"Empathy" is a much-discussed term in the humanities these days. While some critics value it and argue that literature desirably promotes it, other critics worry that appeals to this emotion will neglect important matters of social context. In the literature classroom, the best approach is to take time to consider how texts complicate the impulse…

The history of American imperialism, as well as China's strong presence on the contemporary global scene, should encourage American scholars of rhetoric to look beyond the nation-state and study other rhetorical traditions such as Chinese practices of argument. A debate during the Western Han dynasty over the country's economic policies…

Focuses on D.H. Lawrence and his being taken seriously as an original thinker. Notes that Lawrence is thought of primarily as a novelist. Suggests that readers should acknowledge Lawrence as an original thinker in an evolving history of the dialogical principle and in a continuing attempt to understand the dialogical and its political and ethical…

Analyzes the power of fiction to override fact in politics and in commercial advertising. (DD)

In this article, the author explores the confluence of discourses surrounding disability, identity, and institutional writing to better understand the rhetorical politics of disability. She argues that a fresh theoretical frame is needed to understand the ways in which students rhetorically manage "risky" bodily identities, particularly in…

Discusses an attempt to work both narratively and critically, recognizing that the narratives of experience first constructed (spoken and written) represent a necessary convergence of history, tradition, politics, and interpretation, which represents sites of contest and conflict. Discusses the willingness to allow expression of cultural attitudes…

Examining a range of visual images of executions, both legal (the executions of convicted murderers) and extralegal (the lynchings of innocent African Americans), in still photographs and in Hollywood films, the authors suggest that while such images may flatten and neutralize the popular debates and politics surrounding the issues, this is not…

Suggests a need to deal with class distinctions when teaching lower class students about art and poetry. (DD)

Unpacks some of the underlying assumptions of the modes of knowing that inform "ludic" and "Red" feminist pedagogies and how the pedagogy of critique is a pedagogy of emancipation, whereas the pedagogy of desire, at its most radical moment, is simply a pedagogy of liberation, specifically individual libidinal liberation. (TB)

Argues that Kenneth Burke's insights into hierarchy as a motive within language and his comedic and therapeutic heckling of the twin empires of capitalism and technology provide critical resources that are needed for the recovery of a democracy that is vital and inclusive yet still respects difference. (TB)

Analyzes the evils of political and commercial doublespeak and contends that they can be alleviated by the truth of good literature. (DD)

Analyzes how literary training in content, character, style, and world view might affect one's view of the world of politics. (DD)

Explores some queer and performative objections, challenges, and counterproposals to the identity-based pedagogies still dominating composition studies and closely related fields, bringing to the foreground pedagogies that take the instability of identity as a starting point and move toward even greater deconstruction. Proposes a tentative…

Aspects of the language in the Watergate tapes are examined. (JH)