The Keynotes of the 2016 Political Conventions: The Death of a Genre?

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-413
Author(s):  
Theodore F. Sheckels
Keyword(s):  
Endangered Species ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Keynote Address ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The Many

The concept of genre is an important one in rhetorical criticism. Important work has been done on presidential genres as well as more general ones such as the jeremiad and the apologia. In this vein is work on certain genres that recur at the many political party conventions. If one adopts an historical perspective, there are, from early-on, many genres—some explored by scholars, some not: the welcome address, the keynote address, the nominating and seconding speeches, and the vice presidential and presidential nomination acceptance speeches. There are also, more recently, addresses by former presidents, vanquished candidates, and—since the 1990s—prospective first spouses. This essay focuses on just one of these genres, the keynote. I argue that the genre is an important one, one that performs both important rhetorical and political work. Based on the 2016 party conventions, the genre is very much an endangered species of political communication, portending rhetorical problems for the nation’s two parties.

Emerson's Memory Loss

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hanlon
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Margaret Fuller ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Important Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

Emerson’s Memory Loss is about an archive of texts documenting Emerson’s intellectual state during the final phase of his life, as he underwent dementia. It is also about the way these texts provoke a rereading of the more familiar canon of Emerson’s thinking. Emerson’s memory loss, Hanlon argues, contributed to the shaping of a line of thought in America that emphasizes the social over the solipsistic, the affective over the distant, the many over the one. Emerson regarded his output during the time when his patterns of cognition transformed profoundly as a regathering of focus on the nature of memory and of thinking itself. His late texts theorize Emerson’s experience of senescence even as they disrupt his prior valorizations of the independent mind teeming with self-sufficient conviction. But still, these late writings have succumbed to a process of critical forgetting—either ignored by scholars or denied inclusion in Emerson’s oeuvre. Attending to a manuscript archive that reveals the extent to which Emerson collaborated with others—especially his daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson—to articulate what he considered his most important work even as his ability to do so independently waned, Hanlon measures the resonance of these late texts across the stretch of Emerson’s thinking, including his writing about Margaret Fuller and his meditations on streams of thought that verge unto those of his godson, William James. Such ventures bring us toward a self defined less by its anxiety of overinfluence than by its communality, its very connectedness with myriad others.

Democratic Disarray: Organizational Messaging Coherence and the Local Echoing Press During the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110108
Author(s):  
Eric C. Wiemer ◽  
Joshua M. Scacco ◽  
Brenda Berkelaar
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Organizational Crisis ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Timely Manner ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Des Moines ◽  
American Elections

The Iowa caucuses are the inaugural event of the American presidential nomination process. When the state Democratic Party failed to report the 2020 caucus results in a timely manner and manage the consequences, the crisis situation threatened the legitimacy of the party and the integrity of the results. This research presents an in-depth case of the Iowa Democratic Party’s public communication response regarding an event described by the Des Moines Register as “hell” and a “results catastrophe.” Specifically, we were interested in how the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the crisis event and the extent to which the party organization was successful in disseminating favorable messaging about the caucus process to the local press. Drawing on organizational crisis management and echoing press perspectives, this analysis uses network and qualitative analytic approaches to assess message development, dissemination, and ultimately adoption. A local event with national implications presents a critical case in investigating how a political party, due to its institutional role in American elections and unique organizational structure, struggled to respond to the crisis.

The Relationship of Political Party Affiliation to Wildlife Conservation Attitudes

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Czech ◽  
Rena Borkhataria
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Species Conservation ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Political Party Affiliation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Species conservation via the Endangered Species Act is highly politicized, yet few data have been gathered to illustrate the relationship of political party affiliation to species conservation perspectives. We conducted a nationwide public opinion survey and found that Democrats value species conservation more highly than do Republicans, and that Democrats are also more strongly supportive of the Endangered Species Act. Republicans place higher value on property rights than do Democrats, but members of both parties value economic growth as highly as wildlife conservation. The results imply that the Democratic propensity to value species conservation reflects a biocentric perspective that does not bode well for practical conservation efforts. Species conservation will depend upon the success of academicians and progressive political leaders in educating students and members of all parties about the fundamental conflict between economic growth and wildlife conservation.

scholarly journals Introduction (Special Edition – The Presidential Nomination Process)

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 289-291
Author(s):  
Wayne P. Steger
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Special Edition ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Democratic Country

Understanding why certain candidates get nominated is an important aspect of political scientists. This topic is a narrow one and influences a wider variety of subjects such as the political parties, general elections, and even the extent to which the United States is a democratic country. Presidential nominees matter—they become the foremost spokesperson and the personified image of the party (Miller and Gronbeck 1994), the main selectors of issues and policies for their party’s general election campaign (Petrocik 1996; Tedesco 2001), a major force in defining the ideological direction of a political party (Herrera 1995), and candidates that voters select among in the general election. This volume is devoted to presidential nominations and the 2008 nomination specifically.

After Utopia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Downward Trend ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
New Generation

After Utopia was the author's first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. The book explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward trend. It looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword examining the book's continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers.

