Below is a list of the new books and articles on Kenneth Burke or applying Burkean theories that the editors were able to glean from the presses in 2007. This is the most current listing of Burke work available, as 2008 entries are currently unavailable.

Books

George, Ann, and Jack Selzer. Kenneth Burke in the 1930s. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Lewis, Camille. Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007.

Rountree, Clarke. Judging the Supreme Court: Constructions of Motives in Bush v. Gore. Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 2007.

Articles

Beasley, James P. “Extraordinary Understandings' of Composition at the University of Chicago: Frederick Champion Ward, Kenneth Burke, and Henry W. Sams.” College Composition and Communication (CCC) 59.1: 36-52.

While Richard Weaver, R. S. Crane, Richard McKeon, and Robert Streeter have been most identified with rhetoric at the University of Chicago and its institutional return in the 1950s, the archival record demonstrates that Frederick Champion Ward, dean of the undergraduate “College” from 1947 to 1954, and Henry W. Sams, director of English in the College during Ward’s tenure, created the useful tensions for these positions to emerge.

Beim, Aaron, and Gary Alan Fine. "The Cultural Frameworks of Prejudice: Reputational Images and the Postwar Disjuncture of Jews and Communism." Sociological Quarterly 48.3 (2007): 373-97.

Responses to prominent reputations provide a framework for understanding the growth and decline of group prejudice. In the 1930s, the connection between American Jews and Communism was both an empirical and cognitive reality—Jews constituted a significant portion of the American Communist Party and many Americans stereotyped them as such. However, by mid-century, the perceptual linkage between Jew and Communist had largely vanished. We explain the change in public attitudes by treating prejudice as a cultural framework for collective memory. Building on Blumer (1958) and the empirical conclusions of other prominent sociologists of the period, we argue that group prejudice depends on a group's distinctiveness, its perceived moral imbalance, and the discursive utility of attacks. When components of this three-part frame weaken, prejudice dissipates. Specifically, we claim that the specificity of reputations serves as a concrete stand-in for more diffuse images of social groups. While group position is not only the result of the reputation of prominent figures, the public images of these figures help to shape prejudice and its decline. As an empirical case, we examine the cultural framework for interpreting the linkage of American Jews and Communism in the late 1940s and early 1950s through the reputations of Alger Hiss, Roy Cohn, and Adolf Hitler. Presented by reputational entrepreneurs, these images emphasize American Communists who were decidedly non-Jewish, underline the prominence of anti-Communist American Jews, and delegitimize public anti-Semitism.

Brook, Douglas A., and Cynthia L. King. "Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002." Public Administration Review 67.3 (2007): 399-407.

The events of 9/11 have influenced policy making in public administration. The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, contained language that empowered the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to establish a personnel management system outside the normal provisions of the federal civil service. Why did civil service reform succeed as part of this legislation when previous attempts at large-scale reform had failed? A case analysis of the enactment of civil service reform in the Homeland Security Act points to theories of policy emergence and certain models of presidential and congressional policy making. In this case, civil service reform became associated with national security instead of management reform. An assessment of the rhetorical arguments used to frame this policy image offers a powerful explanation for the adoption of the personnel management reforms in the Homeland Security Act. This case has implications for understanding how policy makers might approach future management reform agendas.

Carabas, Teodora. "’Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad’: The Debunking of Spies, Superheroes, and Cold War Rhetoric in Mad Magazine's ‘Spy Vs Spy’." The Journal of Popular Culture 40.1 (2007): 4-24.

Davisson, Amber, and Paul Booth.. "Reconceptualizing Communication and Agency in Fan Activity: A Proposal for A Projected Interactivity Model for Fan Studies." Texas Speech Communication Journal 32.1: 33-43.

Current advances in the study of fan culture tend to look at the phenomena in one of two ways: either as ethnography or as textual analyses of fan fiction. This paper articulates a new methodology of fan studies: one that incorporates both previous research paradigms as well as additional scholarly fields. Using parasocial theory as an avenue for more exploration, this paper examines how fans communicate and interact with characters in a media text. A modified version of projective identity is used to examine fan studies in a new light. What this paper concludes is that a three-tiered methodology, termed "projected interactivity," would be most applicable for studies of fans using New Media. "Projected interactivity" includes versions of Burke's pentad, survey research, and projective identity to form a new type of analysis. Although further work must be done with "projected interactivity," it is a starting-off point for new fan studies.

DeGenaro, William. ‘The New Deal’: Burkean Identification and Working-Class Poetics.” Rhetoric Review 26.4 (2007): 385-404.

Holbrook, Peter. "What Happened to Burke? How a Lionized American Critic, for Whom Literature Was ‘Equipment for Living,’ Became Lost to Posterity." TLS July 13, 2007 2007: 11-12.

Iuli, Maria Cristina. The Human Is the Limit: Modernity and the Ideology of the Human in Late American Modernism: Kenneth Burke, Nathanael West, and Richard Wright. Dissertation. DAIA 68.2: 571.

This dissertation addresses modernity, its paradoxes and the aesthetics of Modernism by analyzing the works of three writers active in a late stage of American Modernism: Kenneth Burke, Nathanael West and Richard Wright. It takes as its starting point the understanding of modernity from the breaking down of transcendental philosophy into formal, distinctive, and irreducible domains of specialized knowledge. By positing "man" as its point of origin and its final destination, the Enlightenment binds modernity as a philosophical condition to humanism as an ideological matrix. But, as has been pointed out, the Enlightenment also inaugurated the contemporary critique of modernity that originates from within modernity itself, and that has been defined as a philosophical ethos entailing a permanent critique of the possibilities and the limits of modernity itself. This dissertation argues that the critical disarticulation of modernity from humanism is crucial today in advancing an epistemologically compelling, critical project focused on meaning making processes as the primary mode of connectivity among domains of unequal complexity. It charts lines of intersection between modernity and the Enlightenment both as a humanist project and as the germ of modernity's critical tradition. It does so by engaging in the critical reading of significant arguments in the genealogy of Modernism and Postmodernism and of three late American Modernists texts: Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change , Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts , and Richard Wright's Native Son.

Ivie, Robert L., and Oscar Giner. "Hunting the Devil: Democracy's Rhetorical Impulse to War." Presidential Studies Quarterly 37.4 (2007): 580-98.

The rhetoric of evil, so prominently evident in contemporary presidential public address, articulates a primal motive for the war on terrorism by projecting democracy's shadow onto the external enemy. In this regard, the president's discourse is a manifestation rather than aberration of U.S. political culture, a reflection of the nation's troubled democratic identity. Upon close inspection, it reveals the presence of the mythos of a democratic demon contained within the republic, various ways in which the unconscious projection of this devil figure is rhetorically triggered, and the cultural significance of its lethal entailments. The diabolism of presidential war rhetoric, we suggest, functions as an inducement to evacuate the political content of democracy, leaving a largely empty but virulent signifier in its place, which weakens the nation by reproducing a culture of war.

Jeffrey, Stout. "The Spirit of Democracy and the Rhetoric of Excess." Journal of Religious Ethics 35.1 (2007): 3-21.

If militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy depends, to some significant degree, on how we choose to describe the crisis. Saying that we have already entered the new dark ages or a post-democratic era may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because anyone who accepts this message is apt to give up on the hard work of organizing and contestation that is needed to hold political representatives accountable to the people. This paper asks how one might strike the right balance between accuracy and hope in describing the democracy's current troubles. After saying what I mean by democracy and what I think the current threats to it are, I respond to Romand Coles's criticisms of reservations I have expressed before about rhetorical excess in the works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. This leads to a discussion of several points raised against me by Hauerwas. A digression offers some of my reasons for doubting that John Howard Yoder's biblical scholarship vindicates Hauerwas's version of pacifism. The paper concludes by arguing that Sheldon Wolin's work on the evisceration of democracy, though admirably accurate in its treatment of the dangers posed by empire and capital, abandons the project of democratic accountability too quickly in favor of the romance of the fugitive.

Kimble, James J. “My enemy, my brother: The paradox of peace and war in Abraham Lincoln's rhetoric of conciliation.” Southern Communication Journal 72 .1: 55-70.

This essay examines the tension between motives for peace and motives for war in Abraham Lincoln's discourse on the eve of the Civil War, concluding that his rhetoric demonstrates the depth of Kenneth Burke's notion of the victimage ritual. At a surface level, Lincoln's rhetoric exhibits a desire for healing and conciliation. However, three antithetical pairs of underlying motives -- Union and States; we and they; defense and aggression -- disguise a dangerous polarizing dichotomy between North and South, a verbal division that may have pulled the nation closer to a victimizing war of cathartic proportions.

Littlefield, Robert S., and Quenette, Andrea M. “Crisis leadership and Hurricane Katrina: The portrayal of authority by the media in natural disasters.” Journal of Applied Communication Research 35:1: 26-47.

This study used the perspectives of Kenneth Burke to reveal how the media characterized the crisis responses of legitimate authorities during the natural disaster that affected the residents of New Orleans and its surrounding area as a result of Hurricane Katrina. A textual analysis of 52 articles drawn from the New York Times and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans from August 29 to September 3, 2005, indicate that positive and negative terms clustered around the military, the Department of Homeland Security, President Bush, the federal government, and the local government. The findings suggest that the media stepped outside their role of objective observer and assumed a privileged position to point blame toward those with legitimate authority. This positioning implicitly empowered the media to evaluate crisis responses and create a view of reality reflecting their perspective. Understanding how the media create images and depictions can affect how authorities frame their initial crisis responses.

Lloyd, Keith. “Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian Perspective: Implications in the Nyaya Sutra.” Rhetoric Review 26.4 (2007): 365-384.

As Aristotle began to codify rhetorical practices in Greece, a theoretical and pragmatic text on argument, the Nyaya Sutra, emerged in Ancient India, founding one of six key philosophies of India. Though it describes in detail a procedure of reasoning based on a five-part method of dialogic presentation, the rhetorical emphases of the Nyaya approach have been mostly overlooked. This essay proposes Nyaya's inclusion in the field of rhetorical studies, exploring its methods within their historical context, comparing its approach to the traditional logical syllogism, and relating it to the contemporary perspectives of Stephen Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Chaim Perelman.

Myers, Marshall. “The Use of Pathos in Charity Letters: Some Notes Toward a theory and Analysis.” Journal of Technical Writing & Communication 37.1: 3-16.

Americans contribute $240 billion dollars to charities each year, raised in part by writing letters to potential donors. While it is debatable what the reasons are for donors to give so much money, most donors seem to be moved to contribute by pathos, particularly pity. The concept of pathos as a rhetorical appeal has become more complex over the years, growing from a simple strategy to a complicated set of parameters requiring careful delineation. Beginning with the Greeks, particularly Aristotle, pathos was defined with greater clarity (especially the concept of enargia), with Aristotle's formal definitions of the emotions, and with the use of an image upon which to direct the audience's pity. Cicero adds to the theory by calling for the use of pathos in the peroration and reinforcing Aristotle's emphasis on careful audience analysis. St. Augustine and those who follow, including Renaissance, 18thcentury rhetoricians, and 20th-century scholars like Kenneth Burke, argue that style can also be an effective persuasive strategy for a pathetic appeal. Accordingly, the charity letters examined illustrate not only Aristotle's and Cicero's tenets but also show that elements of style, particularly rhetorical figures and schemes, are common rhetorical strategies used in these charity letters. While at first the rhetoric of charity letters seems simple and straightforward, to raise billions of dollars every year charity letters use sophisticated appeals to pity that have a long and interesting history.

Soukup, Charles. “Mastering the Game: Gender and the Entelechial Motivational System of Video Games.” Women's Studies in Communication 30.2: 157-178.

This analysis explores the logic of perfection in the vocabularies and discourses of video gaming. Drawing upon Kenneth Burke's conceptualization of perfection, this article argues that the discourses of heavy 'garners' produce an entelechial system of meaning based upon mathematical mastery. The entelechial system relies on the technical mastery of skills to aggressively defeat 'others' and move up the game's hierarchy until ultimately 'beating the game' or reaching the highest level/score.

Thelen, Andrea Zolnier. Narrative Efforts at Social Redemption by People with AIDS/HIV.Dissertation. DAIA 68.4: 1445.

This dissertation explores four narrative texts written about AIDS/HIV and evaluates each one by applying Kenneth Burke's redemption drama, consisting of guilt, purification, and redemption. The methodology is a close textual analysis using rhetorical analysis as a way to highlight the use of the redemption drama in language. The first chapter explores the history of AIDS/HIV and makes the argument for using Burke's rhetorical approach. The second chapter briefly highlights the plot of the four narratives and provides background information and context for each book. The third chapter applies the concept of guilt to all four narratives. The fourth chapter uses purification, breaking it down into mortification and victimage. Chapter five explains the way each protagonist and reader has found redemption. Chapter six concludes the research and offers limits and possible areas for future study. This research shows that with illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV/AIDS, those ill often feel the need to defend themselves and their mode of infection to others. Using Burke's redemption drama, an analyst can study language use to show how these individuals defend their medical status to others, and how this allows them to redefine both themselves and their ailments.

Weiser, Elizabeth. “Burke and War: Rhetoricizing the Theory of Dramatism.” Rhetoric Review 26.3 (2007): 286-302.  This article was named one of the top two articles in Rhetoric Review in 2007.

While rhetoricians are familiar with Kenneth Burke’s epigram Ad bellum purificandum, little attention has been paid to why the “purification of war” would be Burke’s purpose in A Grammar of Motives. Yet the Grammar, with its theory of dramatism, was written throughout a conflict Burke called “the mightiest war the human race will ever experience.” This article recovers Burke’s wartime writings and explores the impact of World War II on his intellectual development. Arguing that Burke’s dialectical project was conceived as a specific, hortatory response to the absolutism of total war, it recontextualizes Burkean themes of ambiguity, transcendence, dialectic, and action as it “rhetoricizes” dramatism, placing the theory within its original cultural/material conversational parlor.