Included in Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Li... more Included in Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Literature (forthcoming, Routledge May 2016)
During an eleven-month period in 1958 and 1959, photographer Bruce Davidson took well over 100 ph... more During an eleven-month period in 1958 and 1959, photographer Bruce Davidson took well over 100 photographs of the Jokers, a teenage gang, in Brooklyn. I argue that the Brooklyn Gang photographs, which depict teenage boys and girls moving through their everyday lives, provide the conditions of possibility for the public gaze to reconsider fears and anxieties about juvenile delinquency. I consider the effects of Davidson’s conscious move away from social documentary photography, which is concerned with producing politically motivated social feelings, albeit problematically, into a social-landscape framework that, at least for Davidson, focused on the reproduction of his individual feelings. The photos are a product of Davidson’s particular, interiorized aesthetic, yet were also born of his public interest in these so-called juvenile delinquents. Davidson may not have been interested in making a distinct political statement or social commentary on youth gangs or juvenile delinquency, but his collection still provides an opportunity for public reflection because Davidson’s photographs portray the harsh realities of the gang members’ everyday lives. Through a close reading of three photographs from the collection, I contend that although recent scholarship has focused on the collection’s ability to contest whiteness and white masculinity the photographs also provide the opportunity for the public spectator to reconsider dominant notions about gender, childhood, and juvenile delinquency through the lived realities of class.
In this paper, I am concerned with how mid-nineteenth-century children’s literature in the United... more In this paper, I am concerned with how mid-nineteenth-century children’s literature in the United States rhetorically constructed girlhood as a means for developing, teaching, and cementing dominant ideas regarding the formation of a healthy nation through the ideals of the republican family. In particular, I analyze Rebecca Sophia Clarke’s children’s book series Little Prudy, which was published between 1864 and 1868 under the pen name Sophie May. I argue that this series’ treatment of girlhood demonstrates one of the mechanisms through which the shift in the representation of dominant girlhood in this period from an overtly moralistic innocence to an unquestionably natural innocence occurred. I contend that this series participates in this representational shift by connecting a familiar moralistic and didactic narrative structure with the supposedly natural mischievous behavior of young children. That is, innocence is no longer demonstrated through a girl’s innate angelic behavior, but through her ability to learn those preferred behaviors and, eventually, work toward crafting those behaviors in others. In particular, Clarke deploys a narrative structure that is typical of children’s literature in the period and relies primarily on didactic lessons, or modeling. These lessons are contrived almost entirely through the interrelated tropes of mischief and punishment—the girls in the series misbehave and are then reprimanded accordingly. This back and forth between mischievous and corrected behavior not only delineates the behaviors “appropriate” to girlhood but also demonstrates how girls are meant to grow into the moral and emotional caregivers of the republican family, thus perpetuating its values across generations. Additionally, I consider how these tropes of mischief and punishment are complicated by class, race, immigration status, and religion in ways that work to construct the ideal girl as a white, middle-class, Protestant New Englander. Those who do not or cannot learn to conform to these boundaries of girlhood are stigmatized and denied access to the category of the ideal girl—a denial which ultimately works to limit who and what can matter for the construction of the republican family and, thus, the nation.
In this paper I consider how American Girl’s historical fiction has prompted girls to think about... more In this paper I consider how American Girl’s historical fiction has prompted girls to think about and interact with history. In August 2014, American Girl unveiled the BeForever line—a complete overhaul of the company’s original Historical Characters Collection. The BeForever line includes a new set of “Journey” books, a time-traveling, choose-your-own-adventure series, which allows girls to travel back in time to meet and interact with the historical characters and to prompt the reader to make her own choices about how to navigate through the past. By allowing girls to read themselves into history instead of reading about girls in the past, the Journey books prompt girls to exert their own agency and decisionmaking skills in historical situations rather than simply providing examples of “historical” girls exerting agency in the past. I argue that these two conceptions of girls’ agency are influenced by different feminisms—a branch of second-wave women’s history often referred to as “her-story,” which sought to reveal women as important historical actors, and a postfeminist, corporate form of girl power, which promotes girls’ inherent ability to exert power and make choices. I am interested in understanding how tensions between different forms of feminism and different feminist conceptions of agency come together to present a metaphor for new conceptualizations of present-day feminist girlhood. Through an analysis of the Samantha Parkington doll’s original and revamped collections I discuss how girls’ agency is rhetorically constructed in popular culture that is directed exclusively to young girls.
This paper investigates the ways in which an ideal girl subject is constructed through a rhetoric... more This paper investigates the ways in which an ideal girl subject is constructed through a rhetoric of empowered self-care in the American Girl self-help/advice books The Care and Keeping of You 1: The Body Book for Younger Girls and The Care and Keeping of You 2: The Body Book for Older Girls, which are directed at girls aged eight to ten and ten to thirteen, respectively. This paper addresses the newest editions published in 2013, which were updated with input from a medical consultant. The books are marketed to young girls as a source of information about the “confusing and embarrassing” process of growing up in order to empower them and nurture their self-esteem during this period of bodily change (Schaefer and Natterson, 2013, p. 4). In this paper, I claim that these books employ a hegemonic rhetoric of empowered self-care in order to both rhetorically construct a normative model of girlhood (which is specifically classed, raced, gendered, and sexualized) and to discipline girls’ bodies and selves toward that norm. I argue that despite the genuine desire to take on the call from feminist discourses (particularly from the 1990s) for empowerment, the rhetoric of empowered self-care instead uses those principles to reinscribe patriarchal control.
This paper combines approaches from rhetorical studies and visual culture to examine the processe... more This paper combines approaches from rhetorical studies and visual culture to examine the processes of public memory at play in the stories or “persona” of American Girl’s Revolutionary War-era doll, Felicity Merriman. When Pleasant Rowland created the Historical Character collection in 1986, her main goals were to provide young girls with “appropriate” role models and to educate them about important moments in American history, through the eyes of girls their own age. As a nine-year-old, white, merchant-class girl set in colonial Williamsburg in 1774 at the cusp of the Revolutionary War, Felicity’s persona provides an important moment of insight into rhetorical constructions of appropriateness in children's education and the rhetorical visualization of slavery and racism in popular culture. I posit that, in the historical moment of the emergence of American Girl, the discourses of childhood innocence and liberal multiculturalism and a concern for historical accuracy intersected to produce a process of multicultural oblivion within children's education. I define multicultural oblivion as a process of uncritical remembering and forgetting—a way to simultaneously visualize and erase difficult histories from public memory. In particular, Felicity's persona focuses on themes of independence and conflicted loyalties, without considering the contradiction of the presence of slavery in that period. Specifically, this paper examines several American Girl products related to Felicity Merriman to show how slavery and racism is made both visible and invisible—remembered so that it can be forgotten.
This paper uses a critical, decolonial rhetorical perspective to analyze the historical fiction s... more This paper uses a critical, decolonial rhetorical perspective to analyze the historical fiction series of two American Girl Historical Character dolls—Josefina and Kaya, the Hispanic/New Mexican and Native American dolls in the collection. The dolls are intended to teach young girls about United States history through historical fiction. Each doll’s “persona” is constructed mainly through a set of six books, which situates it in a particular historical moment and geographical location. Set prior to the United States’ expansion into the west, Josefina and Kaya are well-suited for a decolonial analysis since they represent peoples who would eventually be colonized by the United States. I argue that the power matrix of coloniality—which shapes intersectional subjectivity through racialization—is rhetorically woven through the personas of Josefina and Kaya and works to naturalize present-day United States settler colonialism. I identify and analyze two rhetorical structures of coloniality that are present in Josefina’s and Kaya’s books. First, the passive voice of history, which reproduces the power structures of coloniality through euphemisms that deny or ignore responsibility for historical actions. Secondly, the colonizer’s gaze on girls of color, which focuses girls and women of color in the white consumer’s gaze and then renders invisible and naturalizes the imbrication of sexual violence and colonialism. The purpose of this paper is to connect rhetorical studies to the project of decolonization by identifying and dismantling Western, colonial forms of power, which rhetorically create and devalue the racial Other.
International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management, Oct 2013
This paper critically reviews the literature and best practices to develop and apply a qualitativ... more This paper critically reviews the literature and best practices to develop and apply a qualitative model for managing terrorism threats. The research shows how risk is too complicated to be reduced to a binary system of safe and unsafe attributes. The researchers show how uncertainty can be reduced through the application of resources, by using a protection profile. The second component in the model is a damage profile, which shows how, as security increases, the additional value of more security decreases. When this relationship is adjusted for the costs of security (reflected in the protection profile), the result is an equilibrium showing an economically-rationalized level of security but generally short of complete safety. The model is then simulated to show how the equilibrium is shifted by such factors as an increase in vulnerability or consequences, a more
effective adversary, changed costs and advances in technology. Although an equilibrium model with known functions is useful, a number of real-world limitations prevent straightforward application of the model to calculate a security equilibrium. These limitations include discontinuous risks and distributed decision-making authority. Finally, the model is analyzed to estimate the likely effects of litigation and security mandates on
counter-terrorism.
"This thesis argues that we should adopt a theory of social movement that is
based in rhetorical... more "This thesis argues that we should adopt a theory of social movement that is
based in rhetorical principles—one that accepts social movement as changes to a set of meanings, or ideology. Instead of focusing primarily or exclusively on the resources and leadership of organizations, this thesis argues that we should study the discourse of counterpublics—the entities involved in social movement activities. By critiquing and expanding upon DeLuca’s work on image events, this thesis argues that we should examine the entire process that counterpublic discourse goes through—production, dissemination, and circulation—from a multimodal perspective. This thesis identifies Occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks as counterpublics and examines each discourse from three perspectives—traditional, image event, and multimodal—in order to demonstrate the strengths of a multimodal theoretical framework."
Included in Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Li... more Included in Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Literature (forthcoming, Routledge May 2016)
During an eleven-month period in 1958 and 1959, photographer Bruce Davidson took well over 100 ph... more During an eleven-month period in 1958 and 1959, photographer Bruce Davidson took well over 100 photographs of the Jokers, a teenage gang, in Brooklyn. I argue that the Brooklyn Gang photographs, which depict teenage boys and girls moving through their everyday lives, provide the conditions of possibility for the public gaze to reconsider fears and anxieties about juvenile delinquency. I consider the effects of Davidson’s conscious move away from social documentary photography, which is concerned with producing politically motivated social feelings, albeit problematically, into a social-landscape framework that, at least for Davidson, focused on the reproduction of his individual feelings. The photos are a product of Davidson’s particular, interiorized aesthetic, yet were also born of his public interest in these so-called juvenile delinquents. Davidson may not have been interested in making a distinct political statement or social commentary on youth gangs or juvenile delinquency, but his collection still provides an opportunity for public reflection because Davidson’s photographs portray the harsh realities of the gang members’ everyday lives. Through a close reading of three photographs from the collection, I contend that although recent scholarship has focused on the collection’s ability to contest whiteness and white masculinity the photographs also provide the opportunity for the public spectator to reconsider dominant notions about gender, childhood, and juvenile delinquency through the lived realities of class.
In this paper, I am concerned with how mid-nineteenth-century children’s literature in the United... more In this paper, I am concerned with how mid-nineteenth-century children’s literature in the United States rhetorically constructed girlhood as a means for developing, teaching, and cementing dominant ideas regarding the formation of a healthy nation through the ideals of the republican family. In particular, I analyze Rebecca Sophia Clarke’s children’s book series Little Prudy, which was published between 1864 and 1868 under the pen name Sophie May. I argue that this series’ treatment of girlhood demonstrates one of the mechanisms through which the shift in the representation of dominant girlhood in this period from an overtly moralistic innocence to an unquestionably natural innocence occurred. I contend that this series participates in this representational shift by connecting a familiar moralistic and didactic narrative structure with the supposedly natural mischievous behavior of young children. That is, innocence is no longer demonstrated through a girl’s innate angelic behavior, but through her ability to learn those preferred behaviors and, eventually, work toward crafting those behaviors in others. In particular, Clarke deploys a narrative structure that is typical of children’s literature in the period and relies primarily on didactic lessons, or modeling. These lessons are contrived almost entirely through the interrelated tropes of mischief and punishment—the girls in the series misbehave and are then reprimanded accordingly. This back and forth between mischievous and corrected behavior not only delineates the behaviors “appropriate” to girlhood but also demonstrates how girls are meant to grow into the moral and emotional caregivers of the republican family, thus perpetuating its values across generations. Additionally, I consider how these tropes of mischief and punishment are complicated by class, race, immigration status, and religion in ways that work to construct the ideal girl as a white, middle-class, Protestant New Englander. Those who do not or cannot learn to conform to these boundaries of girlhood are stigmatized and denied access to the category of the ideal girl—a denial which ultimately works to limit who and what can matter for the construction of the republican family and, thus, the nation.
