Stanton's 'Solitude of Self' as Public Confession

This is an electronic version of an article published in the journal Communication Studies. The published version is available online at: www.tandfonline.com or http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10510971003603929Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened her now famous “Solitude of Self” by asserting her desire to make manifest the “individuality of each human soul.” Using Stanton’s attempt to display the human soul as a case study, I consider in this essay the capacities of language to disclose the self. I argue that, for Stanton, self-disclosure is fundamentally performative: the “Solitude of Self” evokes the “inner-being we call ourself” through a reliance on, and a subsequent violation of, a distinctively narrative logic. As this violation takes from the audience the sense of order that the narrative had theretofore provided, it puts the audience in a position where they, now shorn of narrative and the order it provided, can experience firsthand the solitude of self

The Meanings of Kansas: Rhetoric, Regions, and Counter Regions

This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the RHETORIC QUARTERLY © 2012 Taylor & Francis; RHETORIC QUARTERLY is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrsq20.This essay uses the Kansas reception of Truman Capote's 1966 In Cold Blood to reflect on processes of regionalism and resistance. Noting that Capote and In Cold Blood were articulated quite differently in different portions of the state of Kansas, I explain how Kansans used a text that was imposed on them to craft for themselves regional identities of their own making. I call these “counter regions,” a term I coin to emphasize that region making is an important, if often overlooked, ingredient in practices of cultural resistance

Augustine and the "Chair of Lies": Rhetoric in The Confessions

Published as Tell, Dave. “Augustine and the ‘Chair of Lies’: Rhetoric in The Confessions.” Rhetorica 28.4 (Autumn 2010): 384-407. © 2010 by [the Regents of the University of California/Sponsoring Society or Association]. Copying and permissions notice: Authorization to copy this content beyond fair use (as specified in Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law) for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric for libraries and other users, provided that they are registered with and pay the specified fee via Rightslink® on http://caliber.ucpress.net or directly with the Copyright Clearance Center, http://www.copyright.com."Augustine's highly dramatized resignation as a professor of rhetoric in Book Nine of The Confessions has caused a number of hermeneutic problems for scholars seeking to claim Augustine as an important part of rhetorical histories. By situating the resignation in the context of Augustine's critique of Manichaean practices of speech, I argue that Augustine's resignation marks a fundamental affirmation of rhetoric—an act in which Augustine's deep commitment to the arts of rhetoric shines forth with uncommon brilliance

The ‘Shocking Story’ of Emmett Till and the Politics of Public Confession

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version is available from Taylor & Francis: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630801975426In 1955, journalist William Bradford Huie interviewed Emmett Till’s killers and published their confession in Look magazine. Entitled "The Shocking Story of Approved Murder in Mississippi," Huie’s tale dominated the remembrance of Emmett Till for nearly fifty years. This essay argues that the power of the “Shocking Story” to control the memory of Till’s murder resides in its recourse to the “expressive confession,” the distinctive power of which is a capacity to naturalize historical events and thereby constitute a master narrative of inevitably in which further rhetorical intervention seems unnecessary. So understood, the “Shocking Story” is not just one more recounting of Till’s untimely death, it is also a treatise about the role of speech in the violence of the Mississippi Delta

Burke’s Encounter With Ransom: Rhetoric and Epistemology in “Four Master Tropes”

DOI: 10.1080/0277394040939129

Public Humanities and Publication: A Working Paper

This paper explores the challenges associated with the publication of public and publicly engaged humanities scholarship. It is the product of a working group convened in February 2020 by Routledge, Taylor & Francis and the National Humanities Alliance to identify and discuss model practices for publishing on public and publicly engaged humanities work in higher education. Its central thesis is this: the spread of publicly engaged work via academic publication holds the potential to benefit all, across communities and humanities disciplines. Public humanities work encompasses humanities research, teaching, preservation and programming, conducted for diverse individuals and communities. Publicly engaged humanities work, meanwhile, encompasses humanities research, teaching, preservation and programming, conducted with and for diverse individuals and communities. The innovative nature of this work, driven, often, by co-equal partnership with community members and institutions, broadens the horizons and inclusivity of humanities knowledge. It also, however, creates certain challenges that make publication both more complex and more important

Jimmy Swaggart's Secular Confession

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version is available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02773940902766748 .Following the exposure of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s illicit rendezvous with a New Orleans prostitute, the Assemblies of God simultaneously orchestrated a massive attempt to silence those who would discuss the tryst and arranged the most widely publicized confession in American history theretofore. The coincidence of a “silence campaign” with the vast distribution of a public confession invites us to reconsider the nature of the public confession. For what place has a public confession, the discourse of disclosure par excellence, in a silence campaign? This question is best answered, I argue, if we understand public confession not as a stable a-historical form, but as a practice that is informed by multiple, competing traditions. I argue that by situating Swaggart’s performance in a philosophically modern and secular tradition of public confession we can understand both its complicity in a silence campaign and, more generally, the political logic of the modern public confession

The Rise and Fall of a Mechanical Rhetoric, or, What Grain Elevators Teach us About Postmodernism

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original publisher's version is available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rqjs20