“Rhetoric in Dark Times” Reading List

Patricia Roberts-Miller and Ryan Skinnell

Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute Seminar
May 24-28, 2021

Books (you’ll need to arrange get these on your own)

Ore, Ersula. Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. UP of Mississippi,
2019.
Müller, Jan-Werner. ama U of Pennsylvania P, 2016.

Articles/Chapters/Selections for Seminar

Arendt, Hannah. “Truth and Politics.” The New Yorker, 1967, February 25 issue, 249-
54.
*Antonakis John, and Robert J. House. “The Full-Range Leadership Theory.” In
Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead, 2nd ed.,
Emerald, 2013, 3-33.
Berry, Jeffrey M., and Sarah Sobieraj. Selection from The Outrage Industry: Political
Opinion Media and the New Incivility. Oxford UP, 2014.
Bosmajian, Haig A. “Hitler’s Twenty Five Point Program: An Exercise in Propaganda
before Mein Kampf.” The Dalhousie Review, 49.2, 1969, 208-15.
Burke, “Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’.” In The Philosophy of Literary Form 3rd ed., U of
California P, 1973, 191-220.
Chafe, William H. Selection from Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina,
and the Black Struggle for Freedom. Oxford UP, 1981.
Cobb, Jasmine Nichole. Selection from Picture Freedom: Remaking Visuality in the
Early Nineteenth Century. New York UP, 2015.
Corbett, Edward P. J. “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed
Fist.” College Composition and Communication, 20.5, 1969, 288-96.
Crick, Nathan A. “The Rhetoric of Fascism: Or, This Is the Way the World Ends.”
Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 49:2, 2019, 193-201.
Dubois, W.E.B. “The Demagog.” The Crisis, 23.6, 1922, 252.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars.” The New York
Times, 1992, A15.
Goebbels, Joseph. “The Führer as Speaker.” German Propaganda Archive, 1936.
Goebbels, Joseph. “Our Hitler: A Radio Speech to the German People in Honor of the
Führer’s Birthday.” German Propaganda Archive, 1935.
Ivie, Robert L. “Evil Enemy Versus Agonistic Other: Rhetorical Constructions of
Terrorism.” The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 25:3, 2003,
181-200.
*Jackson, Brad. “Leadership, Transformational.” In the International Encyclopedia of
Organization Studies, Sage, 2008, 792-5.
Johnson, Paul Elliott. “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s
Demagoguery.” Women’s Studies in Communication, 40.3, 2017, 229-50.
*Kershaw, Ian. Selection from Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Yale UP,
2008.
*Kim, Eunyoung. “Transformational Leadership.” In the Encyclopedia of Educational
Leadership and Administration, Sage, 2006, 1030-2.
Lane, Melissa. “The Origins of the Statesman-Demagogue Distinction in and after
Ancient Athens.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 73.2, 2012, 179-200.
King, Martin Luther. “Debate with James J. Kilpatrick on ‘The Nation’s Future’.” The
Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, 1960.
Rensmann, Lars. “Totalitarianism and Evil.” In Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts,
Routledge, 2014, 87-107.
*Richard, Carl J. Selection from The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and
the American Enlightenment. Harvard UP, 1994.
Roberts-Miller, Patricia. Selection from Rhetoric and Demagoguery. Southern Illinois
UP, 2019.
Roberts-Miller, Patricia, and Ryan Skinnell. Handout on Definitions of Demagoguery,
Authoritarianism, and Fascism. Unpublished (because it’s just a handout, y’all).
Skinnell, Ryan. “Using Democracy Against Itself: Demagogic Rhetoric as an Attack on
Democratic Institutions.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 49:3, 2019, 248-63.
Slocum, Fred. “Southern Strategy.” In the International Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences, 2nd Edition, Cengage, 2008, 35-8.
Stewart, Katherine. Selection from The Power Worshippers. Bloomsbury, 2020.
*Ward, Mark. Selection from Deadly Documents: Technical Communication,
Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust: Lessons from the Rhetorical Work
of Everyday Texts. Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Articles/Chapters/Selections for Presentations

Adorno, Theodor. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” In
Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Bloomsbury, 2002, 118-37.
Belew, Kathleen. Selection from Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and
Paramilitary America. Harvard UP, 2018.
Bosmajian, Haig A. “The Sources and Nature of Adolf Hitler’s Techniques of
Persuasion.” Communication Studies, 25.4, 1974, 240-8.
Bytwerk, Randall L. “Believing in ‘Inner Truth’: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in
Nazi Propaganda, 1933–1945.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 29.2, 2015,
212–29.
Carmichael, Stokely. “Black Power.” Voices of Democracy: The US Oratory Project,
1966.
Casmir, Fred L. “Nazi Rhetoric: A Rhetoric of Fear.” Today’s Speech, 16.3, 1968, 15-8.
Cryer, Daniel A. “The Good Man Shooting Well: Authoritarian Submission and
Aggression in the ‘Gun-Citizen’.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 50:4, 2020, 254-67.
Danisch, Robert, and William Keith. Selection from Beyond Civility: The Competing
Obligations of Citizenship. Penn State UP, 2020.
Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism.” The New York Review of Books, 1995, June 22 issue.
Gerdes, Kendall. “Trauma, Trigger Warnings, and the Rhetoric of Sensitivity.” Rhetoric
Society Quarterly, 49:1, 2019, 3-24.
Hampton, Fred. “Power Anywhere Where There’s People.” History is a Weapon, 1969.
Inoue, Asao B. “2019 CCCC Chair’s Address: How Do We Language So People Stop
Killing Each Other, or What Do We Do about White Language Supremacy?”
College Composition and Communication, 71.2, 2019, 352-69.
Mercieca, Jennifer. Selection from Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of
Donald J. Trump. Texas A&M UP, 2020.
Mussolini, Benito. “Doctrine of Fascism (1932)” and “The Fascist Decalogue (1938).” In
The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe, Cambridge UP,
1950, 164-81.
Rice, Jenny. Selection from Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of
Evidence. Ohio State UP, 2020.
Scanlan, Ross. “The Nazi Rhetorician.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 37.4, 1951, 430-
40.
Skinnell, Ryan. “Teaching Writing in the (New) Era of Fake News.” College Composition
and Communication, 72.4, forthcoming, June 2021.
Steudeman, Michael J. “Rethinking Rhetorical Education in Times of Demagoguery.”
Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 49:3, 2019, 297-314.
Steigmann-Gall, Richard. “Star Spangled Fascism: American Interwar Political
Extremism in Comparative Perspective.” Social History, 42:1, 2017, 94-119.

Supplements
Berg-Schlosser, Dirk. “Authoritarianism.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas,
Scribner, 2005, 172-5.
Hitler, Adolf. “The Twenty Five Points of the National Socialist German Workers Party
(1920)” and “The Political and Economic Programme of the NSDAP.” In The
Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe, Cambridge UP, 1950,
190-197.
Luthin, Reinhard H. Selection from American Demagogues: Twentieth Century. Peter
Smith, 1959.
Pepper, Tracey A. “Fascism.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd
Edition, Macmillan, 2008, 102-5.
Phillips, Kevin P. The Emerging Republican Majority (reissue). Princeton UP, 2014.
Powell, Malea. “Rhetorics of Survivance: How American Indians Use Writing.” College
Composition and Communication, 53.3, 2002, 396-434.