In co... more Dominant paradigms of epistemology conventionally separate the rational from the emotional. In contradistinction to those views, we build on a rich tradition of scholarship about feminist anger to make the claim that outrage, in particular, has epistemic value. We understand feminist outrage—especially in the sense of a gross or malicious wrong or injury to principle—as a source of knowing, rather than an obstacle to it. Though the epistemic usefulness of anger has long been recognized among feminists, particularly Black feminists and other feminists of color, the disciplining of feminist outrage in the scholarly publication process invites our attention and demands our response. We define outrage epistemology as a way of knowing through felt, reflective awareness of injustice.
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2021
This article offers two suggestions for the future of queer communication studies: First, we shou... more This article offers two suggestions for the future of queer communication studies: First, we should continue to use language carefully and thoughtfully, especially about gender, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Second, queer communication scholarship should be intentionally and meaningfully intersectional, eschewing superficiality and tokenism related to race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Journal of Autoethnography, 2021
Transgender individuals often face a barrage of questions from family, friends, medical professio... more Transgender individuals often face a barrage of questions from family, friends, medical professionals, and others, asking them to account for and explain their identities. Ultimately, these questions all come down to one fundamental concern: "Why do you feel this way?" This essay offers one potential answer. By turning to the philosophical concept of reincarnation through the methodological approach of autoethnography, this essay posits a relationship among past lives and current lives as one potential way of accounting for one author's (trans) identity. We present an exploration of one author's identity in the form of a dialogue with the other author, a supportive friend curious about his interlocutor's beliefs in reincarnation and excited to learn.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2020
In this article, we trace arguments for the sacredness of Black life from Sojourner Truth to the ... more In this article, we trace arguments for the sacredness of Black life from Sojourner Truth to the Combahee River Collective to the founders of Black Lives Matter, arguing that Black women have consistently drawn on sacred and ritual structures to argue not just that Black life matters but also that Black life has inherent value. As such, we conclude with reflections on Black feminist ethics as an extension of the doctrine of imago dei.
Text and Performance Quarterly, 2020
I offer a critical reading of Naomi Iizuka's play Good Kids, considering the script, the performa... more I offer a critical reading of Naomi Iizuka's play Good Kids, considering the script, the performance of the play I watched, and the talkback with the cast. I argue that Good Kids enacts performative neutrality about sexual assault. By "performative neutrality," I mean not a performance of neutrality, but a productive construction of neutrality whereby the play forecloses side-taking. I conclude that performative neutrality buttresses rape culture by exacerbating ambiguity myths, he said/she said, and the miscommunication model of rape.
Peitho, 2020
This article offers a critical literature review of the emerging discipline of trans rhetorics. T... more This article offers a critical literature review of the emerging discipline of trans rhetorics. To acknowledge common points of interest, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations that cut across both fields, the authors examine published scholarship on trans rhetorics emerging out of rhetoric & composition and communication. The literature review is organized around the following four topics: trans representations in popular culture, trans activism, trans rhetorical pedagogies, and trans rhetorical methodologies. While the authors address the emerging trends and gaps in trans rhetorical studies, the authors also turn readers' attention to the sociopolitical consequences of academic research, arguing that researchers should prioritize projects that emphasize trans people's rhetorical agency.
