1095 books match the query 'Rhetoric' and 20 start with o

cover of Occupying Our Space: The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

Occupying Our Space

The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

Cristina Devereaux Ramírez; Foreword by Jacqueline Jones Royster

University of Arizona Press, 2015

Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award Winner

Occupying Our Space sheds new light on the contributions of Mexican women journalists and writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked as the zenith of Mexican journalism. Journalists played a significant role in transforming Mexican social and political life before and after the Revolution (1910–1920), and women were a part of this movement as publishers, writers, public speakers, and political activists. However, their contributions to the broad historical changes associated with the Revolution, as well as the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, are often excluded or overlooked.
 
This book fills a gap in feminine rhetorical history by providing an in-depth look at several important journalists who claimed rhetorical puestos, or public speaking spaces. The book closely examines the writings of Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1842–1896), Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875­–1942), the political group Las mujeres de Zitácuaro (1900), Hermila Galindo (1896–1954), and others. Grounded in the overarching theoretical lens of mestiza rhetoric, Occupying Our Space considers the ways in which Mexican women journalists negotiated shifting feminine identities and the emerging national politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With full-length Spanish primary documents along with their translations, this scholarship reframes the conversation about the rhetorical and intellectual role women played in the ever-changing political and identity culture in Mexico.
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cover of Olfactory Rhetoric: Sniffing Out Environmental Problems

Olfactory Rhetoric

Sniffing Out Environmental Problems

Lisa L. Phillips

The Ohio State University Press, 2025

Human senses have the potential to play a significant role in inspiring action to combat climate change. When we smell pollutants in the air, for example, or feel the blast of a polar vortex, we are more likely to act in response to these changes in environmental conditions. However, the sensorium—and particularly our sense of smell—is often downplayed when we consider the rhetorics of environmental crises. In Olfactory Rhetoric, Lisa L. Phillips argues that how we sense the world around us should be a crucial piece of rhetorical evidence when evaluating environmental injustices. Specifically, Phillips elevates olfaction (what we smell) and olfactory rhetoric (how we talk about and experience what we smell) when discussing three contemporary environmental crises set in historically marginalized communities: the Sriracha sauce factory controversy, the Salton Sea scent events, and the Blue Ridge Landfill emissions problem. On a broader scale, Phillips develops an intersectional ecofeminist sensory-rhetorical approach for evaluating how olfactory and sensory persuasions work and how they can be used to advocate for environmental justice and a more breathable future.

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cover of Oligarchy in America: Power, Justice, and the Rule of the Few

Oligarchy in America

Power, Justice, and the Rule of the Few

Luke Winslow

University of Alabama Press, 2024

Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award for the National Communication Association's Political Communication Division 

A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs.

To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy’s deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home.

Winslow argues that generic labels like “billionaires” for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of democratic oligarchy—an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth.

Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others.

Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science.

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cover of On Metaphor

On Metaphor

Edited by Sheldon Sacks

University of Chicago Press, 1979

On Metaphor, a collection of fourteen essays by eminent philosophers, literary critics, theologians, art historians, and psychologists, illustrates and explores a striking phenomenon in modern intellectual history: the transformation of metaphor from a specialized concern of rhetoricians and literary critics to a central concept in the study of human understanding. These lively and provocative essays probe the nature, function, and meaning of metaphor and collectively demonstrate the multidisciplinary implications of the concept.

Because of its comprehensive scope, the volume is useful both as a resource for those interested in contemporary philosophy and theories of language and as a text for courses in such areas as the philosophy of language, critical theory, and the philosophy of knowledge. Originally published as a special issue of Critical Inquiry, the present collection includes two new contributions by Max Black and Nelson Goodman, along with a comprehensive index to the work.
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cover of On Symbols and Society

On Symbols and Society

Kenneth Burke

University of Chicago Press, 1989

Kenneth Burke's innovative use of dramatism and dialectical method have made him a powerful critical force in an extraordinary variety of disciplines—education, philosophy, history, psychology, religion, and others. While most widely acclaimed as a literary critic, Burke has elaborated a perspective toward the study of behavior and society that holds immense significance and rich insights for sociologists. This original anthology brings together for the first time Burke's key writings on symbols and social relations to offer social scientists access to Burke's thought.

