In response to the latest "crisis" in the humanities, advocates have marched, rallied, fundraised, and-especially-argued. This essay contends that communication scholars can support the growing "case for the humanities" by analyzing argumentative strategies, and more specifically, by offering ethical argumentative strategies that avoid replicating structures of domination. In particular, we look to Mari Lee Mifsud's theorization of rhetoric as gift, which follows Henry W. Johnstone in conceptualizing argument as something other than winning over an adversary. We place Mifsud's theorization of the gift in conversation with the methods of the digital public humanities (DPH), which acknowledge and offer abundant resources for meaning-making. Through the methods of DPH, we offer a response to the humanities "crisis" that activates the humanities' already broad constituencies by giving resources for humanistic inquiry rather than seeking to capture adversaries. Our case study is Photogrammar, a DPH project for organizing, searching, and visualizing the New Deal and World War II era photographs funded by the U.S. federal government. The project forefronts visual, nonlinear, and interactive argumentation in order to engage publics in generative humanistic inquiry. By enlisting participants and sharing expertise, Photogrammar shows how humanities advocates can deepen attachments to the humanities and build broad constituencies of collaborators and allies.
In a 1938 hearing with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), director Hallie Flanagan claimed that the U.S. Federal Theatre Project (FTP) (1935-9), which she led, disseminated “propaganda for democracy.” In this paper, I explore the possibilities of propaganda for democracy to describe FTP rhetoric. My focus is a body of work that greatly concerned HUAC. Living Newspapers were full-length, documentary plays about hot-button issues. At the New York Living Newspaper Unit (NYLNU), where journalists and theatre-makers worked side-by-side, Living Newspapers wove original reporting into dramatic narratives. Using theatrical conventions, they reimagined democratic communication for a mass society. My case study is the NYLNU’s most popular Living Newspaper. “One-Third of a Nation” was most explicitly about the lack of affordable housing across the U.S. It was also, however, about how to participate in democratic life. More specifically, it was about how to look at, listen to, and speak up about social issues. One-Third of a Nation addressed these themes by way of two recurring characters: a resounding Loudspeaker, and a plucky Little Man who represented the “average” citizen. Their interplay modeled propaganda for democracy as a dynamic relationship between responsive mass media and self-conscious public speech.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.