Argumentation and Advocacy
Treating bodies as explicitly rhetorical, this article analyzes two queer Christian characters fr... more Treating bodies as explicitly rhetorical, this article analyzes two queer Christian characters from the television series Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000(Showtime, -2005, arguing that these guest characters represent embodied queer theologies. As they interact with main characters Brian and Justin, queer minister Tom and militant queer activist Cody offer an embodied queer theology where presence invites a visceral experience of queer Christian life. As such, these characters complicate the typical antagonistic role that Christianity often plays in queer narratives and illustrate the queer potential of embodied arguments, including in contexts of spirituality.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2024
Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious co... more Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious communication, LGBTQ studies, and feminist rhetoric.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2023
Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious co... more Leland has published more than thirty peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles about religious communication, LGBTQ studies, and feminist rhetoric. Timothy S. Forest is an associate professor in Modern British/European History at the University of Cincinnati. He received his BA in British history and international relations from McGill University, and his MA and PhD in British imperial history at the University of Texas-Austin. He has had several articles on the topic of bio-imperialism and settler colonialism, focusing on the Scots and the Irish in the Victorian era, published in journals in Australia and Canada. His first manuscript, entitled Planting Thistles in Western Canadian Gardens: Scottish Islanders, State-Led Colonization, and the (Re)making of Imperialism in the Victorian Age, is under contract with UBC Press. His second manuscript, involving Irish colonies in prairie North America, is being finalized for publication
Auto/biography
Through an analysis of Lacy Crawford’s 2020 memoir Notes on a Silencing, this essay forwards a th... more Through an analysis of Lacy Crawford’s 2020 memoir Notes on a Silencing, this essay forwards a theory of injury epistemology and highlights how epistemic violence attends sexual violence. We define injury epistemology as the ways in which being injured can lead one to feminist knowledge or understanding.
Review of Communication, 2023
Communication scholars are uniquely positioned to engage in complex, interdisciplinary research t... more Communication scholars are uniquely positioned to engage in complex, interdisciplinary research that integrates insights from different fields alongside a key expertise in the role of human symbol use. Viewing symbolizing as one of many central elements in complex social problems, we argue that communication scholars benefit when they begin from an interdisciplinary posture in conducting their research. We take as a case study the example of gaslighting. We show how research on gaslighting from philosophy, psychology, and sociology profits from the addition of insights from the field of communication and propose directions for future research on gaslighting that incorporate communication into robust interdisciplinary projects.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2023
Political women who lead with firmness get castigated as heartless. Margaret Thatcher represents ... more Political women who lead with firmness get castigated as heartless. Margaret Thatcher represents that stereotype, most concisely captured in the sobriquet "Iron Lady." We argue that the film The Iron Lady and the Netflix series The Crown offer versions of Thatcher that critique Thatcher's supposed failures of femininity. Rather than centering their framing of Thatcher on the harms of her policies, these texts excoriate her for her parenting and her inappropriately masculine style. We conclude by asking how we might remember public figures in ways that offer critical analyses of policies without resorting to sexist tropes.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2022
In 2019, Joy Ladin published The Soul of the Stranger, a book that offers a transgender critical ... more In 2019, Joy Ladin published The Soul of the Stranger, a book that offers a transgender critical reading of the Torah along with Ladin's personal reflections as a transgender member of a Jewish community with a background in Torah observance. This essay offers an analysis of The Soul of the Stranger, arguing that Ladin constructs a transgender Jewish tradition in the text. Ladin disavows the ostensible incompatibility of trans and Jewish experiences by showing how her reading of Genesis and Jonah accords with rather than departs from traditional rabbinic approaches to Jewish texts in two key ways: by reinterpreting apparent binaries in the creation narratives and by explaining biblical figures' trans-related experiences. Ladin's reimagining of foundational Jewish texts forecloses transphobic Torah interpretations by refusing to allow potential detractors to set the terms of the conversation. By appealing to Jewish tradition and, thereby, simultaneously constituting it, Ladin imagines and creates a trans-inclusive Judaism framed on its own terms rather than in opposition to voices of exclusion.
Southern Communication Journal, 2022
Asexuality describes a range of identities characterized by a lack of attraction toward sexual re... more Asexuality describes a range of identities characterized by a lack of attraction toward sexual relationships or activities, and its opposite is allosexuality. In this essay, we offer a rhetorical theorization of allonormativity. For us, allonormativity describes the constitutive practices whereby social structures expect and privilege sexual and romantic attraction and relationships-to the exclusion and erasure of asexual and aromantic people. We then apply the concept to the case of asexual Latter-day Saints. Using a close reading of data from interviews and online posts, we reveal how allonormativity constrains the lives of asexual Latter-day Saints from three sources: religious leadership, families, and asexual Latter-day Saints themselves. We briefly consider asexuals' rhetorical strategies in response to allonormativity before concluding with a call to denaturalize presumptions of allosexuality in queer and trans communication research, within and beyond contexts of religious communication.