In his superb introductory essay, Joseph R. Gusfield traces the development of Burke's approach to human action and its relationship to other similar sources of theory and ideas in sociology; he discusses both Burke's influence on sociologists and the limits of his perspective. Burke regards literature as a form of human behavior—and human behavior as embedded in language. His lifework represents a profound attempt to understand the implications for human behavior based on the fact that humans are "symbol-using animals." As this volume demonstrates, the work that Burke produced from the 1930s through the 1960s stands as both precursor and contemporary key to recent intellectual movements such as structuralism, symbolic anthropology, phenomenological and interpretive sociology, critical theory, and the renaissance of symbolic interaction.
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cover of On Visual Rhetoric

On Visual Rhetoric

Christa J. Olson and Brandee Easter

University of Michigan Press, 2026

How do the things we see shape values, beliefs, and actions? Why do viewers come to different conclusions when looking at the same thing? Why do people assume that “seeing is believing” in the age of AI-generated imagery? On Visual Rhetoric responds to these questions, helping readers and viewers consider how the visual intervenes in the world in ordinary and extraordinary ways. Looking at a wide array of pictures, habits, processes, and contexts, Christa J. Olson and Brandee Easter make the case for defining “the visual” broadly so that it includes not only visual objects, but also intangible images, visual technologies, and the cognitive-physical act of seeing. On Visual Rhetoric provides a robust, flexible heuristic for studying visual rhetoricity that not only draws together the vast array of existing case studies and concepts but also raises new questions and concerns for scholars.
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cover of On the Frontier of Science: An American Rhetoric of Exploration and Exploitation

On the Frontier of Science

An American Rhetoric of Exploration and Exploitation

Leah Ceccarelli

Michigan State University Press, 2013

“The frontier of science” is a metaphor that has become ubiquitous in American rhetoric, from its first appearance in the public address of early twentieth-century American intellectuals and politicians who aligned a mythic national identity with scientific research, to its more recent use in scientists’ arguments in favor of increased research funding. Here, Leah Ceccarelli explores what is selected and what is deflected when this metaphor is deployed, its effects on those who use it, and what rhetorical moves are made by those who try to counter its appeal. In her research, Ceccarelli discovers that “the frontier of science” evokes a scientist who is typically male, a risk taker, an adventurous loner—someone separated from a public that both envies and distrusts him, with a manifest destiny to penetrate the unknown. It conjures a competitive desire to claim the riches of a new territory before others can do the same. Closely reading the public address of scientists and politicians and the reception of their audiences, this book shows how the frontier of science metaphor constrains American speakers, helping to guide the ends of scientific research in particular ways and sometimes blocking scientists from attaining the very goals they set out to achieve.
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cover of Once Upon a Time in the Twenty-First Century: Unexpected Exercises in Creative Writing

Once Upon a Time in the Twenty-First Century

Unexpected Exercises in Creative Writing

Edited by Robin Behn

University of Alabama Press, 2020

Inspiring writers through creativity, experimentation, and unexpected discovery.

Once Upon a Time in the Twenty-First Century: Unexpected Exercises in Creative Writing is a unique creative writing text that will appeal to a wide range of readers and writers—from grade nine through college and beyond. Successful creative writers from numerous genres constructed these exercises, including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to one-act plays, song lyrics, genre fiction, travel guides, comics and beyond. The exercises use a broad range of creative approaches, aesthetics, and voices, all with an emphasis on demystifying the writing process and having fun.

Editor Robin Behn has divided the book into three writing sections: Genres and Forms, Sources and Methods, and Style and Subject. In each section, Behn offers a brief introduction which explains how to get started and specific ways to develop one’s writing. Each introduction is followed by extensive exercises that draw on literature from classic to contemporary, as well as other art forms and popular culture. Examples range from Flannery O’Connor and Langston Hughes to Allen Ginsberg and Gertrude Stein, from Jamaica Kincaid and James Joyce to Arlo Guthrie and Harryette Mullen. Integrated within the exercises are apt examples of student writings that have emerged from actual use of the exercises in both the classroom and in writing groups. The book concludes with general advice and direction on how to get published.

Based on years of hands-on experiences in the teaching of creative writing in high schools, colleges, and after-school writing clubs, this volume of exercises offers inestimable value to students and teachers in the traditional classroom, as well as a growing number of homeschoolers, those who are part of a writing club or group, and independent writers and learners of all ages.
 

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cover of Open Hand: Arguing as an Art of Peace

Open Hand

Arguing as an Art of Peace

Barry M. Kroll

Utah State University Press, 2013

Based on five years of classroom experimentation, The Open Hand presents a highly practical yet transformational philosophy of teaching argumentative writing. In his course Arguing as an Art of Peace, Barry Kroll uses the open hand to represent an alternative approach to argument, asking students to argue in a way that promotes harmony rather than divisiveness and avoiding conventional conflict-based approaches.

