Is a Cake Just a Cake? A Lesson in Semiotics
Remember the Christian baker whose refusal to create a custom cake for a gay wedding was upheld last June by the Supreme Court? Jack Phillips and his Masterpiec...
Mark Ward Sr.
Why Old Tactics Can’t Combat the Alt-Right
On November 18, the Washington Post detailed the satirical resistance strategies of Christopher Blair against the far right. Blair runs America’s Last Line of D...
Contesting the ‘Anchor Baby’ Narrative
When President Donald Trump announced his plans to end automatic birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants on October 30, social media li...
Citizen Critics Live:
Midterms 2018
As Election Day unfolds across America, Citizen Critics bring you unique expertise and perspectives on political campaigns and the rhetoric that drove them. Thi...
If Dems are elected, they’ll do what we’ve been doing!
Recently, a common claim (what scholars of rhetoric would call a topos) has emerged among Trump and GOP media, and it goes like this: if Democrats gain the Hous...
We didn’t go to services
My wife and I didn’t go to services. We went to the planetarium instead. Before the Harry Potter-themed constellation show, a college student dressed as Dumbled...
It’s not just violent rhetoric, it’s the power of rhetorical violence we should be worried about
It’s a scary time in America.
In October of 2018 alone, a Florida man driving a van papered with pro-Trump images was arrested on suspicion of sending fourte...
Critics Chat: Indigenous Identity and the 2018 Midterms
In recent weeks, there have been high-profile public debates about the identities and legal standing of Indigenous people. On October 9, the Supreme Court refus...
The Rhetoric of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Immigration Policy
For more than five months, controversy has swirled around the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance immigration policy, which separates families for crossing th...
An Ambivalent Lament for John McCain
At the 2000 Republican National Convention, John McCain gave a particularly somber speech. Quoting Tocqueville, he said he was, like all Americans, "haunted by ...