Southern Communication Journal, 2022
Philosophers have theorized epistemic violence as a form of harm committed against people primari... more Philosophers have theorized epistemic violence as a form of harm committed against people primarily in their capacities as knowers. In this essay, we apply a modal materialist perspective to understand epistemic violence as a rhetorical process that is made possible through binary, hierarchy, and perfecting tendencies of language. Taken together, such tendencies form a script in which interlocutors are divided into "rational" actors, who are legitimated to define knowledge in particular contexts, pitted against "irrational" actors, who are made enemies of knowledge and excluded from knowledge-creating processes. We then apply this script in a reading of two narratives about transphobia by philosopher Veronica Ivy that discuss forms of epistemic violence. We show how such violence is underwritten by our script at the rhetorical level, concluding with three counter-rhetorical strategies to epistemic violence: fomenting empathy, dislodging supremacist power structures, and practicing radical listening.
QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2021
Western Journal of Communication
The April 2018 issue of National Geographic, dubbed "The Race Issue," began with an editorial tha... more The April 2018 issue of National Geographic, dubbed "The Race Issue," began with an editorial that acknowledged the magazine's racist history. Although the editorial and the issue it introduced enjoyed popular reception as an apology for the magazine's racism, I argue the apparent apology instead functions as a half-performative that, while effective in some respects, otherwise works to mask ongoing racist representations. The magazine's half-performative apology contributes to the normalization of whiteness in U.S. culture, even while the magazine profits from the cultural capital it gains for (partially) apologizing for racism. I call for the rigorous analysis of nonperformative and half-performative apologies and the construction of better, more genuine apologies.
Communication Theory
Gaslighting is defined as a dysfunctional communication dynamic in which one interlocutor attempt... more Gaslighting is defined as a dysfunctional communication dynamic in which one interlocutor attempts to destabilize another's sense of reality. In this article, we advance a model of gaslighting based in an epistemic rhetoric perspective. Our model directs attention to the rhetorics used to justify competing knowledge claims, as opposed to philosophical models that tend to rely on objective truth-value. We probe the discursive manifestations of gaslighting in logocentric, ethotic, or pathemic terms. We then apply our model to explain sexist and racist gaslighting that derives power from normatively instantiated discourses of rape culture and White supremacy. Specifically, our analysis identifies the appeal structures used to legitimate such gaslighting in response to disclosures of sexual violence and testimony about racial injustice.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2021
National Geographic magazine’s January 2017 special issue focused on gender around the world, inc... more National Geographic magazine’s January 2017 special issue focused
on gender around the world, including the magazine’s first explicit
discussion of gender identity and transgender lives. I argue that the
issue enacts a colonizing rhetoric of new discovery to address
gender identity, whereby the magazine obscures past and
present understandings of gender identity from cultures around
the globe to position itself (and the United States) as especially
innovative and progressive. I name the phenomenon of talking
about the present in ways that forecast a brighter tomorrow by
deflecting other pasts and presents futurespective kainotēs.
Women's Studies in Communication, 2021
Dominant paradigms of epistemology conventionally separate the rational from the emotional. In co... more Dominant paradigms of epistemology conventionally separate the rational from the emotional. In contradistinction to those views, we build on a rich tradition of scholarship about feminist anger to make the claim that outrage, in particular, has epistemic value. We understand feminist outrage—especially in the sense of a gross or malicious wrong or injury to principle—as a source of knowing, rather than an obstacle to it. Though the epistemic usefulness of anger has long been recognized among feminists, particularly Black feminists and other feminists of color, the disciplining of feminist outrage in the scholarly publication process invites our attention and demands our response. We define outrage epistemology as a way of knowing through felt, reflective awareness of injustice.
