This book argues that the sixteenth-century preoccupation with rehabilitating English tells the larger story of an anxious nation redirecting attention away from its own marginal, minority status by racially scapegoating the 'barbarous' African.
Since Jacob Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1869) rhetoric as a significant cultural factor of the renaissance has largely been neglected. The present study seeks to remedy this deficit regarding the arts by concentrating on literary theory and its aspects of imagination (inventio), genre (dispositio of the genera), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria) and representation (actio), with illustrative examples taken from Shakespeare's works, but also on the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical ideology of the Renaissance.
Jeffrey B. Ferguson is remembered as an Amherst College professor of mythical charisma and for his long-standing engagement with George Schuyler, culminating in his paradigm changing book The Sage of Sugar Hill. Continuing in the vein of his ever questioning the conventions of “race melodrama” through the lens of which so much American cultural history and storytelling has been filtered, Ferguson’s final work is brought together here in Race and the Rhetoric of Resistance.
Menon introduces rhetoric into the largely medico-juridical realm of studies on Renaissance sexuality. In doing so, she suggests that rhetoric allows us to think through the erotics of language in ways that pay most attention to the frisson of English Renaissance drama.
This book expands the discourse on the Harlem Renaissance into more recent crucial areas for literary scholars, college instructors, graduate students, upper-level undergraduates, and Harlem Renaissance aficionados. These selected essays, authored by mostly new critics in Harlem Renaissance studies, address critical discourse in race, cultural studies, feminist studies, identity politics, queer theory, and rhetoric and pedagogy. While some canonical writers are included, such as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke, others such as Dorothy West, Jessie Fauset, and Wallace Thurman have equal footing. Illustrations from several books and journals help demonstrate the vibrancy of this era. Australia Tarver is Associate Professor of English at Texas Christian University. Paula C. Barnes is an Associate Professor of English at Hampton University.
Featuring roughly sixty specially commissioned essays by an international cast of leading rhetoric experts from North America, Europe, and Great Britain, the Handbook will offer readers a comprehensive topical and historical survey of the theory and practice of rhetoric from ancient Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment up to the present day.
In Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts,editors Cheryl Glenn and Krista Ratcliffe bring together seventeen essays by new and established scholars that demonstrate the value and importance of silence and listening to the study and practice of rhetoric. Building on the editors’ groundbreaking research, which respects the power of the spoken word while challenging the marginalized status of silence and listening, this volumemakes a strong case for placing these overlooked concepts, and their intersections, at the forefront of rhetorical arts within rhetoric and composition studies. Divided into three parts—History, Theory and Criticism, and Praxes—this book reimagines traditional histories and theories of rhetoric and incorporates contemporary interests, such as race, gender, and cross-cultural concerns, into scholarly conversations about rhetorical history, theory, criticism, and praxes. For the editors and the other contributors to this volume, silence is not simply the absence of sound and listening is not a passive act. When used strategically and with purpose—together and separately—silence and listening are powerful rhetorical devices integral to effective communication. The essays cover a wide range of subjects, including women rhetors from ancient Greece and medieval and Renaissance Europe; African philosophy and African American rhetoric; contemporary antiwar protests in the United States; activist conflict resolution in Israel and Palestine; and feminist and second-language pedagogies. Taken together, the essays in this volume advance the argument that silence and listening are as important to rhetoric and composition studies as the more traditionally emphasized arts of reading, writing, and speaking and are particularly effective for theorizing, historicizing, analyzing, and teaching. An extremely valuable resource for instructors and students in rhetoric, composition, and communication studies, Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts will also have applications beyond academia, helping individuals, cultural groups, and nations more productively discern and implement appropriate actions when all parties agree to engage in rhetorical situations that include not only respectful speaking, reading, and writing but also productive silence and rhetorical listening.
Few concepts evoke the twentieth century’s record of war, genocide, repression, and extremism more powerfully than the idea of totalitarianism. Today, studies of the subject are usually confined to discussions of Europe’s collapse in World War II or to comparisons between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In Race and the Totalitarian Century, Vaughn Rasberry parts ways with both proponents and detractors of these normative conceptions in order to tell the strikingly different story of how black American writers manipulated the geopolitical rhetoric of their time. During World War II and the Cold War, the United States government conscripted African Americans into the fight against Nazism and Stalinism. An array of black writers, however, deflected the appeals of liberalism and its antitotalitarian propaganda in the service of decolonization. Richard Wright, W. E. B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham, C. L. R. James, John A. Williams, and others remained skeptical that totalitarian servitude and democratic liberty stood in stark opposition. Their skepticism allowed them to formulate an independent perspective that reimagined the antifascist, anticommunist narrative through the lens of racial injustice, with the United States as a tyrannical force in the Third World but also as an ironic agent of Asian and African independence. Bringing a new interpretation to events such as the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956, Rasberry’s bird’s-eye view of black culture and politics offers an alternative history of the totalitarian century.
The Rhetoric of Race: Toward a Revolutionary Construction of Black Identity analitza el llegat dels principals estudiosos de la identitat afroamericana: W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke i Amiri Baraka. El propòsit d'aquest volum és investigar i criticar les seues idees per tal de mostrar fins a quin punt els seus esforços a l'hora de crear una definició de la identitat negra no foren tan fructífers com es podria pensar. El llibre tracta d'elaborar una definició revolucionària de la identitat emmarcada dins les següents posicions teòriques: l'exigència del reconeixement d'un passat de sofriment, la rèplica d'allò negatiu respecte a l'afroamericà i la crida-resposta com a forma de comunicació negra. Tot fent servir la retòrica com a punt de partida, s'intenta justificar aquesta construcció des de les posicions filosòfiques defensades per Michel Foucault i Gilles Deleuze. Les idees de Foucault són la base per analitzar les possibilitats que inclou aquesta identitat negra de resistència davant el poder, mentre que les de Deleuze són útils a l'hora d'investigar el replegament cap a si mateix que aquesta identitat realitza per a crear un espai intern. Tot i que forma part d'allò extern, aquest espai intern esdevé punt de trobada de tots els aspectes històrics d'aquesta identitat, ja que parla del que ha estat, és i serà. d'una altra banda, s'argumenta ací que aquesta trobada interna amb les seues múltiples parts porta aquesta identitat a projectar un jo positiu quan ha d'afrontar allò extern. l'anàlisi de les idees d'investigadores afroamericanes com ara Barbara Smith i bell hooks fa de conclusió. El capítol 5 exposa les conclusions a les quals arriba aquest estudi. s'hi analitza la importancia de la música hip-hop dins el món contemporani per a la comunitat afroamericana. Per la seua força cultural i lingüística, el hip-hop posseix el potencial necessari per a construir una idea positiva del que és ser negre als Estats Units per a la joventut afroamericana actual.
This book challenges the long-held assumption that African American literature aptly reflects black American social consciousness. Offering a novel sociological approach, Washington delineates the social and political forces that shaped the leading black literary works. Washington shows that deep divisions between political thinkers and writers prevailed throughout the 20th century. Visit our website for sample chapters!