Matching Items (20)
Description
Rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke has asserted the significance of paying equal, if not more attention to, propagandist rhetoric, arguing that "there are other ways of burning books on the pyre-and the favorite method of the hasty reviewer is to deprive himself and his readers by inattention." Despite Burke's exhortation, attention to white supremacist discourse has been relatively meager. Historians Clive Webb and Charles Eagles have called for further research on white supremacy arguing that attention to white supremacist discourse is important both to fully understand and appreciate pro-civil rights rhetoric in context and to develop a more complex understanding of white supremacist rhetoric. This thesis provides a close examination of the literature and rhetoric of two white supremacist organizations: the Citizens' Council, an organization that sprang up in response to the 1954 landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education and Stromfront.org, a global online forum community that hosts space for supporters of white supremacy. Memory scholars Barbie Zelizer, John Bodnar, and Stephen Brown note the usability of memory to shape social, political, and cultural aspects of society and the potential implications of such shaping. Drawing from this scholarship, the analysis of these texts focuses specifically on the rhetorical shaping of memory as a vehicle to promote white supremacy. Through an analysis of the Citizens' Council's use of historical events, national figures and cultural stereotypes, Chapter 1 explicates the organization's attempt to form a memorial narrative that worked to promote political goals, create a sense of solidarity through resistance, and indoctrinate the youth in the ideology of white supremacy. Chapter 2 examines the rhetorical use of memory on Stormfront and explains how the website capitalizes upon the wide reaching global impact of World War II to construct a memorial narrative that can be accessed by a global audience of white supremacists. Ultimately, this thesis offers a focused review of the rhetorical signatures of two white supremacist groups with the aim of combating contemporary instantiations of racist discourse.
ContributorsLadenburg, Kenneth (Author) / Ore, Ersula (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation examines racism as discourse and works to explicate, through the examination of historical and contemporary texts, the ways in which racism is maintained and perpetuated in the United States. The project critiques the use of generalized categories, such as alt-right, as an anti-racist tactic and notes that these rigid categories are problematic because they cannot account for the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of racist discourse. The dissertation argues that racist discourse that is categorized as mainstream and fringe both rely upon a fundamental framework of rhetorical strategies that have long been ingrained into the social and political fabric of the United States and are based on the foundational system of white supremacy. The project discusses two of these strategies—projection and stasis diffusion—in case studies that examine their use in texts throughout American history and in mainstream and fringe media. “Everyday White Supremacy” contributes to important academic and societal conversations concerning the how the academy and the public use category to address racism, anti-racist practices, and rhetorical understandings of racist discourse. The project argues for shift away from the use of categorical naming to identify racist groups and people towards the practice of identifying racism as discourse, particularly through its rhetorical strategies. This paradigm shift would encourage scholars, and the general population, to identify racism via the processes by which it is propagated rather than its existence within a person or group
ContributorsLadenburg, Kenneth James (Author) / Miller, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Ore, Ersula (Committee member) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory proposes that the personality has three components, the id, superego, and ego. The id is concerned with pleasure and gain, the reason it is often identified as a human's animalistic side. Additionally, the id does not consider social rules as closely and is the uncensored portion of the personality. The superego is the id's opposite; the superego considers social expectations and pressures immensely, is more self-critical and moralizing. The ego mediates the id and superego, and is understood as the realistic expression of personality which considers both the "animal" and human. A Fractured Whole: A Collection of Short Stories, explores Freud's construction of human personality in both form and content. Within the collection are three sections, each with a different pair of characters. Within each section, the same scene is written in the three "modes" of the id, superego, and ego, as three separate stories. The fifteen stories comprising this collection address the substance of daily life: sexuality, body image, competition, among other topics, to consider how a single person can balance the desires for personal pleasure and to satisfy social expectations. Writing the same scene in three "modes" allows for the observation of how the characters attitudes and actions alter under the influence of different parts of their personalities.
ContributorsOtte, Aneka (Author) / Sturges, Robert (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This is an analysis of broad racial discourse through a critical race theory: Responsibility Avoidance Discourse (RAD). RAD is coded English that communicates meaning through connotation, avoidance, and implication as a means of securing its main purposes: enforcing white supremacy, obscuring inequality, and hindering significant racial progress. RAD is extremely effective at directing discussion away from arguments that might induce self-reflexivity or question white privilege. It focuses on discrediting others as a means of legitimizing whiteness. I analyze examples of it from a variety of sources—from political discourse to media coverage and social media trends—to demonstrate its manifestations throughout society.