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2021
This article offers two suggestions for the future of queer communication studies: First, we shou... more This article offers two suggestions for the future of queer communication studies: First, we should continue to use language carefully and thoughtfully, especially about gender, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Second, queer communication scholarship should be intentionally and meaningfully intersectional, eschewing superficiality and tokenism related to race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Journal of Autoethnography, 2021
Transgender individuals often face a barrage of questions from family, friends, medical professio... more Transgender individuals often face a barrage of questions from family, friends, medical professionals, and others, asking them to account for and explain their identities. Ultimately, these questions all come down to one fundamental concern: "Why do you feel this way?" This essay offers one potential answer. By turning to the philosophical concept of reincarnation through the methodological approach of autoethnography, this essay posits a relationship among past lives and current lives as one potential way of accounting for one author's (trans) identity. We present an exploration of one author's identity in the form of a dialogue with the other author, a supportive friend curious about his interlocutor's beliefs in reincarnation and excited to learn.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2020
In this article, we trace arguments for the sacredness of Black life from Sojourner Truth to the ... more In this article, we trace arguments for the sacredness of Black life from Sojourner Truth to the Combahee River Collective to the founders of Black Lives Matter, arguing that Black women have consistently drawn on sacred and ritual structures to argue not just that Black life matters but also that Black life has inherent value. As such, we conclude with reflections on Black feminist ethics as an extension of the doctrine of imago dei.
Text and Performance Quarterly, 2020
I offer a critical reading of Naomi Iizuka's play Good Kids, considering the script, the performa... more I offer a critical reading of Naomi Iizuka's play Good Kids, considering the script, the performance of the play I watched, and the talkback with the cast. I argue that Good Kids enacts performative neutrality about sexual assault. By "performative neutrality," I mean not a performance of neutrality, but a productive construction of neutrality whereby the play forecloses side-taking. I conclude that performative neutrality buttresses rape culture by exacerbating ambiguity myths, he said/she said, and the miscommunication model of rape.
Peitho, 2020
This article offers a critical literature review of the emerging discipline of trans rhetorics. T... more This article offers a critical literature review of the emerging discipline of trans rhetorics. To acknowledge common points of interest, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations that cut across both fields, the authors examine published scholarship on trans rhetorics emerging out of rhetoric & composition and communication. The literature review is organized around the following four topics: trans representations in popular culture, trans activism, trans rhetorical pedagogies, and trans rhetorical methodologies. While the authors address the emerging trends and gaps in trans rhetorical studies, the authors also turn readers' attention to the sociopolitical consequences of academic research, arguing that researchers should prioritize projects that emphasize trans people's rhetorical agency.
Argumentation and Advocacy
Treating bodies as explicitly rhetorical, this article analyzes two queer Christian characters fr... more Treating bodies as explicitly rhetorical, this article analyzes two queer Christian characters from the television series Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000(Showtime, -2005, arguing that these guest characters represent embodied queer theologies. As they interact with main characters Brian and Justin, queer minister Tom and militant queer activist Cody offer an embodied queer theology where presence invites a visceral experience of queer Christian life. As such, these characters complicate the typical antagonistic role that Christianity often plays in queer narratives and illustrate the queer potential of embodied arguments, including in contexts of spirituality.
