Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Dear Parents of the Child who Yelled Hey Runner at Me

Andrew Rihn — 2016-03-09

An epistle, this open letter considers ways in which we read and write a body by way of public harrassment, sexuality, and homophobia.

Ignoring Ethics with Style: Writing Sentences for "Non U.S. Persons"

Ryan Smith Madan — 2016-03-09

Ignoring Ethics with Style: Writing Sentences for 'Non U.S. Persons'" argues for the importance of understanding the ethical dimensions of sentence writing. To illustrateÂ I cite the stylistic features of a recent public exchange about the legality of government surveillance betweenÂ Director of Intelligence James Clapper andÂ U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall.Â I also discuss my own experience teaching writing to college students in order to reflect on need for a new generation of writers to recognize the relationship between clarity and ethics.

From Product Reviews to Political Commentary: Performances in Amazon.com Reviews

Brenda M. Helmbrecht — 2016-04-29

NOTE: We would like the abstract to mimic the conventions of an Amazon.com review, which includes both the language and the visual presentation.Â Please see the abstract on page 1 of our manuscript.

Do you want products or politics? Or BOTH?!

By LoveHelm on March 15, 2015

If youâ€™ve been searching for an article that combines rhetoric, politics, and shoppingâ€¦ this is it!Â The authors address the rhetorical and political nature of Amazon.com product reviews.Â More specifically, they focus on Amazon reviews circulating shortly after Mitt Romney talked about his â€œbinders full of womenâ€ during the 2012 Presidential Campaign (who says that?!), and reviews written after Texas State Senator Wendy Davis filibustered for 11-hours in her sassy pink Mizuno running shoes in summer 2013 (I seriously want those shoes!).Â The authors argue that we need to look for argumentation in unlikely spacesâ€”like Amazon.com.Â I mean, I buy all kinds of stuff on Amazon, but I donâ€™t get all political while I am thereâ€¦.but apparently some people do.Â Weird, right?Â But for reals: the authors include examples of Amazon reviews that while pretty hilarious, actually deal with serious political issues.Â As always, battery life could be better, but still worth checking out.

Writing in the Moment: Social Media, Digital Identity, and Networked Publics

Jacob Babb — 2016-04-30

This article examines the impact of social media on digital identity. Social media reaffirms the values of communities through the repetition and reflection of those communities. The article addresses different examples of social media usage, such as the recent Internet outrage regarding Cecil the Lion, to explore the complexities of developing and maintaining digital identities.

Inside Voices: Collaborative Writing in a Prison Environment

Alexandra J Cavallaro — 2016-04-09

This article explores how notions of collaboration in the writing classroom are challenged and altered when that classroom is located in a medium-security prison. Based on a for-credit multimodal writing course co-taught by the lead authors, this text (itself a collaboration between the instructors and ten of our incarcerated students) unpacks the processes and practices through which communication is regulated by the institutional authority of the prison (collectively termed the Carceral Communication Framework, or CCF) and places them in conversation with the innovations demanded by the prisonâ€™s technological constraints. Contending that collaboration in a prison setting tactically subverts the CCF and provides agency to people who are systematically disenfranchised, we focus on two different dimensions of that process: collaborations between students and teachers and collaborations between the students themselves.

Deconstructing Trailheads: Six Frames for Wilderness and a Rhetorical Intervention for Ecology

Casey R. Schmitt — 2016-04-30

This essay applies rhetorical analysis to the semantically loaded locations at trailheads, parks, and nature preserve entryways. Using the trailhead markers of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore as a field-based case study, I identify six common rhetorical frames in the trailhead locationâ€”distinction, danger, sacrifice, stewardship, prescribed activity, and tactical disruptionâ€”and discuss how each perpetuates a problematic everyday nature-culture divide. In analyzing the rhetorical functions of physical places, I advocate for embodied critical methods and revisions to the rhetorics of nature preserves and conservancies.

Editors' Letter: Call for Solutions

Editors of Harlot — 2016-05-01