Kroll cultivates a bodily investigation of noncombative argument, offering direct pedagogical strategies anchored in three modalities of learning—conceptual-procedural, kinesthetic, and contemplative—and projects, activities, assignments, informal responses, and final papers for students. Kinesthetic exercises derived from martial arts and contemplative meditation and mindfulness practices are key to the approach, with Kroll specifically using movement as a physical analogy for tactics of arguing.

Collaboration, mediation, and empathy are important yet overlooked values in communicative exchange. This practical, engaging, and accessible guide for teachers contains clear examples and compelling discussions of pedagogical strategies that teach students not only how to write persuasively but also how to deal with personal conflict in their daily lives.

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cover of Oral History and Delinquency: The Rhetoric of Criminology

Oral History and Delinquency

The Rhetoric of Criminology

James Bennett

University of Chicago Press, 1981

From Henry Mayhew's classic study of Victorian slums to Studs Terkel's presentations of ordinary people in modern America, oral history has been used to call attention to social conditions. By analyzing the nature and circumstances of the production of such histories of delinquency, James Bennett argues that oral history is a rhetorical device, consciously chosen as such, and is to be understood in terms of its persuasive powers and aims. Bennett shows how oral or life histories of juvenile delinquents have been crucial in communicating the human traits of offenders within their social context, to attract interest in resources for programs to prevent delinquency. Although life history helped to establish the discipline of sociology, Bennett suggests concepts for understanding oral histories generated in many fields.
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cover of Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric

Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America

Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric

Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran

Southern Illinois University Press, 1993

Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran bring together nine essays that explore change in both the theory and the practice of rhetoric in the nineteenth-century United States.

In their introductory essay, Clark and Halloran argue that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, rhetoric encompassed a neoclassical oratorical culture in which speakers articulated common values to establish consensual moral authority that directed community thought and action. As the century progressed, however, moral authority shifted from the civic realm to the professional, thus expanding participation in the community as it fragmented the community itself. Clark and Halloran argue that this shift was a transformation in which rhetoric was reconceived to meet changing cultural needs.

Part I examines the theories and practices of rhetoric that dominated at the beginning of the century. The essays in this section include "Edward Everett and Neoclassical Oratory in Genteel America" by Ronald F. Reid, "The Oratorical Poetic of Timothy Dwight" by Gregory Clark, "The Sermon as Public Discourse: Austin Phelps and the Conservative Homiletic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century America" by Russel Hirst, and "A Rhetoric of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America" by P. Joy Rouse.

Part 2 examines rhetorical changes in the culture that developed during that century. The essays include "The Popularization of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: Elocution and the Private Learner" by Nan Johnson, "Rhetorical Power in the Victorian Parlor: Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Gendering of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric" by Nicole Tonkovich, "Jane Addams and the Social Rhetoric of Democracy" by Catherine Peaden, "The Divergence of Purpose and Practice on the Chatauqua: Keith Vawter’s Self-Defense" by Frederick J.Antczak and Edith Siemers, and "The Rhetoric of Picturesque Scenery: A Nineteenth-Century Epideictic" by S. Michael Halloran.

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cover of Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Organic Writing Assessment

Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Bob Broad, Linda Adler-Kassner, Barry Alford, Jane Detweiler, Heidi Estrem, Susanmarie Harrington, Maureen McBride, Eric Stalions, and Scott Weeden

Utah State University Press, 2009

Educators strive to create “assessment cultures” in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad’s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches.

For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad’s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies.

Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM’s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.
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cover of Our Body of Work: Embodied Administration and Teaching

Our Body of Work

Embodied Administration and Teaching

edited by Melissa Nicolas & Anna Sicari

Utah State University Press, 2022

Our Body of Work invites administrators and teachers to consider how physical bodies inform everyday work and labor as well as research and administrative practices in writing programs. Combining academic and personal essays from a wide array of voices, it opens a meaningful discussion about the physicality of bodily experiences in the academy.
 
Open exchanges enable complex and nuanced conversations about intersectionality and how racism, sexism, classism, and ableism (among other “isms”) create systems of power. Contributors examine how these conversations are framed around work, practices, policies, and research and identify ways to create inclusive, embodied practices in writing programs and classrooms. The collection is organized to maximize representation in the areas of race, gender, identity, ability, and class by featuring scholarly chapters followed by narratively focused interchapters that respond to and engage with the scholarly work.
 
