Victoria J. Gallagher

Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art

The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates “spaces of attention” wherein visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative possibilities of such existence. Such rhetorical enactments create innovative opportunities for individuals to attend to the human/nature interface. These rhetorical enactments also create and contain tensions that come to the fore when they are employed as authentic mediations of nature, when they function as tropes to promote development of natural space, and/or when they are translated into discursive environmental argument.

Remembering together: Rhetorical integration and the case of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial

This essay explores the extent to which memorials that are connected with issues of national conflict can lead to the construction of shared memories or fictions of the past. In contrast to recent critical analyses that have focused on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, this study analyzes a Civil‐Bights related memorial—the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Atlanta—through the development and application of the concept of “rhetorical integration.” The findings demonstrate that even though rhetorical integration is elusive, memorials can, through aspects of form, function, symbolism and location, provide space, motivation and inventional resources for continued engagement.

Memory and Reconciliation in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama across the street from Kelly Ingram Park where black citizens were sprayed with fire hoses and confronted by police attack dogs in the spring of 1963. Across the street, on the side of the Institute, is Sixteenth Street Baptist church where four young black girls were killed by a bomb blast on September 15,1963. To the right of the front entrance of the Institute is a statue that memorializes the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a key leader of the civil rights efforts in Birmingham during the late 1950s and early 1960s who endured bombings and physical attacks on himself and his family. Visiting the Institute on a Sunday, and walking through the gallery that depicts segregated Birmingham, I met the father of two boys who were the first to integrate an all-white school in Birmingham during that turbulent time. He now serves as a volunteer at the Institute. He took me over to the portion of the gallery devoted to segregated schooling and showed me the picture of himself and his sons on that most difficult day, surrounded by angry white people yelling and shaking fists. In Birmingham, at the Institute, historical conflicts are localized and brought close to home. Memorials and monuments, including those like the Institute that are devoted to honoring the accomplishments and reminding us of the tragic losses accrued during the civil rights movement, have proliferated in the last decade. Various theoretical explanations of the motivations, social consequences, and material nature of such artifacts have been offered along with close and provocative analyses of specific memorials.1 While national memorials such as the Vietnam Veterans

Visibility and Rhetoric: The Power of Visual Images in Norman Rockwell's Depictions of Civil Rights.

This essay demonstrates how visual works of art may operate rhetorically to articulate public knowledge, to illustrate the moral challenges facing citizens, and to shape commemorative practices, through an analysis of Norman Rockwells civil rights paintings of the 1960s. By examining the rhetorical aspects of these paintings, including their form and composition, the essay demonstrates the power of visual works of art to evoke common humanity in three significant ways: (1) disregarding established caricatures; (2) creating recognition of others through particularity; and (3) depicting material aspects of American society, thereby reminding viewers that abstract political concepts are always relative to the individuals or groups whose lives are most directly influenced by their presence or absence.

Martin Luther King, the American dream and Vietnam: A collision of rhetorical trajectories

This essay explores the rhetorical complexity of Martin Luther Kings dual role as political and moral leader, particularly during his last years when he was attacked for his opposition to the Vietnam War. By: 1) discussing and developing the theoretical value and critical possibilities associated with the term “rhetorical trajectories,”; 2) tracing the trajectories present in Kings rhetoric in order to set the context for a speech he gave in 1967 at Riverside Church, and 3) analyzing the text of that speech, the essay offers insight into Kings rhetorical impact, and, as a result, into the possibilities and limitations for combining pragmatic and moralistic discourse in American society.

Visibility and Rhetoric: Epiphanies and Transformations in the Life Photographs of the Selma Marches of 1965

In this article, we contribute to scholarship on visibility and rhetoric by examining the way in which photographs published in march 1965 issues of life magazine functioned rhetorically to (1) evoke common humanity by capturing moments of embodiment and enactment that challenged the established images of blacks in the minds of whites and held up for scrutiny assumptions and power relationships that had long been taken for granted; (2) evoke common humanity by creating recognition of others through particularity; and (3) challenge taken–for-granted ideas of democracy, reminding viewers that a large gap existed between abstract political concepts like democracy and what was actually occurring in american streets. We conclude by considering the transformative capacity of photojournalism as it mediates between the universal and the particular, and enables viewers to experience epiphanic moments when issues, ideas, habits, and yearnings are crystallized into a single recognizable image.

