Pat J. Gehrke

Western culture is in a moment when wholly new kinds of personal transformations are possible, but authentic transformation requires both personal testimony and public recognition. In this book, Adam Ellwanger takes a distinctly rhetorical approach to analyzing how the personal and the public relate to an individual’s transformation and develops a new vocabulary that enables a critical assessment of the concept of authenticity. The concept of metanoia is central to this project. Charting the history of metanoia from its original use in the classical tradition to its adoption by early Christians as a term for religious conversion, Ellwanger shows that metanoia involves a change within a person that results in a truer version of him- or herself—a change in character or ethos. He then applies this theory to our contemporary moment, finding that metanoia provides unique insight into modern forms of self-transformation. Drawing on ancient and medieval sources, including Thucydides, Plato, Paul the Apostle, and Augustine, as well as contemporary discourses of self-transformation, such as the public testimonies of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, Ellwanger elucidates the role of language in signifying and authenticating identity. Timely and original, Ellwanger’s study formulates a transhistorical theory of personal transformation that will be of interest to scholars working in social theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and the history of Christianity.

Western culture is in a moment when wholly new kinds of personal transformations are possible, but authentic transformation requires both personal testimony and public recognition. In this book, Adam Ellwanger takes a distinctly rhetorical approach to analyzing how the personal and the public relate to an individual’s transformation and develops a new vocabulary that enables a critical assessment of the concept of authenticity. The concept of metanoia is central to this project. Charting the history of metanoia from its original use in the classical tradition to its adoption by early Christians as a term for religious conversion, Ellwanger shows that metanoia involves a change within a person that results in a truer version of him- or herself—a change in character or ethos. He then applies this theory to our contemporary moment, finding that metanoia provides unique insight into modern forms of self-transformation. Drawing on ancient and medieval sources, including Thucydides, Plato, Paul the Apostle, and Augustine, as well as contemporary discourses of self-transformation, such as the public testimonies of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, Ellwanger elucidates the role of language in signifying and authenticating identity. Timely and original, Ellwanger’s study formulates a transhistorical theory of personal transformation that will be of interest to scholars working in social theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and the history of Christianity.

This book advances organic public engagement methods based on ecological thinking. The authors draw on rich multi-disciplinary literature in ecological thinking as well as research from public engagement with science events held over the past several years across the United States. Through this combination of ecology theory and case studies, this book provides both the conceptual foundations and the proven practical applications of public engagement grounded in ecological thinking. It offers engagement scholars an effective and efficient means of carrying out their missions, while simultaneously building a more ecologically valid method for studying actually existing publics.

This book discusses the results and implications of a two-year public engagement program on nanotechnology. Led by eleven diverse civic groups across the United States, the program events covered a wide range of applications and sparked robust discussions concerning risk and regulation. Through computer-assisted qualitative data analysis, video recordings of the events were coded for expressed levels of knowledge, positive and negative audience responses, perceptions of risk, views on regulation, and speakers’ communication behaviors. These results add richness, nuance, and complexity to our perception of the public's understanding of nanotechnology, its support for regulation, and effective practices of science communication in the context of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. Nano-Publics also offers further guidance for public engagement research, the regulation of emerging technologies, and potential science communication campaigns.

This book advances organic public engagement methods based on ecological thinking. The authors draw on rich multi-disciplinary literature in ecological thinking as well as research from public engagement with science events held over the past several years across the United States. Through this combination of ecology theory and case studies, this book provides both the conceptual foundations and the proven practical applications of public engagement grounded in ecological thinking. It offers engagement scholars an effective and efficient means of carrying out their missions, while simultaneously building a more ecologically valid method for studying actually existing publics.

This title explores the historical implications of politics and ethics in communication studies. In ""The Ethics and Politics of Speech"", Pat J. Gehrke provides an accessible yet intensive history of the speech communication discipline during the twentieth century. Drawing on several previously unpublished or unexamined sources - including essays, conference proceedings, and archival documents - Gehrke traces the evolution of communication studies and the dilemmas that often have faced academics in this field. In his examination, Gehrke not only provides fresh perspectives on old models of thinking; he reveals new methods for approaching future studies of ethical and political communication. Gehrke begins his history with the first half of the twentieth century, discussing the development of a social psychology of speech and an ethics based on scientific principles, and showing the importance of democracy to teaching and scholarship at this time. He then investigates the shift toward philosophical - especially existential - ways of thinking about communication and ethics starting in the 1950s and continuing through the mid-1970s, a period associated with the rise of rhetoric in the discipline. In the chapters covering the last decades of the twentieth century, Gehrke demonstrates how the ethics and politics of communication were directed back onto the practices of scholarship within the discipline, examining the increased use of postmodern and post-structuralist theories, as well as the new trend toward writing original theory, rather than reinterpreting the past. In offering a thorough history of rhetoric studies, Gehrke sets the stage for new questions and arguments, ultimately emphasizing the deeply moral and political implications that by nature embedded themselves in the field of communication. More than simply a history of the discipline's major developments, ""The Ethics and Politics of Speech"" is an account of the philosophical and moral struggles that have faced communication scholars throughout the last century. As Gehrke explores the themes and movements within rhetoric and speech studies of the past, he also provides a better understanding of the powerful forces behind the forging of the field. In doing so, he reveals history's potential to act as a vehicle for further academic innovation in the future.

Director of some of the most controversial films of the twentieth century, Stanley Kubrick created a reputation as a Hollywood outsider as well as a cinematic genius. His diverse yet relatively small oeuvre - he directed only thirteen films during a career that spanned more than four decades - covers a broad range of the themes that shaped his century and continues to shape the twenty-first: war and crime, gender relations and class conflict, racism, and the fate of individual agency in a world of increasing social surveillance and control. In ""Depth of Field"", leading screenwriters and scholars analyze Kubrick's films from a variety of perspectives. They examine such groundbreaking classics as ""Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey"" and later films whose critical reputations are still in flux. ""Depth of Field"" ends with three viewpoints on Kubrick's final film, ""Eyes Wide Shut"", placing it in the contexts of film history, the history and theory of psychoanalysis, and the sociology of sex and power. Probing Kubrick's whole body of work, ""Depth of Field"" is the first truly multidisciplinary study of one of the most innovative and controversial filmmakers of the twentieth century.

Director of some of the most controversial films of the twentieth century, Stanley Kubrick created a reputation as a Hollywood outsider as well as a cinematic genius. His diverse yet relatively small oeuvre - he directed only thirteen films during a career that spanned more than four decades - covers a broad range of the themes that shaped his century and continues to shape the twenty-first: war and crime, gender relations and class conflict, racism, and the fate of individual agency in a world of increasing social surveillance and control. In ""Depth of Field"", leading screenwriters and scholars analyze Kubrick's films from a variety of perspectives. They examine such groundbreaking classics as ""Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey"" and later films whose critical reputations are still in flux. ""Depth of Field"" ends with three viewpoints on Kubrick's final film, ""Eyes Wide Shut"", placing it in the contexts of film history, the history and theory of psychoanalysis, and the sociology of sex and power. Probing Kubrick's whole body of work, ""Depth of Field"" is the first truly multidisciplinary study of one of the most innovative and controversial filmmakers of the twentieth century.