On this week’s episode, our guests speak with us about how two distinct locations – featuring two billboards – in the city of Pittsburgh played remarkable roles in social movements and controversies over urban spaces. In our first conversation, we speak with Derek Handley (recent Carnegie Mellon Rhetoric PhD. graduate and soon-to-be faculty at Lehigh University) about his study of “Freedom Corner” in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and how it functioned as a location and a resource for arguments against urban renewal practices in that neighborhood. Then, we talk to Liana Maneese, a social practice artist and entrepreneur with The Good Peoples Group, about a recent controversy in the neighborhood of East Liberty over a billboard whose text read: “There are black people in the future.”

Through these conversations, we explore how contestations over places play out in urban communities, as well as the linkages between African American social movements, language, and the ownership of space.

Cover image: The original billboard located at Freedom Corner, circa 1960 (Image source), and Alisha Wormsley's "There will be black people in the future" installment at "The Last Billboard."

Works & Concepts Cited in this Episode:

Endres, D., & Senda-Cook, S. (2011). Location matters: The rhetoric of place in protest. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 97(3), 257-282.

https://nca.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00335630.2011.585167

Handley, Derek G. (forthcoming). “The line drawn”: Freedom corner and rhetorics of place in Pittsburgh, 1960s-2000s. Rhetoric Review.

Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture, in which she states “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence”:

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html

Whitaker, Mark. (2018). Smoketown: The untold story of the other great black renaissance. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Smoketown/Mark-Whitaker/9781501122392

Wilson, Kirt. (2002). The reconstruction desegregation debate: The politics of equality and the rhetoric of place. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Alisha B. Wormsley’s “There Are Black People in the Future” Project:

http://www.alishabwormsley.com/there-are-black-people-in-the-future/

Young, Vershawn A. (2007). Your average nigga: Performing race, literacy, and masculinity. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

Check out Liana Maneese’s company The Good Peoples Group here: http://thegoodpeoplesgroup.com/

Also, check out some of the details about her Adopting Identity project here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/adopting-identity-lies-luck-and-legitimacy#/

It’s a real scorcher of an episode this week as Calvin and Alex sit down with re:verb web editor and Carnegie Mellon PhD candidate Ana Cooke to discuss her research on the arguments taking place within Wikipedia articles about global warming. We talk about why Wikipedia is an important space for public knowledge-curation, how certain kinds of language can color our perceptions of the certainty surrounding scientific facts, and how Wikipedia editors found a working solution to manage the ways both the scientific consensus and dissenting opinions on global warming are represented online. We also get down into the trenches of online polemics with Wikipedia editor and CMU Rhetoric alumnus Daniel Dickson-Laprade, who gives us a first-hand look at how arguments on Wikipedia talk pages play out, tells us how he successfully argued for the deletion of a scientifically faulty Wikipedia article, and reminds a certain popular author that just because you wrote Jurassic Park, it doesn’t mean you get to dictate how science works.

Cover Photo: Former Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe brings a snowball onto the U.S. Senate floor as “evidence” that global warming isn’t real. (image source)

Sources and Concepts Cited in this Episode

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. (on the concept of “dialogism”)

Michael Crichton’s “Aliens Cause Global Warming” speech (in which he coins the spurious term “consensus science”):

https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf

Ceccarelli, L. (2011). “Manufactured scientific controversy: Science, rhetoric, and public debate.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 14(2), 195-228.

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) on Climate Change:

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm

Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (2013). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. (2003). The language of evaluation (Vol. 2). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (on the concepts of “dialogic expansion” and “dialogic contraction”)

McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66(1), 1-16.

Oreskes, N., & Conway, E.M. (2010). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. London, UK: Bloomsbury.

Pew Research Center. (14 Jan. 2016). “Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages.” Retrieved from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/14/wikipedia-at-15/

Safran, N. (20 Mar. 2012). “Wikipedia in the SERPs: Appears on page 1 for 60% of informational, 34% transactional queries.” Conductor. Retrieved from: https://www.conductor.com/blog/2012/03/wikipedia-in-the-serps-appears-on-page-1-for-60-of-informational-34-transactional-queries/

Xia, R. (20 Sep. 2016). “College students take to Wikipedia to rewrite the wrongs of internet science.” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-wikipedia-science-classes-adv-snap-story.html

Wikipedia page on “Global warming”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Wikipedia page on “Global warming controversy”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

Wikipedia page on the spurious “Oregon Petition” (famously “signed” by “Dr. Geri Halliwell,” a.k.a. “Ginger Spice” of the Spice Girls):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

In this episode, we explore some dimensions of the concept of memory through conversations with two people whose work deals directly with how we remember people, places, time periods, and events. Audrey Strohm hops on the mic with Alex to talk with Taylor Rugg, an M.A. student in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon, who has authored both academic and creative work on how people remember traumatic events. We specifically discuss the ways that trauma is experienced by members of the military, and how this can sometimes be at odds with how the public perceives and remembers their trauma, after which Taylor delivers a live reading of a lyric essay she wrote about her own personal trauma. Alex and Ryan also speak with Emily Ruby - a curator at the Heinz History Center museum in Pittsburgh, PA - about her work collecting and preserving the memories and stories of people in the Pittsburgh community.

*Trigger warning* This episode contains brief descriptions of traumatic events such as torture and the death of family members.

Works and concepts cited in this episode:

Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war: When is life grievable? Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books.

Delillo, D. (2007). Falling man. New York, NY: Scribner.

Fair, E. (2007, Feb. 9). An Iraq interregator’s nightmare. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html

Fair, E. (2014, Dec. 9). I can’t be forgiven for Abu Ghraib. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/opinion/the-torture-report-reminds-us-of-what-america-was.html

Fair, E. (2016). Consequence: A memoir. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co.

