Catherine Helen Palczewski

The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and Ideographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suffrage Postcards

In 1909, at the height of the woman suffrage controversy and during the golden age of postcards, the Dunston-Weiler Lithograph Company of New York produced a twelve-card set of full-color lithographic cartoon postcards opposing woman suffrage. The postcard images reflect, and depart from, verbal arguments concerning woman suffrage prevalent during this period. They reflect arguments against suffrage that highlighted the coarsening effect the vote would have on women. The postcards also present an argument that was absent in the verbal discourse surrounding suffrage: that men (and the nation) would become feminized by woman suffrage. Accordingly, these postcards offer a productive location in which to explore how the icons of the Madonna and Uncle Sam, as well as non-iconic images of women, were deployed to reiterate the disciplinary norms of the ideographs of and .

Navigating the Visual Turn in Argument

In 1996, Argumentation and Advocacy published a groundbreaking issue devoted to visual argument. It was the first collection of essays on the subject. Twenty years later, we consider some of the doubts about the possibility of visual argument that were discussed in that first issue. We argue that these doubts have been answered by the last 20 years of research on visual argument, and we look at some of the key theoretical and applied issues that characterize this burgeoning subfield in the study of argument.

When Times Collide: Ward Churchill's Use of an Epideictic Moment to Ground Forensic Argument

During Denvers 1991 Columbus Day parade, fifty Native Americans briefly blocked the parade. As part of the trial of four protesters, Ward Churchill authored a legal brief that contributed to their acquittal. This essay advances two intertwined arguments as to why Churchills brief was effective. First, Churchill skillfully adapted to the forensic form through his choice of expert persona, objective tone, Euramerican evidence and deductive structure, effectively shifting attention from the guilt of the protestors to the blameworthy genocidal actions of Euramericans. Second, because the trial concerned actions that occurred at the epideictic moment created by the Columbus Day parade, a rupture of time in the forensic setting occurred whereby Native American re-presentations of past atrocities became relevant to the case at hand.

Disingenuous Controversy: Responses to Ward Churchill's 9/11 Essay

The response to Ward Churchills essay, “‘Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” is used to explore disingenuous controversy, that is, controversy that closes off, rather than expands, argumentative space. An interesting mix of public argument about U.S. foreign policy, the national grieving process, and negotiation over collective memory positioned Churchills essay as a location through which to assert disciplinary power over what is (not) considered an acceptable statement about 9/11. The time was ripe for pseudo-controversy as a means of stifling genuine controversy.

Bodies, borders, and letters: Gloria Anzaldúa's “Speaking in tongues: A letter to 3rd world women writers”

Anzaldua argues that all writing should be connected and personalized like letters. Both the content and the form of Anzalduas letter make it a text worthy of attention as well as a text suitable for challenging Euro‐Americans to rethink their approach to texts by people of color. This paper argues that a letter is a distinct rhetorical form that enables an author to suspend the non‐addressed audience in an a‐critical position, and that an alternative approach to rhetoric is to understand communication as embodied.

Contesting Pornography: Terministic Catharsis and Definitional Argument.

This essay focuses on the debates over the MacKinnon-Dworkin Anti-Pornography Ordinance to explore one instance of definitional argument: the attempt to effect a redefinition. Using Burkes critical matrix of the pentad as a framework, I argue that advocates for a definitional shift created the possibility for a “terministic catharsis” by simultaneously locating pornography in multiple locations on the pentad, highlighting its act/agent/agency fonctions.

The 1919 Prison Special: Constituting white women's citizenship

ABSTRACT During the spring of 1919, the National Womans Party sponsored the Prison Special, a cross-country train tour of 26 white women who had been jailed as a result of their protest activity for woman suffrage. Using visual, embodied, and verbal enactments of imprisonment and civic action, the Prison Special constituted white womens citizenship through simultaneous rhetorics of inclusion and expulsion. The Prison Specials foregrounding of white womens martial capabilities, respectability, and vulnerability justified white womens inclusion in the category of citizen. The Prison Specials contrast of the imprisoned white suffragists to Black women co-prisoners participated in the expulsion of Black women from the category of citizen.