Keeping with: The Civic Work of Heritage Claims

Abstract

This article proposes keeping with as a rhetorical practice used by communities to maintain cultural heritages in unfamiliar or unwelcoming settings. Grounded in interviews from participatory research with urban Appalachian advocates in Cincinnati, Ohio, the article provides a view of cultural rhetorics in action at points of community crisis. The article argues that keeping with is a rhetorical migration practice that helps account for a range of rhetorical practices rhetors use to maintain cultural connections to homes and heritages.

Notes

1. I am grateful to RR reviewers Kyle Vealey and Ashley Holmes for their encouraging and insightful feedback. Special thanks to research participants at the UACC. Thanks also to Leigh Gruwell and Travis Rountree for reading earlier drafts of the manuscript, and to W. Michele Simmons, James E. Porter, and Heidi McKee for guidance on designing and implementing the research for this project.

2. This project received an exempt certification from Miami University’s IRB. Exempt Research Certification Number: 01407e.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan L. Bradshaw

Dr. Jonathan L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. His work on heritage claims and rhetorical circulation studies has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, enculturation: a journal of rhetoric, writing, and culture, and Appalachian Journal. His email is [email protected]