Phillips, K. (2010). The failure of memory: Reflections on rhetoric and public remembrance. Western Journal of Communication, 74(2), 208-223.

Plato. (1992). Theaetetus. (M. J. Levett, Rev., Myles F. Burnyet, Trans., B. Williams, Ed.). Indianapolis: Hackett.

Rugg, T. (2017). As a star moves among stars in the night’s darkening. The Journal, 41(4). http://thejournalmag.org/archives/12542

Donald Trump stating that torture “absolutely” works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUtAUu_3Yks

In part two of our series on the politics of security, Calvin and Alex analyze two recent “artifacts” of national security discourse – General John Kelly’s October 2017 press conference addressing why the U.S. has troops in Niger (and elsewhere), and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Office’s January 2017 report on Russian “activities and intentions” in U.S. elections. The ensuing conversation explores how national security figures establish an authoritative, dominating narrative and close off the possibility of dissent through their language, and ends with a meditation on a radically different way of thinking about “security.” Plus, Ryan Mitchell solicits people’s associations with the term “national security” in a new edition of re:verberations.

Works and concepts mentioned in this episode:

Chilton, P. A. (1996). Security metaphors: Cold war discourse from containment to common house (Vol. 2). Peter Lang Pub Incorporated.

Chilton, P. A. (1996). The meaning of security. In R. Hariman (Ed), Post-realism: The rhetorical turn in international relations, 193-216. East, Lansing, MI: MSU Press.

The DNI report on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”:

Full report: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

John Kelly’s press conference:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BxsCyS6Y8U (question on Niger comes @ 11:53)

Further reading on security discourse, particularly the "container" metaphor:

Brown, W. (2017). Walled states, waning sovereignty. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Campbell, D. (1992). Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press.

Prior to World War II, American political leaders tended to talk about national security by framing the U.S. as a “sanctuary” for democratic ideals that needed to be protected. After the war, this dominant framing shifted to focus on the U.S. as a “powerhouse” for democracy, in which the nation’s responsibility was to go on the offensive and spread American ideals throughout the world. In this week’s episode, Calvin and Alex speak with Kent State English Professor Patricia Dunmire about the ways that U.S. politicians and others in government have made arguments about national security throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – what “security” means, who should have it, and what actions are deemed necessary to “maintain” and “promote” that security in the future.

We also introduce a new segment called "re:verbrations," in which Ryan Mitchell speaks with guests at re:verb's launch party to get their thoughts on the power of language in society and politics.

Cover Image: Commemorative "challenge coin" bearing the US National Security Agency (NSA) slogan: "Defending our nation, securing the future." (image source)

Publications by Dr. Patricia Dunmire on national security and the rhetoric of futurity:

Dunmire, P. L. (2005). Preempting the future: rhetoric and ideology of the future in political discourse. Discourse & Society, 16(4), 481-513.

Dunmire, P. L. (2010). Knowing and controlling the future: A review of futurology. Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, 32(3), 240-263.

Dunmire, P.L. (2011). Projecting the future through political discourse: The case of the Bush doctrine. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Dunmire, P. L. (2015). Beyond space and time: Temporal and geographical configurations in US national security discourse. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(3), 297-312.

Other works & concepts mentioned in this episode:

Fairclough, N. (2003). Representations of social events [chapter mentioning “space-time”]. Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London/New York: Routledge, 134-155.

John Kelly’s response to questioning about US troops in Niger:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/us/politics/statement-kelly-gold-star.html

George Kennan’s “long telegram”

               Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan#The_%22Long_Telegram%22

               Document: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

Luce, H. (1999/1941). The American century. Diplomatic History, 23(2), 159-171.

NSC Resolution 68

               Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68

Document: https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf

Teleology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

Further Reading:

Engels, J., & Saas, W. O. (2013). On acquiescence and ends-less war: An inquiry into the new war rhetoric.

Goode, L. & Godhe, M. (2017). Beyond capitalist realism – why we need critical future studies. Culture Unbound, 9, 1-22.

On the Nov. 2017 special election results: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/5-takeaways-election-virginia-governor-trump/index.html

We introduce the re:verb podcast, its hosts (Calvin Pollak and Alex Helberg), and we explain the project's genealogy as a descendant of The Silver Tongue, a rhetorical criticism blog founded by Doug Cloud, Hilary Franklin, Alexis Teagarden and Matt Zebrowski in 2010. We talk to Silver Tongue co-founder Doug Cloud -- now an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado State University -- about rhetoric, public engagement, and the benefits of topical eclecticism in humanities research. Then, co-hosts Calvin and Alex have a free-wheeling conversation with re:verb Web Editor Ana Cooke and PR & Social Media Editor Ryan Mitchell about the humanities and STEM, enacting the kinds of lenses/approaches we hope to bring to public issues on the show going forward.

Works and concepts cited in this episode:
Carr, Nicholas. The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. WW Norton & Company, 2011.
Cloud, Doug. "The Social Consequences of Dissociation: Lessons from the Same-Sex Marriage Debate." Argumentation and Advocacy, vol. 50, no. 3, 2014, pp. 157.
Cloud, Doug. "Rewriting a Discursive Practice: Atheist Adaptation of Coming Out Discourse." Written Communication, vol. 34, no. 2, 2017, pp. 165-188.
Davisson, Amber. "Beyond the borders of red and blue states: Google Maps as a site of rhetorical invention in the 2008 presidential election." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 14.1 (2011): 101-123.
Hart, Roderick P. "An unquiet desperation: Rhetorical aspects of “popular” atheism in the United States." Quarterly Journal of Speech 64.1 (1978): 33-46.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/business/nobel-economics-richard-thaler.html
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone, 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes