ABSTRACT Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way... more ABSTRACT Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagine social relations, recent cinematic and televisual examples of the genre feature the resiliency of the heteronormative nuclear family as the central formation from which a new social world is to spring. By analyzing 21st-century zombie narratives that have been among the most financially successful (e.g., Zombieland; AMC’s The Walking Dead) or innovative (28 Days Later; Shaun of the Dead), this study maps neoliberal ideological representations of heteronormative family relations as a key feature of popular contemporary zombie media. Moreover, these new familial narratives rely on strong female characters who, despite impressive survival skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.
This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment an... more This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the
... Glenn, Rhetoric Retold, 2. View all notes. Glenn and other rhetoricians including Vivian, Sco... more ... Glenn, Rhetoric Retold, 2. View all notes. Glenn and other rhetoricians including Vivian, Scott, and Johannesen 53 Robert Scott, “Rhetoric and Silence,” Western Speech 36 (1972): 146–158; Scott, “Dialectical Tensions of Speaking and Silence”; Glenn, Rhetoric Retold; Cheryl ...
This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object ... more This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth-century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.
... Newsweek used a 43-year-old female manager in the electronics division of an aerospace engine... more ... Newsweek used a 43-year-old female manager in the electronics division of an aerospace engineering corporation to introduce its argument. Judie Forbes was described as performing a kind of double duty, combining acquired skills and innate femininity: ...
Introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) met... more Introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) met steady, organized resistance on its ultimately failed political journey that ended in 1982, just three states shy of ratification. For many female stakeholders in the protracted ERA controversy, support or opposition for the amendment hinged largely on the anticipated effect the amendment would have on existing labor protections for women. This essay explicates rhetorical shifts and continuities within the ERA controversy stemming from its storied relationship to debates over protective legislation. An analysis of the pro-ERA National Woman’s Party’s weekly newspaper Equal Rights and the anti-ERA Women’s Trade Union League’s newsletter Life and Labor Bulletin traces these prominent stakeholders’ active battle over what constituted “protection” and “equal rights.” Thus, this essay complicates the rhetorical history of the ERA, illuminating how constituencies on all sides of the debate claimed to best represent the interests of working women.
In a period of only one decade in the United States, the neti pot shifted from obscure Ayurvedic ... more In a period of only one decade in the United States, the neti pot shifted from obscure Ayurvedic health device to mainstream complementary and integrative medicine (CIM), touted by celebrities and sold widely in drug stores. We examine the neti pot as a case study for understanding how a foreign health practice became mainstreamed, and what that process reveals about more general discourses of health in the United States. Using discourse analysis of U.S. popular press and new media news (1999-2012) about the neti pot, we trace the development of discourses from neti's first introduction in mainstream news, through the hype following Dr. Oz's presentation on Oprah, to 2011 when two adults tragically died after using Naegleria fowleri amoeba-infested tap water in their neti pots. Neti pot discourses are an important site for communicative analysis because of the pot's complexity as an intercultural artifact: Neti pots and their use are enfolded into the biomedical practice...
Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagi... more Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagine social relations, recent cinematic and televisual examples of the genre feature the resiliency of the heteronormative nuclear family as the central formation from which a new social world is to spring. By analyzing 21st-century zombie narratives that have been among the most financially successful (e.g., Zombieland; AMC’s The Walking Dead) or innovative (28 Days Later; Shaun of the Dead), this study maps neoliberal ideological representations of heteronormative family relations as a key feature of popular contemporary zombie media. Moreover, these new familial narratives rely on strong female characters who, despite impressive survival skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.
This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object ... more This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.
This paper analyzes The Lowell Offering as it negotiated issues of female, specifically workingcl... more This paper analyzes The Lowell Offering as it negotiated issues of female, specifically workingclass, sexuality and propriety. A reading is offered of the various positions regarding marriage represented in the Offering that particularly focuses on the story "Ann and Myself." I argue that this story is notable not only for its resistance to the containment of women through definition vis-à-vis their marital state, but also for the possible sexualities created in its narrative silences.
Women and Language (Alternative Scholarship), 2011
Dixie Square Mall, destroyed in The Blues Brothers' famous car chase, has recently been transform... more Dixie Square Mall, destroyed in The Blues Brothers' famous car chase, has recently been transformed online. These networked texts resurrected the Mall as an Internet meme. Our purpose is to recreate this Internet meme, but view it from a different critical lens. There is an implicit gender valence to the meme. We argue that this Mall symbolizes a feminine space that has been violated, and both this violation and subsequent deterioration is held up online for a masculine scopophilic gaze.