In this paper I consider how American Girl’s historical fiction has prompted girls to think about... more In this paper I consider how American Girl’s historical fiction has prompted girls to think about and interact with history. In August 2014, American Girl unveiled the BeForever line—a complete overhaul of the company’s original Historical Characters Collection. The BeForever line includes a new set of “Journey” books, a time-traveling, choose-your-own-adventure series, which allows girls to travel back in time to meet and interact with the historical characters and to prompt the reader to make her own choices about how to navigate through the past. By allowing girls to read themselves into history instead of reading about girls in the past, the Journey books prompt girls to exert their own agency and decisionmaking skills in historical situations rather than simply providing examples of “historical” girls exerting agency in the past. I argue that these two conceptions of girls’ agency are influenced by different feminisms—a branch of second-wave women’s history often referred to as “her-story,” which sought to reveal women as important historical actors, and a postfeminist, corporate form of girl power, which promotes girls’ inherent ability to exert power and make choices. I am interested in understanding how tensions between different forms of feminism and different feminist conceptions of agency come together to present a metaphor for new conceptualizations of present-day feminist girlhood. Through an analysis of the Samantha Parkington doll’s original and revamped collections I discuss how girls’ agency is rhetorically constructed in popular culture that is directed exclusively to young girls.
This paper investigates the ways in which an ideal girl subject is constructed through a rhetoric... more This paper investigates the ways in which an ideal girl subject is constructed through a rhetoric of empowered self-care in the American Girl self-help/advice books The Care and Keeping of You 1: The Body Book for Younger Girls and The Care and Keeping of You 2: The Body Book for Older Girls, which are directed at girls aged eight to ten and ten to thirteen, respectively. This paper addresses the newest editions published in 2013, which were updated with input from a medical consultant. The books are marketed to young girls as a source of information about the “confusing and embarrassing” process of growing up in order to empower them and nurture their self-esteem during this period of bodily change (Schaefer and Natterson, 2013, p. 4). In this paper, I claim that these books employ a hegemonic rhetoric of empowered self-care in order to both rhetorically construct a normative model of girlhood (which is specifically classed, raced, gendered, and sexualized) and to discipline girls’ bodies and selves toward that norm. I argue that despite the genuine desire to take on the call from feminist discourses (particularly from the 1990s) for empowerment, the rhetoric of empowered self-care instead uses those principles to reinscribe patriarchal control.
This paper combines approaches from rhetorical studies and visual culture to examine the processe... more This paper combines approaches from rhetorical studies and visual culture to examine the processes of public memory at play in the stories or “persona” of American Girl’s Revolutionary War-era doll, Felicity Merriman. When Pleasant Rowland created the Historical Character collection in 1986, her main goals were to provide young girls with “appropriate” role models and to educate them about important moments in American history, through the eyes of girls their own age. As a nine-year-old, white, merchant-class girl set in colonial Williamsburg in 1774 at the cusp of the Revolutionary War, Felicity’s persona provides an important moment of insight into rhetorical constructions of appropriateness in children's education and the rhetorical visualization of slavery and racism in popular culture. I posit that, in the historical moment of the emergence of American Girl, the discourses of childhood innocence and liberal multiculturalism and a concern for historical accuracy intersected to produce a process of multicultural oblivion within children's education. I define multicultural oblivion as a process of uncritical remembering and forgetting—a way to simultaneously visualize and erase difficult histories from public memory. In particular, Felicity's persona focuses on themes of independence and conflicted loyalties, without considering the contradiction of the presence of slavery in that period. Specifically, this paper examines several American Girl products related to Felicity Merriman to show how slavery and racism is made both visible and invisible—remembered so that it can be forgotten.