Spencer's compelling, nuanced analysis of women bishops' rhetoric offers keen and timely insights... more Spencer's compelling, nuanced analysis of women bishops' rhetoric offers keen and timely insights about intersections of gender, power, religion, and politics. Yet it is his articulation of shalom as a model for peaceful community that takes my breath away-Spencer's vision offers hope, guidance, and a call for social and political transformation based on the eloquent words of trailblazing women of God. A mustread for scholars and students in rhetoric, women's and gender studies, and social change!" -Laura L. Ellingson, Santa Clara University "Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace locates an intrepid 'shalom,' in the sermons of three ground-breaking (and ground-making) bishops in the Christian Church…Spencer reveals how each woman navigates the waters in her singular manner, embodying and advancing a courageous shalom, coconstructed by persons from all religious backgrounds-and from none-as a vision of active and fully inclusive peace, across religious, racial, ethnic, gender, and all lines that would divide us." -Elizabeth Nelson, University of Minnesota, Duluth "Leland G. Spencer invites readers along a path that is at once scholarly and transformational. The feminist rhetorical analysis offered in this study of the language of pioneering women bishops is skillful, integrated, and expansive. Professor Spencer's re-visioning of the concept of shalom as it uniquely unfolds in their sermons calls forth the strength and hope of shared values in a world that far too frequently battens down the hatches against difference. Each chapter reminds the reader, through compelling display of Spencer's intellect as he considers the words of the bishops, that feminist scholarship is as propelled by deep desire for learning as it is for social change. The goodness and grace of Professor Spencer's message, culled from the sermons of the bishops, is not to be missed, either by seasoned or aspiring language and communication scholars. " -Carol L. Winkelmann, Xavier University
City places, country spaces: Rhetorical explorations of the urban/rural divide, 2020
Cover image: ©iStock.com/Alfribeiro www.peterlang.com Regional di erences matter. Even in an incr... more Cover image: ©iStock.com/Alfribeiro www.peterlang.com Regional di erences matter. Even in an increasingly globalized world, rhetorical attention to regionalism yields very di erent understandings of geographic areas and the people who inhabit them. Regional identities often become most apparent in the di erences (real and perceived) between urban and rural areas. Politicians recognize the perceived di erences and develop messages based on that knowledge. Media highlight and exacerbate the differences to drive ratings. Cultural markers (from memorials to restaurants and memoirs and beyond) point to the di erences and even help to construct those divisions. The places identifi ed as urban and rural even visually demarcate the di erences at times. This volume explores how rhetoric surrounding the urban and rural binary helps shape our understanding of those regions and the people who reside there. Chapters from award-winning rhetorical scholars explain the implications of viewing the regions as distinct and divided, exploring how they infl uence our understanding of ourselves and others, politics and race, culture, space and place, and more. Attention to urban and rural spaces is necessary because those spaces both act rhetorically and are also created through rhetoric. In a time when thoughtful attention to regional division has become more critical than ever, this book is required reading to help think through and successfully engage the urban/rural divide. "This book fi lls an important niche in rhetoric and communication studies. The chapters contained here engage the growing conversation about regionalism-and its attendant terms like space and place-while exploring rural and urban settings. Each chapter demonstrates how rhetorical constructions of place and space weave into discourse as persuasive evidence, as a ective resonance, and as interpretative frame. The scholarship is impressive, the essays are well-written, the volume is invaluable." -Greg Dickinson, Professor and Chair, Communication Studies, Colorado State University Wendy Atkins-Sayre (PhD, University of Georgia) is Professor of Rhetoric and Department Chair at the University of Memphis. Her most recent book with Ashli Quesinberry Stokes, Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefi ning the South, explores the role that food plays in creating Southern identity.
Queer Communication Pedagogy, 2019
Global Agenda for Social Justice (Vol. 1), 2018
Fostering critical awareness of masculinity and gender inequality around the world is key to deve... more Fostering critical awareness of masculinity and gender inequality around the world is key to developing effective solutions to many social problems. Men in societies throughout the world enjoy privilege in the areas of power, wealth, and status. They are also responsible for a vast majority of acts related to gender violence and oppression around the globe. Yet, men’s health disparities and changing economic patterns offer ever more complex constraints for what it means to be a man around the world.
Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse: Advancing Conversations across Disciplines, ed., Dunn, J. and Manning, J., 2018
This teaching activity, included in Teaching From the Heart, introduces students to the importanc... more This teaching activity, included in Teaching From the Heart, introduces students to the importance of inclusive language and offers them a chance to apply the lesson to novel examples.
Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories, 2015
Gender in a Transitional Era: Changes and Challenges, ed. by Amanda Martinez and Lucy J. Miller, 2015
Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories, 2015
Women's Studies in Communication
The author presents a review of Beyond Freedom's Reach by Adam Rothman.
Journal of Communication and Religion, 2017
The author presents a review of the book Our Lives Matter by Pamela R. Lightsey.