ContributorsClarke, Ty Larson (Author) / Bebout, Lee (Thesis director) / Spanierman, Lisa (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Animation is a medium that is not taken as seriously as live-action television and film. This thesis focuses on the representation of LGBT characters in American animation and attempts to give a rigorous analysis on a medium that should be taken seriously. Analysis is done on the stereotypes and coding from various animated shows, such as South Park, Family Guy, and Steven Universe. The shows are further divided into adult and children's animation, in which the analysis will track how LGBT characters are represented and have progressed in both. The thesis describes how problematic these characters may potentially be and how the images may project certain cultural and social attitudes towards the LGBT community. The thesis also considers the future of queer visibility and representation in other mediums, other than just in broadcast television. It was found that representation begins in the early 90s in adult comedy animation with Big Gay Al in South Park. In adult animation, the focus is usually more on the use of stereotypes and how these stereotypes are used for comedy. These stereotypes are sometimes enforced or subverted, depending on the show. It was also found that in adult animation, there has been a shift towards normalizing queer characters to fit a heteronormative framework. For children's animation, the sexuality of a character is subtler and coded with context clues. Some children and teen shows have decided to reveal the sexuality of certain characters in the last episode of the series. Children's animation also follows a similar trend that adult animation has taken with the normalization of queer characters.
ContributorsVuong, Hansen (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In the mid-twentieth century, a number of vital and quietly revolutionary gay male writers, including Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and John Rechy, increasingly wrote about explicitly homosexual experiences and culture despite social and legal opposition. Both individually and collectively, these four authors ultimately merged disjointed identities to establish a tradition of visibility and resistance in the United States. Divided into four main sections, this thesis examines each author’s portrayal of homosexual experiences and culture through his distinct approach with a close literary analysis of various works. The first section considers Christopher Isherwood and how milieu affects his depictions of homosexuality in The Berlin Stories (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and A Single Man (1964). The second examines Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (1948) and the relationship between homosexuality and masculinity. The third section looks at how James Baldwin writes about the intersection of homosexuality, race, nationality, and class in both Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). Finally, the fourth section considers the emergence of queer communities built around resistance in John Rechy’s City of Night (1963). In addition to these literary texts, original reviews of each novel published in The New York Times capture their reception and acceptance into a mainstream American readership. Through their distinct approaches, these four authors collectively present a varied, although somewhat limited, look at the homosexual experience in postwar, pre-Stonewall America.
ContributorsBramlett, Charles Paul (Author) / Sturges, Robert (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Scholars have attended to paradoxes inherent in wider public discourse where subordinated groups most affected by laws and sanctions have the least political, material, and rhetorical capital to speak back to them. Such scholarship often focuses either on the subordinated status of a group or the work of subordinated groups going public as part of a collective mass movement for social change. In doing so, scholarship risks undermining the agency of subordinated rhetors or treating mass-movement rhetoric as somehow both exceptional and yet necessary for enacting cultural citizenship. What is less frequently studied is the agency that local publics demonstrate through their tenacious organizational decision-making in the face of political, material, and rhetorical sanctions.
In response to this gap, this project features the Puente Movement, a mixed-documentation-status grassroots organization in Phoenix, AZ. Specifically, I’ve analyzed this organization’s public efforts from April 23rd, 2010 to September 6th, 2012 to oppose Senate Bill 1070—a state-specific measure to stop undocumented immigration across the Mexico/Arizona border and deport current undocumented residents. I situate the study in the larger context of Latino cultural citizenship. Combining a critical-incident interview technique and a rhetorically informed decision-making framework, I analyze Puente’s active construction and public circulation of argumentative appeals in relation to their decision-making that attempted to leverage Puente’s identity and membership to serve its constituents and to continue to direct wider public attention to SB 1070. Using a five-part framework to assess potential risks and benefits, the study documents the complexity of this decision-making. For instance, the study shows how Puente’s strategy of Barrio Defense Committees negotiated the tension between protecting the identification of local residents and publically protesting the injustices of immigration sanctions. It also highlights how a strategy to use member’s undocumented status as a point of publicity actively engaged tensions between the narratives Puente members wanted to present to the public about undocumented people and the images otherwise circulated. Behind these strategies and others like them is Puente’s persistent effort to re-frame immigration controversy. Findings are relevant to the study of Latino/a social movements, public-spheres scholarship, and action-research with subordinated rhetors.
