Copyright (c) 2013 California Polytechnic State University All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac Recent documents in Communication Studies en-us Thu, 16 May 2013 09:46:59 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/17 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/17 Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:15:35 PDT This article explores the relevance performance studies to music scholarship by doing three interrelated actions. First, the author reassesses Pelias and VanOosting’s influential essay “A Paradigm for Performance Studies,” and suggest that their four performative topoi offer important insights into establishing transdisciplinary connections between music scholarship and performance studies. The second and third prongs of the essay unfold as the author moves through a discussion of two scholars’ work and approaches to music and performance studies, Philip Auslander’s and himself. Reflecting on the author’s research on the U.S.-based band Phish and its scene, he attempts to leave the reader with a deepened understanding of (some of) the interconnections between music and performance studies.

]]> Jnan Blau http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/16 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/16 Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:15:33 PDT Explored as a series of five interrelated performative commitments, the author takes seriously the notion that live musical performance, especially when it is pervaded by an improvisational ethos, can be quite powerful and well worth close examination. In particular, the band Phish, with its devout subcultural following of “phans,” is mined as a rich site for critical, theoretical, and descriptive fodder. The author writes as both a phan and a scholar, drawing from his own experiences seeing Phish live on many occasions as well as from an interdisciplinary body of scholarly literature. The essay provides insight not only into the Phish phenomenon but also into the intersections of performance, communication, popular music, and critical cultural studies.

]]> Jnan A. Blau http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/15 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/15 Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:15:29 PDT At the annual meeting of the National Communication Association in November of 2010, John and I presented a co-authored, performed script as part of a panel entitled "Complicating Performances of Privilege," sponsored by the Performance Studies Division. We had conceived and proposed the panel ourselves. The panel, in fact, had come into being as a result of a series of conversations the two of us had been having, on and off, for a while, about matters of privilege. In and through our dialoguing, we were seeking to somehow balance the expression of our personal experiences (and frustrations) With the careful self-reflexivity that a commitment to critical theory and praxis calls forth in us as academics.

]]> Jnan A. Blau et al. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/14 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/14 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:25:34 PST Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before the U.S. Senate was an important turning point in the history of global climate change. However, no studies have explained why Hansen’s scientific communication in this deliberative setting was more successful than his testimonies of 1986 and 1987. This article turns to Hansen as an important case study in the rhetoric of accommodated science, illustrating how Hansen successfully accommodated his rhetoric to his non-scientist audience given his historical conditions and rhetorical constraints. This article (1) provides a richer explanation for the rhetorical/political emergence of global warming as an important public policy issue in the United States during the late 1980s and (2) contributes to scholarly understanding of the rhetoric of accommodated science in deliberative settings, an often overlooked area of science communication research.

]]> Richard Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/13 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/13 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:25:32 PST Richard Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/12 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/12 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:25:27 PST Richard D. Besel et al. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/11 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/11 Thu, 07 Jun 2012 08:47:22 PDT As a device of argumentative anticipation, prolepsis use generally is considered a positive rhetorical strategy. Turning to the Climate Stewardship Act (CSA) of 2003, this article contributes to our understanding of environmental communication, political argumentation, and rhetorical theory by examining how proleptic miscalculation can actually produce devastating consequences against one’s cause when used as a source of invention. Proponents of the CSA relied on creating proleptic arguments grounded in a scientific understanding of climate change to such an extent that they mistakenly downplayed the economic arguments against the Act. This orchestrated miscalculation was encouraged and strengthened by key US senators. This article concludes by discussing contributions to scholarly understanding of prolepsis use in public policymaking and offers practical suggestions for improving communication in future considerations of environmental legislation.

]]> Richard Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/10 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/10 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:29:18 PDT To further understanding of how individuals experience media and political systems, this article compares a project in the Chicago sociology tradition to concepts from Bourdieu's field theory and practical reason. Limited life history documents from Chicago working-class and more-advantaged young adults illustrate two interactionist concepts, subjective posture, one's stance toward media and politics, and subjective affluence, the range of empowerment the postures reveal. A stance as individual consumer, primarily in pursuit of entertainment, crossed over class lines, but elite participants had higher subjective affluence, with agency as political actors influencing others. The similarities illustrate an aspect of Bourdieu's habitus, and their class differences illustrate distinctions in symbolic power. The results advance theory in the midrange between macrolevel structures and microlevel subjectivity.

]]> Kevin G. Barnhurst et al. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/9 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/9 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:26:43 PDT Richard D. Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/8 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/8 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:26:41 PDT Richard D. Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/7 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/7 Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:17:57 PDT In this essay, Joseph Barton’s controversial congressional investigation of the well-known ‘‘hockey-stick’’ study of climate change, produced by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, is analyzed though the critical lens of actor-network theory. Turning to the works of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law, this essay illustrates how the hockey-stick node of this rhetorical climate change actor-network was successfully defended by invoking the entire actor-network as an inventional resource. Suggestions for improving environmental communication and the theoretical linkages between rhetorical criticism, rhetoric of science, and actor-network theory are discussed.

]]> Richard D. Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/6 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/6 Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:21:09 PST In this paper I examine a recent artistic attempt to publicly visualize a future at risk, Alexis Rockman’s mural painting Manifest Destiny. By turning to J. Robert Cox’s work on the “Locus of the Irreparable,” I contend that Manifest Destiny compels viewers to see the irreparable nature of global climate change in terms of the unique, precarious, and timely. Arguing that Rockman’s creation is a visual example of the rhetoric of the irreparable, I put Cox’s work into conversation with recent efforts to understand the nature of visual rhetoric. However, despite the attention-grabbing nature of Rockman’s work, the production of specific social judgments related to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are left wanting. The implications for public understanding of global climate change issues and future research directions for scholarship using Cox’s articulation of rhetoric of the irreparable are discussed.

]]> Richard D. Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/5 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/5 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:04:05 PST Richard D. Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/4 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/4 Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:04:04 PST Richard Besel http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/3 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/3 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:58:06 PST Bernard K. Duffy et al. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/2 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/2 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:58:05 PST Richard D. Besel et al. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/1 http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comm_fac/1 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:58:04 PST Bernard K. Duffy et al.