Josephine Baker’s Routes and Roots: Mobility, Belonging, and Activism in the Atlantic World

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-32
Author(s):  
Katharina Gerund
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Transnational American Studies ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Mobility Studies ◽  
The Many

Chapter uses research paradigms from mobility studies, black diaspora studies, and transnational American studies, in order to create a nuanced picture of the many facets of Josephine Baker’s career as an artist and activist. It discusses Baker’s often neglected role as an activist for the French Resistance and in the US Civil Rights Movement, as well as her self-fashioning as a mother, head of state, and humanitarian at Les Milandes: a 15th century château where Baker established her Rainbow Tribe. The chapter considers how Baker’s changing positionalities, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in different social contexts, and experiences of displacement and exile, partially determined her political work and how she was simultaneously constructed by these discourses. Baker is cast as a “revolutionary diva” who does not simply belong on the margins of current debates around transnational affiliations and cosmopolitanisms, cultural mobilities and immobilities, and political activism in the black diaspora.

Afterword Uncertain trajectories and refigured social worlds: the image entourage and other practices of digital and social media photography

Africa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-328
Author(s):  
Corinne A. Kratz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
East West

Drawn from East, West, Central and Southern Africa, the case studies in this special issue build on several decades of important work on photography in Africa. That work has examined colonial photography and postcards, studio work from colonial times to the present, activist photography, photojournalism, and artists who work with photographic images. It has addressed issues of representation, portraiture, aesthetics, self-fashioning, identities, power and status, modernities and materiality, the roles of photographs in governance and everyday politics, and the many histories and modes of social practice around making, showing, viewing, exchanging, manipulating, reproducing, circulating and archiving photographic images. Yet these articles push such issues and topics in exciting directions by addressing new photographic circumstances emerging throughout the world, initiated through new media's technological shifts and possibilities. In Africa, this has fuelled a range of transformations over the last fifteen years or so, transformations that are still unfolding. As the articles show, digital images, mobile phone cameras and social media (also accessed via phone) constitute the potent triad that has set off these transformations.

scholarly journals Moving Birds in Hawai'i: Assisted Colonisation in a Colonised Land

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Thom Van Dooren
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Avian Species ◽  
Kanaka Maoli ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

In September 2011, a delicate cargo of 24 Nihoa Millerbirds was carefully loaded by conservationists onto a ship for a three-day voyage to Laysan Island in the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The goal of this effort was to establish a second population of this endangered species, an “insurance population” in the face of the mounting pressures of climate change and potential new biotic arrivals. But the millerbird, or ulūlu in Hawaiian, is just one of the many avian species to become the subject of this kind of “assisted colonisation.” In Hawai'i, and around the world, recent years have seen a broad range of efforts to safeguard species by finding them homes in new places. Thinking through the ulūlu project, this article explores the challenges and possibilities of assisted colonisation in this colonised land. What does it mean to move birds in the context of the long, and ongoing, history of dispossession of the Kānaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people? How are distinct but entangled process of colonisation, of unworlding, at work in the lives of both people and birds? Ultimately, this article explores how these diverse colonisations might be understood and told responsibly in an era of escalating loss and extinction.

scholarly journals Reading over McLuhan’s Shoulder

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Durham Peters
Keyword(s):  
Keynote Address ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

Background This article1 presents a reworked keynote address given at the “Many McLuhans” conference held at the University of Toronto in September 2018 on the occasion of UNESCO recognizing Marshall McLuhan’s library as part of its Memory of the World program.Analysis  The article explores McLuhan as a reader and suggests that his greatest work might have been what he read rather than what he wrote. Conclusion and implications  The library, as a genre, is one of the great media forms of modernity and antiquity and a marker of the fragility and majesty of the things that humans do with their large brains. Contexte  Cet article consiste en la révision d’un discours principal donné au colloque « Many McLuhans » tenu en septembre 2018 à l’Université de Toronto, à l’occasion de la reconnaissance de la bibliothèque de Marshall McLuhan par l’UNESCO dans le contexte de son programme Mémoire du monde.Analyse  L’article explore McLuhan en tant que lecteur et suggère que sa plus grande œuvre consiste en ce qu’il a lu plutôt qu’en ce qu’il a écrit.Conclusions et implications La bibliothèque, en tant que genre, est une des grandes formes médiatiques de l’Antiquité et de la modernité et une instance de la fragilité et de la majesté de ce que font les humains avec leurs grands cerveaux.

scholarly journals Psychology Cannot Afford to Ignore the Many Harms Caused by Microaggressions

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monnica T. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Studies ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Medical Problems ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Many ◽  
Everyday Discrimination

In an ongoing debate, Scott Lilienfeld (2019) continues to question the merits and meaning of microaggressions research. Key issues include how to define microaggressions, whether microaggressions cause measurable harm, whether microaggression education is helpful, and defining the most important next steps in the microaggressions research agenda. I discuss the importance of understanding microaggressions in context and as they relate to pathological stereotypes about groups, given that this is critical to identifying them. I summarize some of the many longitudinal studies linking psychological and medical problems to experiences of everyday discrimination. In addition, the literature indicates that victims of microaggressions experience further harms when trying to respond to offenders, but there is little research to support any specific interventions, including those advanced by Lilienfeld. I discuss the importance of believing and supporting those reporting experiences of microaggressions. I conclude that there is a need for more research examining (a) how to reduce the commission of microaggressions, (b) how to best respond to offenders in the moment in a way that mitigates harm for all persons involved, and (c) how clinicians can best help those who are suffering as a result of microaggressions as the next frontier in this important work.

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