The honest and emotionally powerful stories in Our Body of Work expose problematic and normalizing policies, practices, and procedures and offer diverse theories and methodologies that provide multiple paths for individuals to follow to make the academy more inclusive and welcoming for all bodies. It will be an important resource for researchers, as well a valuable addition to graduate and undergraduate syllabi on embodiment, writing instruction/pedagogy, and WPA work.
 
Contributors: Dena Arendall, Janel Atlas, Hayat Bedaiwi, Elizabeth Boquet, Lauren Brentnell, Triauna Carey, Denise Comer, Joshua Daniel, Michael Faris, Rebecca Gerdes-McClain, Morgan Gross, Nabila Hijazi, Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott, Maureen Johnson, Jasmine Kar Tang, Elitza Kotzeva, Michelle LaFrance, Jasmine Lee, Lynn C. Lewis, Mary Lourdes Silva, Rita Malenczyk, Anna Rita Napoleone, Julie Prebel, Rebecca Rodriguez Carey, Ryan Skinnell, Trixie Smith, Stacey Waite, Kelsey Walker, Shannon Walters, Isaac Wang, Jennie Young
 
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cover of Our Man in Warszawa: How the West Misread Poland

Our Man in Warszawa

How the West Misread Poland

Jo Harper

Central European University Press, 2021

Written by a Brit who has lived in Poland for more than twenty years, this book challenges some accepted thinking in the West about Poland and about the rise of Law and Justice (PiS) as the ruling party in 2015. It is a remarkable account of the Polish post-1989 transition and contemporary politics, combining personal views and experience with careful fact and material collections. The result is a vivid description of the events and scrupulous explanations of the political processes, and all this with an interesting twist – a perspective of a foreigner and insider at the same time. Settled in the position of participant observer, Jo Harper combines the methods of macro and micro analysis with CDA, critical discourse analysis. He presents and interprets the constituent elements and issues of contemporary Poland: the main political forces, the Church, the media, issues of gender, the Russian connection, the much-disputed judicial reform and many others.

A special feature of the book is the detailed examination of the coverage of the Poland’s latest two elections, one in 2019 (parliamentary) and the other in 2020 (presidential) in the British media, an insightful and witty specimen of comparative cultural and political analysis.

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cover of OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture

OurSpace

Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture

Christine Harold

University of Minnesota Press, 2009

Culture jamming is so twentieth century! What’s next?

When reporters asked about the Bush administration’s timing in making their case for the Iraq war, then Chief of Staff Andrew Card responded that “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” While surprising only in its candor, this statement signified the extent to which consumer culture has pervaded every aspect of life. For those troubled by the long reach of the marketplace, resistance can seem futile. However, a new generation of progressive activists has begun to combat the media supremacy of multinational corporations by using the very tools and techniques employed by their adversaries.

In OurSpace, Christine Harold examines the deployment and limitations of “culture jamming” by activists. These techniques defy repressive corporate culture through parodies, hoaxes, and pranks. Among the examples of sabotage she analyzes are the magazine Adbusters’s spoofs of familiar ads and the Yes Men’s impersonations of company spokespersons.While these strategies are appealing, Harold argues that they are severely limited in their ability to challenge capitalism. Indeed, many of these tactics have already been appropriated by corporate marketers to create an aura of authenticity and to sell even more products. For Harold, it is a different type of opposition that offers a genuine alternative to corporate consumerism. Exploring the revolutionary Creative Commons movement, copyleft, and open source technology, she advocates a more inclusive approach to intellectual property that invites innovation and wider participation in the creative process.From switching the digital voice boxes of Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe action figures to inserting the silhouetted image of Abu Ghraib’s iconic hooded and wired victim into Apple’s iPod ads, high-profile instances of anticorporate activism over the past decade have challenged, but not toppled, corporate media domination. OurSpace makes the case for a provocative new approach by co-opting the logic of capitalism itself.
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cover of Out in the Center: Public Controversies and Private Struggles

Out in the Center

Public Controversies and Private Struggles

Harry C. Denny

Utah State University Press, 2018

Out in the Center explores the personal struggles of tutors, faculty, and administrators in writing center communities as they negotiate the interplay between public controversies and features of their own intersectional identities. These essays address how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, faith, multilingualism, and learning differences, along with their intersections, challenge those who inhabit writing centers and engage in their conversations.
 
A diverse group of contributors interweaves personal experience with writing center theory and critical race theory, as well as theories on the politics and performance of identity. In doing so, Out in the Center extends upon the writing center corpus to disrupt and reimagine conventional approaches to writing center theory and practice. Out in the Center proposes that practitioners benefit from engaging in dialogue about identity to better navigate writing center work—work that informs the local and carries forth a social and cultural impact that stretches well beyond academic institutions.
 
