Michael Middleton – författare

Readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork compiles foundational articles highlighting the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism. Presenting a wide variety of approaches, the volume begins with a section establishing the starting points for the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism and then examines five topics: Space & Place; Public Memory; Publics and Counterpublics; Advocacy and Activism; and Science, Technology, and Medicine. Within these sections, readers evaluate a full spectrum of methods, from interviews, to oral histories, to participant observation. This volume is invaluable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of rhetorical criticism, rhetorical fieldwork, and qualitative methods looking for a comprehensive overview of the development of rhetorical fieldwork.

Readings in Rhetorical Fieldwork compiles foundational articles highlighting the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism. Presenting a wide variety of approaches, the volume begins with a section establishing the starting points for the development of fieldwork in rhetorical criticism and then examines five topics: Space & Place; Public Memory; Publics and Counterpublics; Advocacy and Activism; and Science, Technology, and Medicine. Within these sections, readers evaluate a full spectrum of methods, from interviews, to oral histories, to participant observation. This volume is invaluable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of rhetorical criticism, rhetorical fieldwork, and qualitative methods looking for a comprehensive overview of the development of rhetorical fieldwork.

Increasingly, rhetorical scholars are using fieldwork and other ethnographic, performance, and qualitative methods to access, document, and analyze forms of everyday in situ rhetoric rather than using already documented texts. In this book, the authors argue that participatory critical rhetoric, as an approach to in situ rhetoric, is a theoretically, methodologically, and praxiologically robust approach to critical rhetorical studies. This book addresses how participatory critical rhetoric furthers understanding of the significant role that rhetoric plays in everyday life through expanding the archive of rhetorical practices and texts, emplacing rhetorical critics in direct conversation with rhetors and audiences at the moment of rhetorical invention, and highlighting marginalized voices that might otherwise go unnoticed. This book organizes the theoretical and methodological foundations of participatory critical rhetoric through four vectors that enhance conventional rhetorical approaches: 1) the political commitments of the critic; 2) rhetorical reflexivity and the role of the embodied critic; 3) emplaced rhetoric and the interplay between the field, text, and context; and 4) multiperspectival judgment that is informed by direct participation with rhetors and audiences. In addition to laying the groundwork and advocating for the approach, Participatory Critical Rhetoric also offers significant contributions to rhetorical theory and criticism more broadly by revisiting the field’s understanding of core topics such as role of the critic, text/context, audience, rhetorical effect, and the purpose of criticism. Further, it enhances theoretical conversations about material rhetoric, place/space, affect, intersectional rhetoric, embodiment, and rhetorical reflexivity.