Communication
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Item Reckoning with Freedom: Legacies of Exclusion, Dehumanization, and Black Resistance in the Rhetoric of the Freedmen's Bureau(2017) Lu, Jessica H.; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Charged with facilitating the transition of former slaves from bondage to freedom, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known colloquially as the Freedmen’s Bureau) played a crucial role in shaping the experiences of black and African Americans in the years following the Civil War. Many historians have explored the agency’s administrative policies and assessed its pragmatic effectiveness within the social, political, and economic milieu of the emancipation era. However, scholars have not adequately grappled with the lasting implications of its arguments and professed efforts to support freedmen. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to analyze and unpack the rhetorical textures of the Bureau’s early discourse and, in particular, its negotiation of freedom as an exclusionary, rather than inclusionary, idea. By closely examining a wealth of archival documents— including letters, memos, circular announcements, receipts, congressional proceedings, and newspaper articles—I interrogate how the Bureau extended antebellum freedom legacies to not merely explain but police the boundaries of American belonging and black inclusion. Ultimately, I contend that arguments by and about the Bureau contributed significantly to the reconstruction of a post-bellum racial order that affirmed the racist underpinnings of the social contract, further contributed to the dehumanization of former slaves, and prompted black people to resist the ongoing assault on their freedom. This project thus provides a compelling case study that underscores how rhetorical analysis can help us better understand the ways in which seemingly progressive ideas can be used to justify exercises of power and domination. Additionally, this interpretation of the Bureau’s primary role as a mechanism of supervision, rather than support, sheds light on the history of unjust practices that persist today in American race relations. Finally, this study affirms how black people have persevered in inventive and innovative ways to disrupt the pervasive discourse that seeks to destroy them.Item INVENTING AND DELIVERING THE WOMAN CITIZEN: SUSAN B. ANTHONY’S EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING AS A PERFORMANCE OF CITIZENSHIP IN SERVICE OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE(2017) Styer, Meridith Irene; Maddux, Kristy; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Susan B. Anthony became the face of the woman suffrage movement as she traveled across the country speaking and organizing. Anthony began speaking extemporaneously in 1857 and embraced the conversational and immediate performance that remained her dominant practice through her public career. This project examines how Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of citizenship in service of her arguments for women’s rights and woman suffrage during three periods of the nineteenth century. My research suggests both theoretical and methodological challenges of studying nineteenth-century extemporaneous rhetoric. I also discuss the problems associated with extemporaneous speaking in a movement for social change and engage the theoretical bounds of how citizenship can be performed rhetorically when liberal and republican citizenship status are denied based on an individual’s identity. The first period includes Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking within the social and religious upheaval of the Burned-over District of Upstate New York before and during the Civil War (1849-1864). My analysis suggests that Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking used a millennial and prophetic invention and delivery that derived from what I call the genre of Burned-over District rhetorical culture. Drawing upon this tradition allowed Anthony to speak persuasively to Burned-over District audiences but rendered her message inaccessible to the policy makers in Albany and Washington D.C. The second case examines Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking during Reconstruction (1865-1874). Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of citizenship that both constituted women as equal citizens and provided the impetus for national-level politicians and state legislatures to codify the cultural assumptions of male-gendered citizenship into policy language that excluded women from democratic citizenship rights. The third case examines how Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of “character citizenship” during the final years of her professional career in the context of the Gilded Age (1875-1906). Character citizenship manifested in that era as a way to define who was or could be a good American through the lens of gendered, middle-class, white, Protestant values. Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned to frame her as a laudable woman of character who was a respectable authority on the topic of woman suffrage.Item Symbolic Power as a Dimension of Public Life(1991-11) Klumpp, James F.Argues for a reconceptualization of citizenship built around participation in the symbolic life of a political community. Ties revisions in political theory into revisions in rhetorical theory.