Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: September 11, 2001 was significant in world history, as it was not only a disaster of epic proportions, but also witnessed the development of the War on Terror, and its accompanying rhetoric This analysis examines the rhetoric of the War on Terror from Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic perspective. The primary focus of this analysis is the September 20, 2001 address to the U.S. and the world, the 2002 State of the Union Address, and the memorial speech on September 11, 2002. The author argues that these speeches form the foundation of a rhetoric surrounding the War on Terror. This paper will engage the rhetoric of the War on Terror by describing the tragic frame, and the ways in which the rhetoric is deployed through that frame. This will lead to an examination of how framing the situation tragically leads to an act-agent emphasis in its description of the situation. Through this rhetoric, George W. Bush communicates the situation through a tragic frame to make sense of U.S. military response, one that is not limited to one particular action, but instead can be extended to other theatres as a result of the original threat. This framing serves to construct the U.S. response as inevitable, natural, and beyond question. Future implications of this rhetoric are examined in terms of how this rhetoric will dictate future action. The paper concludes with a discussion of how a comic evaluation of the War on Terrorism may be more appropriate, and better allow personal and social growth.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper we investigate the impact of entertainment television on citizens’ performance of their civic duties. The impact of entertainment shows on political information acquisition is often overseen, in comparison to news broadcasts, which are considered the only source of political information in modern media. In this paper, we borrow from learning theories to examine whether TV-dramas can facilitate political learning. We conduct interviews with regular viewers of six American TV-dramas in Greece and explore how shows affect their political understanding as well as their civic habits. The findings suggest that exposure to TV-dramas leads to indirect acquisition of insights and practical information and affects viewers’ discussion patterns. These findings support the role of TV-dramas as one alternative explanation on how citizens enhance their understanding of the political world, how they formulate their opinions and how they perform their civic tasks.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: History as Drama will examine African-American resistance as a reflection of dramatic confrontation in the old south and the liberal north. The paper will present comparative perspectives on slavery and segregation in Virginia and Massachusetts and the legal response to African-American resistance. Specifically, the paper examines two episodes of African-American resistance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by exploring the poisoning of and murder of Ambrose Madison (grandfather of President James Madison) and the trial of three slaves: Pompey, Turk and Dido. In addition, the paper discusses the trial of Patience Cooper in Nantucket, Massachusetts who was tried and convicted for the killing of an elderly and racist white shop keeper. The focus of the paper will be on the following interlocking themes: African-American resistance as drama, European depiction of this history as fiction, legal oppression of this resistance as drama, and the utility of drama in the reconstruction of historical episodes of resistance in African-American history.

In short, the paper will discuss the importance of African-American history as drama and the role the stage should play in bringing this history not only to the African-American community, but the world in general. In essence, the paper will argue that the stage presents a propitious opportunity to expand the methodological approaches to the teaching of African-American History, thereby making it more accessible to a broader audience.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: With more than 9,000 objects (or, ?junk?) in orbit, there is no denying the effects of space debris that results from all Space activities. Indeed, the expected overall growth in Space activity ? and as endorsed by the current Bush Administration?s endeavour to secure ?permanent access to and in Space? ? will only heighten further the danger of collisions with debris that will be fatal to all satellites or spacecraft. Against this backdrop, arguably, the lack of an international framework for debris ?rules? represents the most serious and challenging long-term threat in, and out of, Space. While this paper is certainly prompted by the lack of such framework, as much as by the threat of Space debris itself, the arguments here will not seek to provide such new framework, nor explain the reasons for a threat by debris. Instead, this paper seeks to articulate an understanding of the condition of possibility for the lack of a successful international effort to combat space debris to begin with. Here, this paper argues that we must turn to the role of technology and the technical discourses that surround operations in Space and that present the creation of debris as seamless, common-sensical and, most of all, inevitable. This paper thus invites us to break with the ?common sense? of technology and suggests a re-claiming of the problematic of debris as non-technical, moral, and political. It does so in two steps. First, the paper explores the modes of technical-knowledge production in the forging of Space activities. That is to say, it uncovers the ways in which technological discourse is employed in order to mediate the problem of debris not as an ?accident in Space? (for which someone may have to claim responsibility retrospectively) but as an ?inevitability? ? foreseen, and yet, devoid of responsibility since such inevitability is located in the technical and not the human. Thus, second, the paper then goes on to problematise the regime of technology in Outer Space and wants to attempt to modify the relation of technology to morality and responsibility that has been silenced by these claims to technical inevitability thus far. It will conclude by arguing that technologies belong to human endeavor in Space in a modality other than that of instrumentality, efficiency, rationality, and materiality. Instead, and here the paper draws on Bruno Latour, technologies and moralities are deeply enmeshed in one another (thus not excluding one another) which means that we should be able to locate the dimension of responsibility pertaining to technology.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Korean TV dramas are believed to be the battlefield of the Korean feminism. Previous research has paid great attention to media’s representations of female gender roles in Korean TV dramas. However, there is an absence of study on representation of males, the indispensable counterpart in the social negotiation of gender roles. This study aims to examine the redefining of masculinity in two South Korean TV dramas, My Lovely Sam Soon and Full House, with consideration of the social cultural environment of the country. The textual analysis of the main male characters of these two TV dramas show a transformation is occurring in the representation of male gender roles. The “new man” and the “new lads” under the Korean context are observed, as well as the recurrence of the “old man” and the traits of the “hardline masculinity”. These findings indicate a negotiating process of the masculinity in today’s Korean society.