Labor and Women's Liberation 2 Running head: LABOR AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION This article explores a... more Labor and Women's Liberation 2 Running head: LABOR AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the book framed it as feminism's origin, a clarion call to work, and used these connections to condemn all feminism as bourgeois careerism. The analysis argues that antifeminist and neoliberal ideologies color contemporary uses of the text, narrowing the range of issues addressed by the book and by women's liberation. Ultimately, the article contends that feminists should reclaim the articulation of feminist and labor politics in Friedan's book in order to contest current constructions of neoliberal governmentality.
By drawing on Foucault's (1979 theory of governmentality, this essay posits that media discourses... more By drawing on Foucault's (1979 theory of governmentality, this essay posits that media discourses helped to create, deliberate upon, and circulate proper practices for an emergent population of white-collar working women in the 1980s U.S. Analysis of discourse circulating in mass media about the woman manager, the saleswoman, and the woman union leader shows that media outlets claimed each would offer innovative solutions to counteract the volatile economy in the 1980s. Specifically with respect to the most ubiquitous of the three figures, the woman manager, I illustrate how a logic of maternal management propagated in these discourses valorized a "return to the home" for women while simultaneously claiming men to be better maternal managers than women. The articulations creating this context established particular kinds of professional-managerial subjects, each with corresponding modes of self-governance; the privileged subject ultimately emerging in this discourse was a feminized businessman, rather than a maternal or feminized businesswoman.
ABSTRACT Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way... more ABSTRACT Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagine social relations, recent cinematic and televisual examples of the genre feature the resiliency of the heteronormative nuclear family as the central formation from which a new social world is to spring. By analyzing 21st-century zombie narratives that have been among the most financially successful (e.g., Zombieland; AMC’s The Walking Dead) or innovative (28 Days Later; Shaun of the Dead), this study maps neoliberal ideological representations of heteronormative family relations as a key feature of popular contemporary zombie media. Moreover, these new familial narratives rely on strong female characters who, despite impressive survival skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.
This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment an... more This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the
... Glenn, Rhetoric Retold, 2. View all notes. Glenn and other rhetoricians including Vivian, Sco... more ... Glenn, Rhetoric Retold, 2. View all notes. Glenn and other rhetoricians including Vivian, Scott, and Johannesen 53 Robert Scott, “Rhetoric and Silence,” Western Speech 36 (1972): 146–158; Scott, “Dialectical Tensions of Speaking and Silence”; Glenn, Rhetoric Retold; Cheryl ...
This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object ... more This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth-century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.
... Newsweek used a 43-year-old female manager in the electronics division of an aerospace engine... more ... Newsweek used a 43-year-old female manager in the electronics division of an aerospace engineering corporation to introduce its argument. Judie Forbes was described as performing a kind of double duty, combining acquired skills and innate femininity: ...
Introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) met... more Introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) met steady, organized resistance on its ultimately failed political journey that ended in 1982, just three states shy of ratification. For many female stakeholders in the protracted ERA controversy, support or opposition for the amendment hinged largely on the anticipated effect the amendment would have on existing labor protections for women. This essay explicates rhetorical shifts and continuities within the ERA controversy stemming from its storied relationship to debates over protective legislation. An analysis of the pro-ERA National Woman’s Party’s weekly newspaper Equal Rights and the anti-ERA Women’s Trade Union League’s newsletter Life and Labor Bulletin traces these prominent stakeholders’ active battle over what constituted “protection” and “equal rights.” Thus, this essay complicates the rhetorical history of the ERA, illuminating how constituencies on all sides of the debate claimed to best represent the interests of working women.
In a period of only one decade in the United States, the neti pot shifted from obscure Ayurvedic ... more In a period of only one decade in the United States, the neti pot shifted from obscure Ayurvedic health device to mainstream complementary and integrative medicine (CIM), touted by celebrities and sold widely in drug stores. We examine the neti pot as a case study for understanding how a foreign health practice became mainstreamed, and what that process reveals about more general discourses of health in the United States. Using discourse analysis of U.S. popular press and new media news (1999-2012) about the neti pot, we trace the development of discourses from neti's first introduction in mainstream news, through the hype following Dr. Oz's presentation on Oprah, to 2011 when two adults tragically died after using Naegleria fowleri amoeba-infested tap water in their neti pots. Neti pot discourses are an important site for communicative analysis because of the pot's complexity as an intercultural artifact: Neti pots and their use are enfolded into the biomedical practice...
Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagi... more Although many scholars argue that zombie narratives position the apocalypse as a new way to imagine social relations, recent cinematic and televisual examples of the genre feature the resiliency of the heteronormative nuclear family as the central formation from which a new social world is to spring. By analyzing 21st-century zombie narratives that have been among the most financially successful (e.g., Zombieland; AMC’s The Walking Dead) or innovative (28 Days Later; Shaun of the Dead), this study maps neoliberal ideological representations of heteronormative family relations as a key feature of popular contemporary zombie media. Moreover, these new familial narratives rely on strong female characters who, despite impressive survival skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.
This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object ... more This essay assesses the feminist potential of workplace flexibility when it emerged as an object of knowledge in 1980s US public culture. The keyword flexibility, which crossed economic discourses about topics ranging from production to remuneration to consumption, was constructed as coextensive with feminism at this time. The essay begins by analyzing popular knowledge concerning labor flexibility created in scholarship and mainstream news. Next, the paper focuses on the contemporaneous articulation of flexibility to feminism. Since 1980, news, scholarship, and film argued that flexibility might provide a feminist antidote for late twentieth century capitalism's harsh draining of labor from bodies. Particularly, flexible working conditions became publicized as a way that mothers could be better accommodated in the workplace. Yet as the century waned, flexibility failed to uproot standard time-intensive models of work and excluded some women from job opportunities and job security. When flexibility appeared to fail, pundits blamed feminism for wage-earning women's difficulty balancing family and workplace. This analysis shows that the various contradictory practices understood as flexibility rendered it troublesome as a feminist strategy. The paper concludes with an examination of the contemporary implications of this recent discursive history of flexibility.
This paper analyzes The Lowell Offering as it negotiated issues of female, specifically workingcl... more This paper analyzes The Lowell Offering as it negotiated issues of female, specifically workingclass, sexuality and propriety. A reading is offered of the various positions regarding marriage represented in the Offering that particularly focuses on the story "Ann and Myself." I argue that this story is notable not only for its resistance to the containment of women through definition vis-à-vis their marital state, but also for the possible sexualities created in its narrative silences.
Women and Language (Alternative Scholarship), 2011
Dixie Square Mall, destroyed in The Blues Brothers' famous car chase, has recently been transform... more Dixie Square Mall, destroyed in The Blues Brothers' famous car chase, has recently been transformed online. These networked texts resurrected the Mall as an Internet meme. Our purpose is to recreate this Internet meme, but view it from a different critical lens. There is an implicit gender valence to the meme. We argue that this Mall symbolizes a feminine space that has been violated, and both this violation and subsequent deterioration is held up online for a masculine scopophilic gaze.
Labor and Women's Liberation 2 Running head: LABOR AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION This article explores a... more Labor and Women's Liberation 2 Running head: LABOR AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the book framed it as feminism's origin, a clarion call to work, and used these connections to condemn all feminism as bourgeois careerism. The analysis argues that antifeminist and neoliberal ideologies color contemporary uses of the text, narrowing the range of issues addressed by the book and by women's liberation. Ultimately, the article contends that feminists should reclaim the articulation of feminist and labor politics in Friedan's book in order to contest current constructions of neoliberal governmentality.
By drawing on Foucault's (1979 theory of governmentality, this essay posits that media discourses... more By drawing on Foucault's (1979 theory of governmentality, this essay posits that media discourses helped to create, deliberate upon, and circulate proper practices for an emergent population of white-collar working women in the 1980s U.S. Analysis of discourse circulating in mass media about the woman manager, the saleswoman, and the woman union leader shows that media outlets claimed each would offer innovative solutions to counteract the volatile economy in the 1980s. Specifically with respect to the most ubiquitous of the three figures, the woman manager, I illustrate how a logic of maternal management propagated in these discourses valorized a "return to the home" for women while simultaneously claiming men to be better maternal managers than women. The articulations creating this context established particular kinds of professional-managerial subjects, each with corresponding modes of self-governance; the privileged subject ultimately emerging in this discourse was a feminized businessman, rather than a maternal or feminized businesswoman.
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skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.
skills, consistently embody essentialized feminine difference and ultimately choose to return to a traditional domestic sphere. Overall, we demonstrate why contemporary zombie media has yet to fulfill its potential to radically reimagine social relations in transformative ways by instead working to recenter the heteronormative family as the essential feature of a functioning society.