Contributors:
Allia Abdullah-Matta, Nancy Alvarez, Hadi Banat, Tammy S. Conard-Salvo, Michele Eodice, Rochell Isaac, Sami Korgan, Ella Leviyeva, Alexandria Lockett, Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison, Anna Rita Napoleone, Beth A. Towle, Elizabeth Weaver, Tim Zmudka
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cover of Out of Style: Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric

Out of Style

Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric

Paul G. Butler

Utah State University Press, 2008

Paul Butler applauds the emerging interest in the study of style among scholars of rhetoric and composition, arguing that the loss of stylistics from composition in recent decades left it alive only in the popular imagination as a set of grammar conventions. Butler’s goal in Out of Style is to articulate style as a vital and productive source of invention, and to redefine its importance for current research, theory, and pedagogy.
    Scholars in composition know that the ideas about writing most common in the discourse of public intellectuals are egregiously backward. Without a vital approach to stylistics, Butler argues, writing studies will never dislodge the controlling fantasies of self-authorized pundits in the nation’s intellectual press. Rhetoric and composition must answer with a public discourse that is responsive to readers’ ongoing interest in style but is also grounded in composition theory.
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cover of Outcomes Book: Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement

Outcomes Book

Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement

edited by Susanmarie Harrington, Keith Rhodes, Ruth Fischer, & Rita Malenczyk

Utah State University Press, 2005

The WPA Outcomes Statement is important because it represents a working consensus among composition scholars about what college students should learn and do in a composition program. But as a single-page document, the statement cannot convey the kind of reflective process that a writing program must undertake to address the learning outcomes described.

The Outcomes Book relates the fuller process by exploring the matrix of concerns that surrounded the developing Statement itself, and by presenting the experience of many who have since employed it in their own settings.

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cover of Over the Range: A History of the Promontory Summit Route of the Pacific Railroad

Over the Range

A History of the Promontory Summit Route of the Pacific Railroad

Richard V. Francaviglia

Utah State University Press, 2008

Francaviglia looks anew at the geographical-historical context of the driving of the golden spike in May 1869. He gazes outward from the site of the transcontinental railroad's completion—the summit of a remote mountain range that extends south into the Great Salt Lake. The transportation corridor that for the first time linked America's coasts gave this distinctive region significance, but it anchored two centuries of human activity linked to the area's landscape.

Francaviglia brings to that larger story a geographer's perspective on place and society, a railroad enthusiast's knowledge of trains, a cartographic historian's understanding of the knowledge and experience embedded in maps, and a desert lover's appreciation of the striking basin-and-range landscape that borders the Great Salt Lake.

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cover of Overturned: The Rhetoric of Overruling in the United States Supreme Court

Overturned

The Rhetoric of Overruling in the United States Supreme Court

Clarke Rountree

University of Alabama Press, 2025

A timely and lively summary and analysis of the Supreme Court’s justifications for overruling nearly 300 prior rulings in its history

An audacious US Supreme Court is overturning a number of long-standing precedents, and Overturned offers a lively account of the court’s history of overturning prior cases and examples and analyses of 300 cases overruled in its history.

The immense controversy surrounding the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, which overruled Roe v. Wade and erased the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, has focused public attention on how and why the Supreme Court knocks down long-established precedents.

In his vivid and accessible style, scholar Clarke Rountree recounts the rhetorical pirouettes and linguistic acrobatics the court has deployed to explain its reversal of Dobbs and numerous other landmark decisions. He reviews strategies the court uses to undermine a previous court’s standing without undermining its own. He analyzes overrulings across time, by type (constitutional cases versus statutory and common law cases), by the ages of the overturned precedents, with changes in the court’s membership, and through other variables.

Rountree gives engrossing accounts of pivotal overrulings in the past, such as when Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase used the Legal Tender Act in 1862 to raise money for the Civil War then ruled the same law unconstitutional in 1870 when he served as chief justice. Rountree retells Thomas Edison’s attempt to monopolize the burgeoning film industry, which was stopped only when the Supreme Court overturned an earlier patent-rights case in 1917. Finally, Rountree applies his myriad insights to the politically fraught Dobbs case.

Overturned makes a valuable contribution to law, rhetoric, politics, and history, and readers interested in the role and function of America’s highest court will find Rountree’s account fast-paced, lively, and engaging.

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