Thomas W Benson: 38 books
You Can't Padlock an Idea
Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961
Language: English
Release Date: October 3, 2014
You Can’t Padlock an Idea examines the educational programs undertaken at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee and looks specifically at how these programs functioned rhetorically to promote democratic social change. Founded in 1932 by educator Myles Horton, the Highlander Folk School sought...
The Cultural Economy of Falun Gong in China
A Rhetorical Perspective
Language: English
Release Date: November 16, 2012
Emerging in China in the early 1990s, Falun Gong is viewed by its supporters as a folk movement promoting the benefits of good health and moral cultivation. To the Chinese establishment, however, it is a dissident religious cult threatening political orthodoxy and national stability. The author, a...
Logos without Rhetoric
The Arts of Language before Plato
Language: English
Release Date: June 19, 2017
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized—or perhaps invented—their...
The Genuine Teachers of This Art
Rhetorical Education in Antiquity
Language: English
Release Date: December 7, 2012
Genuine Teachers of This Art examines the technê, or "handbook," tradition—which it controversially suggests began with Isocrates—as the central tradition in ancient rhetoric and a potential model for contemporary rhetoric. From this innovative perspective, Jeffrey Walker offers reconsiderations...
The Keys of Power
The Rhetoric and Politics of Transcendentalism
Language: English
Release Date: August 31, 2017
Nathan Crick has crafted a new critical rhetorical history of American Transcendentalists that interprets a selection of their major works between the years 1821 and 1852 as political and ethical responses to the growing crises of their times. In The Keys of Power, Crick argues that one of the most...
The Rhetoric of Mao Zedong
Transforming China and Its People
Language: English
Release Date: May 24, 2017
Mao Zedong fundamentally transformed China from a Confucian society characterized by hierarchy and harmony into a socialist state guided by communist ideologies of class struggle and radicalization. It was a transformation made possible largely by Mao’s rhetorical ability to attract, persuade, and...
Rhetoric and Power
The Drama of Classical Greece
Language: English
Release Date: October 28, 2014
In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning with the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its...
Democracy and Rhetoric
John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2012
In Democracy and Rhetoric, Nathan Crick articulates from John Dewey's body of work a philosophy of rhetoric that reveals the necessity for bringing forth a democratic life infused with the spirit of ethics, a method of inquiry, and a sense of beauty. Crick relies on rhetorical theory as well interdisciplinary...
Managing Vulnerability
South Africa's Struggle for a Democratic Rhetoric
Language: English
Release Date: September 30, 2012
In Managing Vulnerability, Richard C. Marback analyzes the tension surrounding the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa through a rhetorical lens. Marback studies the heart of South Africa’s desire for reconciliation and contends that this goal could be achieved only through the...
Introducing Science through Images
Cases of Visual Popularization
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2018
As funding for basic scientific research becomes increasingly difficult to secure, public support becomes essential. Because of its promise for captivating nonexpert publics, the practice of merging art and imagery with science has been gaining traction in the scientific community. While images have...
Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change
A Critical Companion
Language: English
Release Date: November 27, 2018
Since its publication in 1935, Kenneth Burke’s Permanence and Change, a text that can serve as an introduction to all his theories, has become a landmark of rhetorical theory. Using new archival sources and contextualizing Burke in the past and present, Ann George offers the first sustained exploration...
by M. Lane Bruner, Thomas W. Benson
Language: English
Release Date: June 4, 2019
Language: English
Release Date: June 4, 2019
Rhetorical Unconsciousness and Political Psychoanalysis investigates unintentional forms of persuasion, their political consequences, and our ethical relation to the same. M. Lane Bruner argues that the unintentional ways we are persuaded are far more important than intentional persuasion; in fact...
Prisoners of Conscience
Moral Vernaculars of Political Agency
Language: English
Release Date: August 16, 2012
Prisoners of Conscience continues the work begun by Gerard A. Hauser in Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres, winner of the National Communication Association’s Hochmuth Nichols Award. In his new book, Hauser examines the discourse of political prisoners, specifically the...
Editorial Bodies
Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics
Language: English
Release Date: September 28, 2018
Though typically considered oral cultures, ancient Greece and Rome also boasted textual cultures, enabled by efforts to perfect, publish, and preserve both new and old writing. In Editorial Bodies, Michele Kennerly argues that such efforts were commonly articulated through the extended metaphor of...