The R3 Book Series - Rhetoric Race and Religion

What Movies Teach about Race: Exceptionalism, Erasure, & Entitlement reveals the way that media frames in entertainment content persuade audiences to see themselves and others through a prescriptive lens that favors whiteness. These media representations threaten democracy as conglomeration and convergence concentrate the media’s global influence in the hands of a few corporations. By linking film’s political economy with the movie content in the most influential films, this critical discourse study uncovers the socially-shared cognitive structures that the movie industry passes down from one generation to another. Roslyn M. Satchel encourages media literacy and proposes an entertainment media cascading network activation theory that uncovers racialized rhetoric in media content that cyclically begins in historic ideologies, influences elite discourse, embeds in media systems, produces media frames and representations, shapes public opinion, and then is recycled and perpetuated generationally.

Leland Spencer. Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace (2017)

Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom: A Whole Peace argues that the theological concept of shalom offers a way forward for progressive Christians who want to advocate for social justice based on their faith in an increasingly globalizing world characterized by many faiths. To do so, the book considers the rhetorical leadership of three women bishops who are all “firsts” in important ways: Marjorie Matthews, the first woman bishop in any mainline Post-Reformation church, Leontine Kelly, the first woman bishop of color in any mainline church, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. This book is recommended for scholars interested in communications, religious studies, and gender studies.

Kimberly P. Johnson. The Womanist Preacher: Proclaiming Womanist Rhetoric (2017)

The Womanist Preacher: Proclaiming Womanist Rhetoric from the Pulpit performs a close textual analysis of five womanist sermons to answer the question: how does womanist preaching attempt to transform/adapt the tenets of womanist thought to make it rhetorically viable in the church? And what is gained and lost in this? The sermons come from five women who are considered exemplars of womanist preaching: Elaine M. Flake, Gina M. Stewart, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Melva L. Sampson, and Claudette A. Copeland. This book takes the first step in womanist scholarship to dissect what is rhetorically going on in womanist preaching, to categorize womanist sermons under the four tenets of womanist preaching, and to then create four rhetorical models that reflect the rhetorical attributes of the four different categories or phrased tenets that Stacey Floyd-Thomas uses to represent Alice Walker’s “womanist” definition.

Wayne E. Croft Sr. The Motif of Hope in African American Preaching during Slavery and the Post-Civil War Era: There’s a Bright Side Somewhere (2017)

The Motif of Hope in African American Preaching during Slavery and the Post-Civil War Era: There’s a Bright Side Somewhere explores the use of the motif of hope within African American preaching during slavery (1803–1865) and the post-Civil War era (1865–1896). It discusses the presentation of the motif of hope in African American preaching from a historical perspective and how this motif changed while in some instances remained the same with the changing of its historical context. Furthermore, this discussion illuminates a reality that hope has been a theme of importance throughout the history of African American preaching.

Omotayo O. Banjo and Kesha Morant Williams. Christian Culture: Messages, Missions, and Dilemmas (2017)

Contemporary Christian Culture: Messages, Missions, and Dilemmas studies Christian media, its meanings, and its impact on social perceptions and lived experiences in a multicultural context and from within a communication framework. This interdisciplinary collection expands the dialogue surrounding race, culture, and Christian messages and provides a valuable resource for researchers, educators, and church practitioners who are interested in understanding how racial and cultural identity are impacted by religious media products.

Sally F. Paulson. Desegregation and the Rhetorical Fight for African American Citizenship Rights: The Rhetorical/Legal Dynamics of “With All Deliberate Speed.” (2018)

Focusing on the NAACP’s twentieth-century attempt to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine through school desegregation cases, Desegregation and the Rhetorical Fight for African American Citizenship Rights analyzes the rhetorical/legal dynamics inherent in the struggle to determine African American citizenship rights. This book begins by identifying the fundamental dialectical tension existing within all American citizenship rights between the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of “ideal equality” to all citizens as opposed to the Constitution’s privileging of local, “practical” decision-making through Article IV Sect. 2, the “privileges and immunities” clause. It contends that as a consequence of that dynamic, American citizenship rights are rhetorical concepts produced through argument grounded in “all the available means of persuasion,” including logical, emotional, and ethical appeals. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the school desegregation issue came down to a question of credibility/ethics. Recommended for scholars interested in communication, law, history, political science, and cultural studies.

Matthew Boedy. Speaking of Evil: Rhetoric and the Responsibility to and for Language (2018)

Rhetoric and the Responsibility to and for Language: Speaking of Evil relocates the “problem of evil”— the question of why God would allow for the existence of evil—and surveys it as a rhetorical problem. It raises this question: if we speak evil, how shall we speak of evil? When we communicate, we are naming, and evil as the corruption of language plays a central role in that naming. Evil freezes our words, convinces us we have the sole right to their definitions, and generally stifles the dynamic gift of language. By looking at how people in different eras and situations have named evil, this book suggests how we can better take responsibility for our words and why we owe a responsibility to language as our ethical stance toward evil.

Is your book next??

Call for Book Proposals

We are pleased to announce that Lexington Books, a division of the Roman and Littlefield Press, will publish the Rhetoric, Race and Religion Book Series. The series will provide space for emerging, junior or senior scholars engaged in research that studies rhetoric from a race or religion perspective. This will include studies contributing to our understanding of how rhetoric helps shape race and/or religion and how race and/or religion shapes rhetoric. In this series, scholars seek to examine phenomenon from either a historical and contemporary perspective. Moreover, we are interested in how race and religion discourse function rhetorically. Since these subjects are interdisciplinary, this peer-reviewed book series will invite proposals for and submissions of monographs and edited volumes from scholars across all academic disciplines.

Below is the information for those who are interested in submitting book proposals

Prospectus. The prospectus should include a description of the book; a statement regarding what makes it important, timely, or unique; an analysis of competing or similar books (including publishers and dates of publication); a description of your target audience (general readers? undergraduate or graduate students? scholars? professionals?); an indication if any of the material in the book has been previously published, and, if so, when and where and whether republication rights are available; the length of the manuscript in word count; and, if the manuscript is not complete, an estimation of when it will be finished.

Outline. An annotated table of contents, including a paragraph describing each chapter.

Curriculum vitae or resume. In short, what qualifies you to write the book you are proposing? If you are proposing a contributed volume, please include affiliations and, if possible, brief resumes for each of the contributors.

Writing samples. One or two sample chapters. If an introduction or overview is available, please include it. If no chapters are ready, send a comparable example of your writing.

Peer reviewers. A list of four to seven potential peer reviewers, with whom you have no personal or professional relationship, but who might advise us as to the quality, academic integrity, and commercial viability of the project. If possible, please include their affiliations, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

We will acknowledge receipt of a proposal within two weeks; we are usually able to render a decision on contract within three months.

Please send proposals to Andre E. Johnson at ajohnsn6@memphis.edu. Please add “book proposal” in the subject line.

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