Groundbreaking case studies mapping the rhetoric inherent in acts of presentation and concealment Rhetorics of Display is a pathbreaking volume that brings together a distinguished group of scholars to assess an increasingly pervasive form of rhetorical activity. Editor Lawrence J. Prelli notes in his introduction that twenty-first century citizens continually confront displays of information and images, from the verbal images of speeches and literature to visual images of film and photography to exhibits in museums to the arrangement of our homes to the merchandising of consumer goods. The volume provides an integrated, comprehensive study of the processes of selecting what to reveal and what to conceal that together constitute the rhetorics of display. Surveying major historical transformations in the relationship between rhetoric and display, this book also identifies the leading themes in relevant scholarship of the past three decades. Seventeen case studies canvass a representative and diverse range of displays—from body piercing to a civil rights memorial to a Titanic exhibition to imagery found in gambling casinos—and examine the ways that phenomena, persons, places, events, identities, communities, and cultures are exhibited before audiences. Collectively the contributors shed light on rhetorics that are nearly ubiquitous in contemporary communication and culture.

The Politics of the Superficial argues that the increasing volume of visually communicative surfaces in public life contributes to a very particular form of public imagination and political activity.

Visual images, artifacts, and performances play a powerful part in shaping U.S. culture. To understand the dynamics of public persuasion, students must understand this "visual rhetoric." This rich anthology contains 20 exemplary studies of visual rhetoric, exploring an array of visual communication forms, from photographs, prints, television documentary, and film to stamps, advertisements, and tattoos. In material original to this volume, editors Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope present a critical perspective that links visuality and rhetoric, locates the study of visual rhetoric within the disciplinary framework of communication, and explores the role of the visual in the cultural space of the United States. Enhanced with these critical editorial perspectives, Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture provides a conceptual framework for students to understand and reflect on the role of visual communication in the cultural and public sphere of the United States. Key Features and Benefits Five broad pairs of rhetorical action—performing and seeing; remembering and memorializing; confronting and resisting; commodifying and consuming; governing and authorizing—introduce students to the ways visual images and artifacts become powerful tools of persuasion Each section opens with substantive editorial commentary to provide readers with a clear conceptual framework for understanding the rhetorical action in question, and closes with discussion questions to encourage reflection among the essays The collection includes a range of media, cultures, and time periods; covers a wide range of scholarly approaches and methods of handling primary materials; and attends to issues of gender, race, sexuality and class Contributors include: Thomas Benson; Barbara Biesecker; Carole Blair; Dan Brouwer; Dana Cloud; Kevin Michael DeLuca; Anne Teresa Demo; Janis L. Edwards; Keith V. Erickson; Cara A. Finnegan; Bruce Gronbeck; Robert Hariman; Christine Harold; Ekaterina Haskins; Diane S. Hope; Judith Lancioni; Margaret R. LaWare; John Louis Lucaites; Neil Michel; Charles E. Morris III; Lester C. Olson; Shawn J. Parry-Giles; Ronald Shields; John M. Sloop; Nathan Stormer; Reginald Twigg and Carol K. Winkler "This book significantly advances theory and method in the study of visual rhetoric through its comprehensive approach and wise separations of key conceptual components." —Julianne H. Newton, University of Oregon

Exploring style in a global culture In A Rhetoric of Style, Barry Brummett illustrates how style is increasingly a global system of communication as people around the world understand what it means to dress a certain way, to dance a certain way, to decorate a certain way, to speak a certain way. He locates style at the heart of popular culture and asserts that it is the basis for social life and politics in the twenty-first century. Brummett sees style as a system of signification grounded largely in image, aesthetics, and extrarational modes of thinking. He discusses three important aspects of this system—its social and commercial structuring, its political consequences, and its role as the chief rhetorical system of the modern world. He argues that aesthetics and style are merging into a major engine of the global economy and that style is becoming a way to construct individual identity, as well as social and political structures of alliance and opposition. It is through style that we stereotype or make assumptions about others’ political identities, their sexuality, their culture, and their economic standing. To facilitate theoretical and critical analysis, Brummett develops a systematic rhetoric of style and then demonstrates its use through an in-depth exploration of gun culture in the United States. Armed with an understanding of how this rhetoric of style works methodologically, students and scholars alike will have the tools to do their own analyses. Written in clear and engaging prose, A Rhetoric of Style presents a novel discussion of the workings of style and sheds new light on a venerable and sometimes misunderstood rhetorical concept by illustrating how style is the key to constructing a rhetoric for the twenty-first century.

Images play an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. In this distinctive collection, editors Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers examine the connection between visual images and persuasion, or how images act rhetorically upon viewers. Chapters included here highlight the differences and commonalities among a variety of projects identified as "visual rhetoric," leading to a more precise definition of the term and its role in rhetorical studies. Contributions to this volume consider a wide variety of sites of image production--from architecture to paintings, from film to needlepoint--in order to understand how images and texts work upon readers as symbolic forms of representation. Each chapter discusses, analyzes, and explains the visual aspect of a particular subject, and illustrates the ways in which messages and meaning are communicated visually. The contributions include work from rhetoric scholars in the English and communication disciplines, and represent a variety of methodologies--theoretical, textual analysis, psychological research, and cultural studies, among others. The editors seek to demonstrate that every new turn in the study of rhetorical practices reveals more possibilities for discussion, and that the recent "turn to the visual" has revealed an inexhaustible supply of new questions, problems, and objects for investigation. As a whole, the chapters presented here demonstrate the wide range of scholarship that is possible when a field begins to take seriously the analysis of images as important cultural and rhetorical forces. Defining Visual Rhetorics is appropriate for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in rhetoric, English, mass communication, cultural studies, technical communication, and visual studies. It will also serve as an insightful resource for researchers, scholars, and educators interested in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication studies.

Part of a series in Studies in Rhetoric and Communication, this book casts a fresh light on the process by which scientific claims are validated. If scientists cannot justify their claims in positivistic terms, how can a scientific claim be legitimatized?

This book explores how ephemeral and displaced public memories continue to linger and circulate around the National Mall in Washington, DC. Chapters examine unrecognized historical events on the Mall, selective interpretations of the past within the Mall’s sites, and places of public memory hiding in plain sight.