M. Elizabeth Weiser – författare

In today’s diverse societies, museums are the primary institutions within the public sphere in which individuals can both engage critical thought and celebrate community. This volume uses the lens of rhetoric to explore the role these societal repositories play in establishing and altering cultural heritage and national identity.Based on fieldwork conducted in over sixty museums in twenty-two countries across six continents, Museum Rhetoric explores how heritage museum exhibits persuade visitors to unite their own sense of identity with that of the broader civic society and how the latter changes in response. Elizabeth Weiser examines what compels communities, organizations, and nations to create museum spaces, and how museums operate as sites of both civic engagement and rhetorical persuasion. Moving beyond rhetorical explorations of museums as “memory sites,” she shows how they intentionally straddle the divides between style and content, intellect and affect, and unity and diversity, and why their portrayal of the past matters to civic life—and particularly studies of nationalism—in the present and future.Deeply researched and artfully argued, Museum Rhetoric sheds light on the public impact of cultural and aesthetic heritage and opens avenues of inquiry for scholars of museum studies and public history.

In today’s diverse societies, museums are the primary institutions within the public sphere in which individuals can both engage critical thought and celebrate community. This volume uses the lens of rhetoric to explore the role these societal repositories play in establishing and altering cultural heritage and national identity.Based on fieldwork conducted in over sixty museums in twenty-two countries across six continents, Museum Rhetoric explores how heritage museum exhibits persuade visitors to unite their own sense of identity with that of the broader civic society and how the latter changes in response. Elizabeth Weiser examines what compels communities, organizations, and nations to create museum spaces, and how museums operate as sites of both civic engagement and rhetorical persuasion. Moving beyond rhetorical explorations of museums as “memory sites,” she shows how they intentionally straddle the divides between style and content, intellect and affect, and unity and diversity, and why their portrayal of the past matters to civic life—and particularly studies of nationalism—in the present and future.Deeply researched and artfully argued, Museum Rhetoric sheds light on the public impact of cultural and aesthetic heritage and opens avenues of inquiry for scholars of museum studies and public history.

This book reconceptualizes Kenneth Burke’s comic frame as a critical method for analyzing how publics can be invited into difficult, unresolved conversations about collective history, identity, and justice.Drawing on fieldwork across twelve U.S. museums of conscience, it develops the concept of rhetorics of repair—truth-sharing, communal healing, restorative justice, and disciplined hope—as patterned practices through which these sites operationalize a comic-frame stance. Rather than simply persuading or informing, these museums stage encounters in which visitors are positioned to confront precarity, reconsider inherited narratives, and participate in the ongoing remaking of a civic “we.” Readers will gain a new understanding of how rhetorical invitation—across narrative, spatial arrangement, and polyphonic curation—can sustain engagement without foreclosing disagreement. More broadly, it demonstrates how this reconceived comic frame provides transferable strategies for addressing conflict in public life and rebuilding a more capacious and resilient civic identity.The book offers both a theoretical reframing and a set of analytical tools and will appeal to scholars and students of rhetoric, museum and heritage studies, and public humanities, as well as museum professionals and civic educators.