In response to this gap, this project features the Puente Movement, a mixed-documentation-status grassroots organization in Phoenix, AZ. Specifically, I’ve analyzed this organization’s public efforts from April 23rd, 2010 to September 6th, 2012 to oppose Senate Bill 1070—a state-specific measure to stop undocumented immigration across the Mexico/Arizona border and deport current undocumented residents. I situate the study in the larger context of Latino cultural citizenship. Combining a critical-incident interview technique and a rhetorically informed decision-making framework, I analyze Puente’s active construction and public circulation of argumentative appeals in relation to their decision-making that attempted to leverage Puente’s identity and membership to serve its constituents and to continue to direct wider public attention to SB 1070. Using a five-part framework to assess potential risks and benefits, the study documents the complexity of this decision-making. For instance, the study shows how Puente’s strategy of Barrio Defense Committees negotiated the tension between protecting the identification of local residents and publically protesting the injustices of immigration sanctions. It also highlights how a strategy to use member’s undocumented status as a point of publicity actively engaged tensions between the narratives Puente members wanted to present to the public about undocumented people and the images otherwise circulated. Behind these strategies and others like them is Puente’s persistent effort to re-frame immigration controversy. Findings are relevant to the study of Latino/a social movements, public-spheres scholarship, and action-research with subordinated rhetors.
ContributorsOliver, Veronica (Author) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Jason Bryant Queering Home: Domestic Space and Sexuality in Postmodern American Fiction This dissertation explores narratives of homosexuals and trans men and women occupying domestic spaces, discerning the ways that “home” shapes understandings about sexuality and examining the ways that understandings of sexuality shape how domestic spaces are occupied. Queer artists and intellectuals have deconstructed the legacy of normativity that clings to the metaphor of the domestic realm. Queering Home argues that writers have used the discursive concept of home to cultivate sociopolitical communities (Audre Lorde, Zami) while also insisting upon material spaces of shelter and comfort for individuals queered by gender performance, sexual orientation, and resultant adverse economic conditions (Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues). Two novels, Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Mike Albo's Hornito, challenge the coming-of-age tradition of narrating childhood/adolescence through the redeeming prism of the confident, queer adult; in particular, these novels trouble the problematic notion of domesticated maturation as a heteronormative condition that continues to cling to much contemporary American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) politics. The third chapter examines Marilyn Hacker's sonnet collection, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons in correspondence with Carl Phillips's collection, Cortège, as they queer the concept of domestic bliss, the goal toward which romantic partners are “supposed” to be committed. Hacker and Phillips revise the same-sex couple as a processing of gay ways of life, which resists positing normative, married futures for lesbians and homosexuals. Finally, the study investigates Terrence McNally's play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart and a series of still life paintings by Joey Terrill for their depiction of narratives of domestic spaces (pools, open-concept design, medicine cabinets), which condition the subjectification and desubjectification of gay male sexuality and domesticity in the era of HIV/AIDS. Throughout, this dissertation draws energy by challenging the “given” and “inevitable” heteronorms that condition domesticity, sexuality, and space, demonstrating how late twentieth century writers and artists have queered the home.
ContributorsBryant, Jason (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
A study on the power inequity between men and women in inter-gender conversations, how it manifests linguistically, and the social ramifications thereafter. Conversations from the game show Cash Cab are used to this point.
ContributorsPirotte, Adeline Rose (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
The United States houses only five percent of the world’s population but over 20% of its prison population. There has been a dramatic increase in carceral numbers over the last several decades with much of this population being people with mental illness designations. Many scholars attribute this phenomenon to the process of deinstitutionalization, in which mental health institutions in the U.S. were shut down in the 1950s and ‘60s. However, disability scholar Liat Ben-Moshe argues that this is a dangerous oversimplification that fails to credit the deinstitutionalization movement as an abolitionist movement and to take into account shifting demographics between institutions and prisons/jails. This study considers how mass incarceration in the U.S. stems from a trend of isolating and punishing BIPOC and people with disabilities at disproportionate rates as it explores lived experiences at the intersection of mental health and incarceration. Findings inform an abolitionist agenda by highlighting the near impossibility of rehabilitation and treatment in an inherently traumatizing space.
ContributorsGerkin, Alyssa (Author) / Kirsch-Stancliff, Willa (Co-author) / Henson, Abigail (Thesis director) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / DeMarse, Angela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor)
Created2023-05