This paper uses a critical, decolonial rhetorical perspective to analyze the historical fiction s... more This paper uses a critical, decolonial rhetorical perspective to analyze the historical fiction series of two American Girl Historical Character dolls—Josefina and Kaya, the Hispanic/New Mexican and Native American dolls in the collection. The dolls are intended to teach young girls about United States history through historical fiction. Each doll’s “persona” is constructed mainly through a set of six books, which situates it in a particular historical moment and geographical location. Set prior to the United States’ expansion into the west, Josefina and Kaya are well-suited for a decolonial analysis since they represent peoples who would eventually be colonized by the United States. I argue that the power matrix of coloniality—which shapes intersectional subjectivity through racialization—is rhetorically woven through the personas of Josefina and Kaya and works to naturalize present-day United States settler colonialism. I identify and analyze two rhetorical structures of coloniality that are present in Josefina’s and Kaya’s books. First, the passive voice of history, which reproduces the power structures of coloniality through euphemisms that deny or ignore responsibility for historical actions. Secondly, the colonizer’s gaze on girls of color, which focuses girls and women of color in the white consumer’s gaze and then renders invisible and naturalizes the imbrication of sexual violence and colonialism. The purpose of this paper is to connect rhetorical studies to the project of decolonization by identifying and dismantling Western, colonial forms of power, which rhetorically create and devalue the racial Other.
International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management, Oct 2013
This paper critically reviews the literature and best practices to develop and apply a qualitativ... more This paper critically reviews the literature and best practices to develop and apply a qualitative model for managing terrorism threats. The research shows how risk is too complicated to be reduced to a binary system of safe and unsafe attributes. The researchers show how uncertainty can be reduced through the application of resources, by using a protection profile. The second component in the model is a damage profile, which shows how, as security increases, the additional value of more security decreases. When this relationship is adjusted for the costs of security (reflected in the protection profile), the result is an equilibrium showing an economically-rationalized level of security but generally short of complete safety. The model is then simulated to show how the equilibrium is shifted by such factors as an increase in vulnerability or consequences, a more
effective adversary, changed costs and advances in technology. Although an equilibrium model with known functions is useful, a number of real-world limitations prevent straightforward application of the model to calculate a security equilibrium. These limitations include discontinuous risks and distributed decision-making authority. Finally, the model is analyzed to estimate the likely effects of litigation and security mandates on
counter-terrorism.
"This thesis argues that we should adopt a theory of social movement that is
based in rhetorical... more "This thesis argues that we should adopt a theory of social movement that is
based in rhetorical principles—one that accepts social movement as changes to a set of meanings, or ideology. Instead of focusing primarily or exclusively on the resources and leadership of organizations, this thesis argues that we should study the discourse of counterpublics—the entities involved in social movement activities. By critiquing and expanding upon DeLuca’s work on image events, this thesis argues that we should examine the entire process that counterpublic discourse goes through—production, dissemination, and circulation—from a multimodal perspective. This thesis identifies Occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks as counterpublics and examines each discourse from three perspectives—traditional, image event, and multimodal—in order to demonstrate the strengths of a multimodal theoretical framework."
Uploads
effective adversary, changed costs and advances in technology. Although an equilibrium model with known functions is useful, a number of real-world limitations prevent straightforward application of the model to calculate a security equilibrium. These limitations include discontinuous risks and distributed decision-making authority. Finally, the model is analyzed to estimate the likely effects of litigation and security mandates on
counter-terrorism.
based in rhetorical principles—one that accepts social movement as changes to a set of meanings, or ideology. Instead of focusing primarily or exclusively on the resources and leadership of organizations, this thesis argues that we should study the discourse of counterpublics—the entities involved in social movement activities. By critiquing and expanding upon DeLuca’s work on image events, this thesis argues that we should examine the entire process that counterpublic discourse goes through—production, dissemination, and circulation—from a multimodal perspective. This thesis identifies Occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks as counterpublics and examines each discourse from three perspectives—traditional, image event, and multimodal—in order to demonstrate the strengths of a multimodal theoretical framework."
effective adversary, changed costs and advances in technology. Although an equilibrium model with known functions is useful, a number of real-world limitations prevent straightforward application of the model to calculate a security equilibrium. These limitations include discontinuous risks and distributed decision-making authority. Finally, the model is analyzed to estimate the likely effects of litigation and security mandates on
counter-terrorism.
based in rhetorical principles—one that accepts social movement as changes to a set of meanings, or ideology. Instead of focusing primarily or exclusively on the resources and leadership of organizations, this thesis argues that we should study the discourse of counterpublics—the entities involved in social movement activities. By critiquing and expanding upon DeLuca’s work on image events, this thesis argues that we should examine the entire process that counterpublic discourse goes through—production, dissemination, and circulation—from a multimodal perspective. This thesis identifies Occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks as counterpublics and examines each discourse from three perspectives—traditional, image event, and multimodal—in order to demonstrate the strengths of a multimodal theoretical framework."