Rhetorics Haunting The National Mall

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.

Rhetoric of the Opioid Epidemic argues that the opioid epidemic is a public health issue. By analyzing case studies from popular culture and governmental responses, Tiara Good demonstrates that the power of naming it an epidemic, rather than a drug or crime issue, reduces counterproductive stigma and assists in reshaping public perspectives.

This book analyzes the rhetoric of Donald Trump to argue that Trump embraces conflicting populist and Republican values, and as a result has relied on populist and polarizing rhetoric, along with fabricated crises, to reconcile these combating ideals and uphold his image of an “anti-status quo politician.”

In this book, Wanda Little Fenimore traces the resurrection of the phrase “New South” with South Carolina’s governor, Nikki Haley. Through analyzing speeches, Fenimore demonstrates how politicians use historical terms in new ways that obscure their roots, but remain oppressive in the twenty-first century.

The Corruption of Ethos in Fortress America: Billionaires, Bureaucrats, and Body Slams argues that authoritarian strains of U.S. governance violate the idea of ethos in its ancient, collectivist sense. Christopher Carter posits that this corrupts the cultural “dwelling place” through public relations strategies, policies on race and immigration, and a general disregard for environmental concerns. Donald Trump’s presidency provides a signal instance of the problem, refashioning the dwelling place as a fortress while promoting sweeping forms of exclusion and appealing to power for power’s sake. Carter’s analysis shows that, emboldened by the purported flexibility of truth, Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric underwrites unrestrained policing, militarized borders, populist nationalism, and relentless assaults on investigative journalism. These trends bode ill for human rights and critical education as well as progressive social movements and the forms of life they entail. Worse yet, the corruption of ethos threatens life in general by privileging corporate prerogatives over ecological attunement. In response to those tendencies, Carter highlights modes of activism that merge antiracist and labor rhetoric to offer a more fluid, unpredictably emergent vision of social space, allying with ecofeminism in ways that make that vision durable. Scholars of rhetoric, political science, history, ecology, race studies, and American studies will find this book particularly useful.

This book explores how prominent sites across the National Mall remember US history, both individually and in concert with other sites throughout the Mall. Collectively, these sites reveal how the nation remembers itself and convey key elements of its collective nature.

The Commemoration of Women in the United States examines the public memorialization of women in the US over the past century, with a particular focus on the late twentieth century and early twenty first. The analysis centers on six case examples of memorialization, and explores broad themes of cultural representation. Bergman argues that the construction, or relocation, of a series of prominent national memorials together form a significant moment of change in the ways in which women are commemorated in the US. The historic and present-day challenges facing such commemoration are examined, with reference to broader political debates. The case examples explored are the Women in the Military Service for America Memorial; the Women’s Rights National Historic Park; the Vietnam Veterans Women’s Memorial; the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park; the Eleanor Roosevelt Statue in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial; and the Portrait Monument of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Providing insightful and grounded analysis of the history and practice of the commemoration of women in the US, this book makes useful reading for a range of scholars and students in subjects including heritage studies, communication studies, and history.

In This Issue Articles "Guided by Ghosts of the Post-Civil War Era": Felon Disenfranchisement and the Limits of Race Liberal Advocacy Chris S. Earle Monkey Business in a Kangaroo Court: Reimagining Naruto v. Slater as a Litigious Event S. Marek Muller "Imitation (In)Security" and the Polysemy of Russian Disinformation: A Case Study in How IRA Trolls Targeted U.S. Military Veterans Hamilton Bean, Stephen J. Hartnett, Farnoush Banaei-Kashani, Haadi Jafarian, and Alex Koutsoukos They Spoke in Defense of Roy Moore: Networked Apologia and Media Ecosystems Jacob Justice and Brett Bricker Book Reviews Roger C. Aden, ed., Rhetorics Haunting the National Mall: Displaced and Ephemeral Public Memories Reviewed by Daniel M. Chick John Oddo, The Discourse of Propaganda: Case Studies from the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror Reviewed by Yishan Wang Kristen Hoerl, The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements Reviewed by David P. Schulz Gary A. Remer, Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality Reviewed by Robert W. Cape, Jr. Amos Kiewe, Andrew Jackson: A Rhetorical Portrayal of Presidential Leadership Reviewed by Jacob Justice