As we all know, the process of getting an essay into print is lengthy. Scholars address issues of the day, but who knows where events may have moved by the time the work makes it into print? The essays in this issue were not originally imagined as a coordinated set. But now that they are lined up together, certain themes emerge that speak to current concerns. Health care, for example, is still in the spotlight. Looking back on the inception of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Jeffrey St. Onge uncovers the neoliberal logic driving Obama’s arguments for the ACA. St. Onge’s adept analysis not only informs us about the recent past but will help to keep our attention on the forms of “common sense” advanced in ongoing debates on this vital issue. Craig Rood in his essay on “rhetorical closure”—tactics used to close off argument—works with speeches and writings of the famous mid-century libertarian Ayn Rand as the chief example. But his findings resonate powerfully with styles of argumentation in use by a range of speakers since the inauguration of the 45th president.
In these strange rhetorical times, how could or would one imagine talking (back) to a president? Bryan Blankfield’s refreshing archival study of talking dogs in FDR’s final presidential election brings to light a striking historical use of the figure prosopopoeia—speaking in the voice of another. It would seem these days that we need all the rhetorical resources available to make sense of and participate in a strange new world of public discourse. In the fourth essay in this issue Katy Rothfelder and Davi Johnson Thornton focus on the fascinating memoir of a successful science journalist who reveals himself to be a sufferer of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Rothfelder and Thornton’s thoughtful analysis probes the status of OCD as the acceptable, or even fashionable, mental illness of our day. Mental illnesses of various sorts are newly on our public radar screens. This fine work draws attention to the rhetorical resources at hand for evaluating the barrage of claims about and (possible) demonstrations of mental illness coming at us almost daily.
Finally, we note that Jeremy Engels, Book Review Editor, has been hard at work bringing in reviews of a stimulating range of new books by and of interest to rhetoric scholars.
2017 Kneupper Award Announced
The Charles Kneupper Award is given annually to recognize the essay published in the previous year’s volume of Rhetoric Society Quarterly (RSQ) that made the most significant contribution to scholarship in rhetoric. The award is named in honor of Charles Kneupper (1949–1989) to honor his many contributions to the Rhetoric Society of America’s scholarly mission. The members of the 2017 Kneupper Award committee were: John Ackerman, Ekaterina Haskins (chair), and Judy Segal. They reported that there were a number of RSQ essays published in 2016 that made significant contributions to the study of rhetoric. Given the strength of the material, they decided to award a winner and to recognize another essay with an honorable mention. Rhetoric Society Quarterly is pleased to present these Kneupper Awards:
Winner: Heather Lee Branstetter, “‘A Mining Town Needs Brothels’: Gossip and the Rhetoric of Sex Work in a Wild West Mining Community.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (2016): 381–409.
This essay stood out for a number of reasons. Its focus on gossip advances our theoretical and critical understanding of vernacular rhetoric. The author offers an impressive archive—and new oral histories—in a place (Wallace, Idaho) to which she had unusual access because of her roots in the community. The author’s exploration points us “toward a heuristic for small talk as an interdependent cultural rhetoric, blurring boundaries and dichotomies, where vernacular and official, respectable and illicit lines of argument are related” (384). The essay is not only theoretically transformative and thoroughly researched but also self-reflective about its research methodologies. Last but not least, it weaves a riveting historical narrative of how residents of Wallace negotiated their relationship to sex work, thereby demonstrating that theoretical sophistication and vivid storytelling can go hand in hand.
Honorable Mention: Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse: Citizenship and Maternity Tourism in Hong Kong.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (2016): 410–33.
Yam argues that “while rhetorical studies has linked citizenship with reason and examined it in terms of deliberation, civic engagement, and participatory democracy …, it has not sufficiently interrogated its affective and emotional dimensions” (411). Yam looks at Internet postings that reveal the animus of Hong Kong citizens toward Mainland Chinese immigrants, and she teases out, in particular, two kinds of alienizing discourse that function as an “emotional pedagogy” of citizenship. The essay is well grounded in its archive, and in rhetorical theory, and makes a strong contribution to rhetorical studies: a contribution especially important at this moment in US history, when “political emotion” is called on to distinguish (in Yam’s terms) the “threatened” from the “threatening.”