From “conflict” to “constitutional question”: Transformations in early American public discourse

The American Constitution functions both as a condensation symbol and as a set of essentially contested concepts. The former function is the result of constructive ambiguity which produces broad social consensus; the latter function reflects the fact that Constitutional symbols are given meaning in specific controversies which produce dissensus. This seeming contradiction is contained by removing the battle for Constitutional interpretation from the public forum and assigning it to the specialized forum of the Supreme Court. Before the Civil War, however, the principle of judicial review was not yet established. Constitutional issues instead were the province of the same public forum which adjudicated the substantive questions. As a result, questions of expediency were transformed into Constitutional questions. Three case studies (the Alien and Sedition Acts, the nullification crisis, and the secession controversy) illustrate both the gradual evolution of Constitutional issues and the rigidity which these...

Visual Wellbeing: Intersections of Rhetorical Theory and Design

In her recent book Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe, Caroline van Eck argues that classical rhetoric influenced both the producers and consumers of visual art and architecture in early modern Europe through concepts related to vivid representation. Indeed, according to van Eck, both oral communication and image making share the goal of establishing vivid representation (or enargeia). In addition, she argues that both rhetoric and the visual arts work “to bring to life that which is absent.” Building upon her work and also following the work of Buchanan (2001) and Kaufer & Butler (1996), we suggest that an even stronger argument can be made for the interrelatedness of rhetoric and the visual arts, particularly in the field of design. In this paper, we speak from within two intellectual traditions—rhetoric and visual design—that have developed separately. Despite this separation, we argue that what emerged as two distinct fields of study are intricately related, as reflected in their assumptions, goals, and functions. For instance, scholars in design and rhetoric define their practices and objects of study similarly. In addition, they have similar values and goals particularly related to the possibility of changing an imperfect situation and instigating a level of social consciousness. Furthermore, both fields work toward human advancement in both functional and moral senses (Figure 1). Indeed, Twyman1 and Bonsiepe,2 both of whom write from a design perspective, argue that ancient rhetoric resembles modern design because both arts deal with functional, contextual, and social aspects of language and symbol systems and thus are well suited to design issues. In their book, Rhetoric and the Art of Design, Kaufer and Butler suggest that rhetoric belongs to the family of design arts, like architecture and graphics, because all of these arts are arts of production.3 They conclude that theories of rhetoric are theories of design. Meanwhile, Ehses, a design educator, argues that rhetorical theory is relevant for information design because of the applicability of the three operational functions of rhetoric—to instruct, to move, to please—to the nature of design.4 Twyman and Bonsiepe also argue that ancient rhetoric did in fact consider, and therefore address, the visual. Gronbeck,

Black Power in Berkeley: Postmodern Constructions in the Rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael.

In the speech at Berkeley, Carmichael revealed a potential in discourse that enabled him to develop, from out of the confines of a tactical rhetoric, a strategic rhetoric of blackness. Close analysis of Carmichaels speech, grounded in Burkes paradox of purity, illuminates the internal logic of Black Power, as well as Carmichaels use of reflexivity, reversal, deconstruction and re‐construction of dialectical terms and relationships. Contemporary discursive practices addressing issues of civil rights and race are then examined in light of the principles and purposes developed by Carmichael. The results challenge rhetorical scholars and critics to disrupt reliance on dialectical constructions within discourses of race.

Student evaluations of teaching: the impact of faculty procedures on response rates

Abstract In the last 10–15 years, many institutions of higher education have switched from paper-and-pencil methods to online methods of administering student evaluations of teaching (SETs). One consequence has been a significant reduction in the response rates to such instruments. The current study was conducted to identify whether offering in-class time to students to complete online SETs would increase response rates. A quasi-experiment (nonequivalent group design) was conducted in which one group of tenured faculty instructed students to bring electronic devices with internet capabilities on a specified day and offered in-class time to students to complete online SETs. A communication protocol for faculty members’ use was developed and implemented. A comparison group of tenured faculty who did not offer in-class time for SET completion was identified and the difference-in-differences method was used to compare the previous year’s response rates for the same instructor teaching the same course across the two groups. Response rates were substantially higher when faculty provided in-class time to students to complete SETs. These results indicate that high response rates can be obtained for online SETs submitted by students in face-to-face classes if faculty communicate the importance of SETs in both their words and actions.