Many people have been in those awkward situations in which they're the center of attention with no idea what to say or how to say it. Vernon shares on how he, Chris Brogan, and Patrice Washington were able to overcome the challenges to finding their voices and delivering masterful messages. No matter if someone is on stage, behind the microphone, on a podcast, or sitting in front of a camera, they will learn key strategies to keeping their cool and finding their voice in Master Your Message.

In this accessible, straightforward book, seasoned author Betsy Graziani Fasbinder offers readers the why, what, and how of public speaking, along with exercises and resources to support ongoing learning. She provides inspiration and encouragement to help writers to overcome their fears of public speaking, but she doesn't stop there; she also lays out the practical, nuts-and-bolts tools they need to select, deselect, and arrange the content of what to say when they're on a podium, in an interview, or in casual conversations about their writing, and includes a model for handling challenging questions from interviewers and audience members with confidence and grace. Part practical how-to-full of usable tools and tips-and part author cheerleader and champion, From Page to Stage is the ultimate resource for writers who wish bring their storytelling skills to their speaking opportunities.

What forces bring ordinary people together in public to make their voices heard? What means do they use to break through impediments to democratic participation? Unruly Rhetorics is a collection of essays from scholars in rhetoric, communication, and writing studies inquiring into conditions for activism, political protest, and public assembly. An introduction drawing on Jacques Ranciere and Judith Butler explores the conditions under which civil discourse cannot adequately redress suffering or injustice. The essays offer analyses of "unruliness" in case studies from both twenty-first-century and historical sites of social-justice protest. The collection concludes with an afterword highlighting and inviting further exploration of the ethical, political, and pedagogical questions unruly rhetorics raise. Examining multiple modes of expression - embodied, print, digital, and sonic - Unruly Rhetorics points to the possibility that unruliness, more than just one of many rhetorical strategies within political activity, is constitutive of the political itself.

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the Talented Tenth in an influential essay of the same name. The concept exalted college-educated Blacks who Du Bois believed could provide the race with the guidance it needed to surmount slavery, segregation, and oppression in America. Although Du Bois eventually reassessed this idea, the rhetoric of the Talented Tenth resonated, still holding sway over a hundred years later. In Rethinking Racial Uplift: Rhetorics of Black Unity and Disunity in the Obama Era, author Nigel I. Malcolm asserts that in the post-civil rights era, racial uplift has been redefined not as Black public intellectuals lifting the masses but as individuals securing advantage for themselves and their children. Malcolm examines six best-selling books published during Obama's presidency-including Randall Kennedy's Sellout, Bill Cosby's and Alvin Poussaint's Come on People, and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me-and critically analyzes their rhetorics on Black unity, disunity, and the so-called "postracial" era. Based on these writings and the work of political and social scientists, Malcolm shows that a large, often-ignored, percentage of Blacks no longer see their fate as connected with that of other African Americans. While many Black intellectuals and activists seek to provide a justification for Black solidarity, not all agree. In Rethinking Racial Uplift, Malcolm takes contemporary Black public intellectual discourse seriously and shows that disunity among Blacks, a previously ignored topic, is worth exploring.

In Authenticating Whiteness: Karens, Selfies, and Pop Stars, Rachel E. Dubrofsky explores the idea that popular media implicitly portrays whiteness as credible, trustworthy, familiar, and honest, and that this portrayal is normalized and ubiquitous. Whether on television, film, social media, or in the news, white people are constructed as believable and unrehearsed, from the way they talk to how they look and act. Dubrofsky argues that this way of making white people appear authentic is a strategy of whiteness, requiring attentiveness to the context of white supremacy in which the presentations unfold. The volume details how ideas about what is natural, good, and wholesome are reified in media, showing how these values are implicitly racialized. Additionally, the project details how white women are presented as particularly authentic when they seem to lose agency by expressing affect through emotional and bodily displays. The chapters examine a range of popular media-newspaper articles about Donald J. Trump, a selfie taken at Auschwitz, music videos by Miley Cyrus, the television series UnREAL, the infamous video of Amy Cooper calling the police on an innocent Black man, and the documentary Miss Americana-pinpointing patterns that cut across media to explore the implications for the larger culture in which they exist. At its heart, the book asks: Who gets to be authentic? And what are the implications?

Unter dem Rahmenthema Visionen und Illusionen fand am 4./5. April 2014 an der Universitat Goeteborg die 11. Arbeitstagung schwedischer Germanistinnen und Germanisten Text im Kontext statt. Der vorliegende Band versammelt ausgewahlte Beitrage, die in ihrer Vielfalt zugleich einen Eindruck der Forschungsansatze und -projekte der Germanistik in Schweden vermitteln. Das Spektrum der Beitrage reicht von der Untersuchung fruhneuzeitlicher Kochbucher zur Analyse des RAF-Manifests Die Rote Armee aufbauen; von der Betrachtung der Sprachbiographie einer Spataussiedlerin zu literaturwissenschaftlichen Textanalysen bzw. Interpretationen jungerer Dramen von Christoph Hein, Simon Urbans Roman Plan D und Pilgerinnenberichten uber den Jakobsweg. Eine Analyse des Neologismus' "Sternenkind" und vergleichende Grammatikstudien runden den Band ab. Die Begriffe Visionen und Illusionen ermoeglichen Bruckenschlage zwischen Literaturwissenschaft und Sprachwissenschaft und erscheinen nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihrer gesellschaftlichen Dimension pradestiniert fur die OEffnung hin zu kulturwissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen.

A broadly interdisciplinary study of the pervasive secrecy in America cultural, political, and religious discourse.
The occult has traditionally been understood as the study of secrets of the practice of mysticism or magic. This book broadens our understanding of the occult by treating it as a rhetorical phenomenon tied to language and symbols and more central to American culture than is commonly assumed.
Joshua Gunn approaches the occult as an idiom, examining the ways in which acts of textual criticism and interpretation are occultic in nature, as evident in practices as diverse as academic scholarship, Freemasonry, and television production. Gunn probes, for instance, the ways in which jargon employed by various social and professional groups creates barriers and fosters secrecy. From the theory wars of cultural studies to the Satanic Panic that swept the national mass media in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gunn shows how the paradox of a hidden, buried, or secret meaning that cannot be expressed in language appears time and time again in Western culture.
These recurrent patterns, Gunn argues, arise from a generalized, popular anxiety about language and its limitations. Ultimately, "Modern Occult Rhetoric" demonstrates the indissoluble relationship between language, secrecy, and publicity, and the centrality of suspicion in our daily lives.