Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy


Book Description

Analyzes the political and legal struggles between labor movements and school administrators over the rise of part-time and temporary jobs in higher education.




The Corruption of Ethos in Fortress America


Book Description

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.




Dangerous Counterstories in The Corporate Academy


Book Description

Although the social reality is stark for progressive scholars who engage in scholarly activities or are committed to guiding their students to develop a social-just praxis in the circles of higher education, some scholars have found fissures amid the alienating, often hostile academic world to learn, grow, and create transformative communities. Up to this date, however, their stories have not been captured. Therefore, the purpose of this volume is to highlight alternative narratives generated by transformative scholars who have maintained their oppositional identity to the structures that oppress the vast majority of citizens. By bringing together these narratives, we focus on those who have joined with likeminded colleagues to teach, engage in activism, and conduct emancipatory forms of research, learning to negotiate and survive academic and corporate realities in spite of restrictive climates. Not only are these stories vital for helping students, academics, and the wider community understand how commercialized forces are impacting the professional lives of critical scholars in the academy, they have the power to help current and future critical pedagogues define (and redefine) themselves in a social world which is continually “promoting a narrow and intellectually stifling agenda for the role of education and turning the public against the very idea of a critical education” (McLaren, 2006). As stated by Bruner (1986) stories give “a map of possible roles and possible worlds in which action, thought, and self-definition are possible (or desirable)” (p. 2, cited in Collins & Cooper, 2005). These possibilities for definition and redefinition are what we seek to present, explore and understand.




Queerly Centered


Book Description

Queerly Centered explores writing center administration and queer identity, showcasing LGBTQA labor undertaken but not previously acknowledged or documented in the field’s research. Drawing from interviews with twenty queer writing center directors, Travis Webster examines the lived experiences of queer people leading writing centers, the promise and occasional peril of this work, and the disciplinary implications of such work for writing center administration, research, and praxis. Focused on directors’ queer histories, administrative activisms, and on-the-job tensions, this study connects and departs from oft-referenced lenses, such as emotional and invisible labor, for understanding work in higher education. The first book-length project that exclusively bridges writing centers and LGBTQA studies, Queerly Centered is for researchers, administrators, educators, and practitioners of all orientations and backgrounds in writing center and writing program administration, rhetoric and composition, and higher education administration.




Speaking Up, Speaking Out


Book Description

Speaking Up, Speaking Out addresses the lived experiences of those working in the non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) trenches through storytelling and reflection. By connecting NTTF voices from various aspects of writing studies, the collection offers fresh perspectives and meaningful contributions, imagining the possibilities for contingent faculty to be valued and honored in educational systems that often do the opposite. Challenging traditional ways of seeing NTTF, the work contains multiple entry points to NTT life: those with and without “terminal degrees,” those with PhDs, and those who have held or currently hold tenured positions. Each chapter suggests tangible ways that writing departments and supporters can be more thoughtful about their policies and practices as they work to create more equitable spaces for NTTF. Speaking Up, Speaking Out considers the rhetorical power of labeling and asserts why contingent faculty, for far too long, have been compared to and against TT faculty and often encouraged to reach the same or similar productivity with scholarship, teaching, and service that TT faculty produce. The myopic ideas about what is valued and whose position is deemed more important impacts contingent faculty in ways that, as contributors in this collection share, effect and affect faculty productivity, emotional health, and overall community involvement. Contributors: Norah Ashe-McNalley, Sarah Austin, Rachel Azima, Megan Boeshart Burelle, Peter Brooks, Denise Comer, Jessica Cory, Liz Gumm, Brendan Hawkins, Heather Jordan, Nathalie Joseph, Julie Karaus, Christopher Lee, John McHone, Angie McKinnon Carter, Dauvan Mulally, Seth Myers, Liliana M. Naydan, Linda Shelton, Erica Stone, Elizabeth Vincelette, Lacey Wootton




President Donald Trump and His Political Discourse


Book Description

President Donald Trump and His Political Discourse brings together a diverse collection of perspectives on President Trump’s Twitter rhetoric. Truly unique in its in-depth exploration, the volume demonstrates the ways in which international and U.S. relations, media and "fake news," and marginalized groups, among other things, have been the subject of President Trump’s tweets. It also features qualitative–quantitative analyses, evaluating tweet patterns, broader language shifts, and the psychology of President Trump’s Twitter voice. The purpose of this collection is not only to analyze the language used but also to consider the ramifications of the various messages on both individual and global levels, for which Trump is both celebrated and criticized. Interdisciplinary in approach, this collection is a useful resource for students in political rhetoric and communication, international relations, linguistics, journalism, leadership studies, and more.




The Ritual Culture of Victorian Professionals


Book Description

Focusing on the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Albert D. Pionke's book historicizes the relationship of ritual, class, and public status in Victorian England. His analysis of various discourses related to professionalization suggests that public ritual flourished during the period, especially among the burgeoning ranks of Victorian professions. As Pionke shows, magazines, court cases, law books, manuals, and works by authors that include William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Hughes, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning demonstrate the importance of ritual in numerous professional settings. Individual chapters reconstruct the ritual cultures of pre-professionalism provided to Oxbridge undergraduates; of oath-taking in a wide range of professional creation and promotion ceremonies; of the education, promotion, and public practice of Victorian barristers; and of Victorian Parliamentary elections. A final chapter considers the consequences of rituals that fail through the lens of the Eglinton tournament. The uneasy place of Victorian writers, who were both promoters of and competitors with more established professionals, is considered throughout. Pionke's book excavates Victorian professionals' vital ritual culture, at the same time that its engagement with literary representations of the professions reconstructs writers' unique place in the zero-sum contest for professional status.




Education as Civic Engagement


Book Description

A collection of the finest works of scholarship examining education - mostly higher education - as civic engagement published over the last decade in JAC, an award-winning journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture.




Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods


Book Description

"Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores how antiracism, as a critical methodology, can be used to structure knowledge production about language, culture, and communication. In each chapter, the authors draw on this methodology to reflect on how their experiences with race and racism dramatically influence our cultural literacies, canon formation, truth-telling, and digitally mediated modes of interpretation"--




How the University Works


Book Description

Uncovers the labor exploitation occurring in universities across the country As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce. Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education's corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.