Stephen J. Hartnett – författare

Sweet Freedom's Song is a celebration and critical exploration of the complicated musical, cultural and political roles played by the song 'America' over the 250 years. Popularly known as 'My Country Tis of Thee' - and as 'God Save the King/Queen' before that - this song is arguably the most important political song in our national history. Branham and Hartnett chronicle the song's appropriation and adaption by colonial Americans, Southern slaveowners, abolitionalists, temperance campaigners and civil rights leaders. Because the song has been invoked by nearly every grassroots movement in our nation's history, the story of 'America' offers important insights on the story of democracy in the United States.

Standing as the world’s two largest economies, marshaling the most imposing armies on earth, holding enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons, consuming a majority share of the planet’s natural resources, and serving as the media generators and health care providers for billions of consumers around the globe, the United States and China are positioned to influence notions of democracy, nationalism, citizenship, human rights, environmental priorities, and public health for the foreseeable future. These broad issues are addressed as questions about communication—about how our two nations envision each other and how our interlinked imaginaries create both opportunities and obstacles for greater understanding and strengthened relations. Accordingly, this book provides in-depth communication-based analyses of how U.S. and Chinese officials, scholars, and activists configure each other, portray the relations between the two nations, and depict their shared and competing interests. As a first step toward building a new understanding between one another, Imagining China tackles the complicated question of how Americans, Chinese, and their respective allies imagine themselves enmeshed in nations, old rivalries, and emerging partnerships, while simultaneously meditating on the powers and limits of nationalism in our age of globalization.

The United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan have danced on the knife’s edge of war for more than seventy years. A work of sweeping historical vision, A World of Turmoil offers case studies of five critical moments: the end of World War II and the start of the Long Cold War; the almost-nuclear war over the Quemoy Islands in 1954–1955; the détente, deceptions, and denials surrounding the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué; the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995–1996; and the rise of postcolonial nationalism in contemporary Taiwan. Diagnosing the communication dispositions that structured these events reveals that leaders in all three nations have fallen back on crippling stereotypes and self-serving denials in their diplomacy. The first communication-based study of its kind, this book merges history, rhetorical criticism, and advocacy in a tour de force of international scholarship. By mapping the history of miscommunication between the United States, China, and Taiwan, this provocative study shows where and how our entwined relationships have gone wrong, clearing the way for renewed dialogue, enhanced trust, and new understandings.

Executing Democracy: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807 is the first volume of a rhetorical history of public debates about crime, violence, and capital punishment in America. This examination begins in 1683, when William Penn first struggled to govern the rowdy indentured servants of Philadelphia, and continues up until 1807, when the Federalists sought to impose law-and-order upon the New Republic. This volume offers a lively historical overview of how crime, violence, and capital punishment influenced the settling of the New World, the American Revolution, and the frantic post-war political scrambling to establish norms that would govern the new republic. By presenting a macro-historical overview, and by filling the arguments with voices from different political camps and communicative genres, Hartnett provides readers with fresh perspectives for understanding the centrality of public debates about capital punishment to the history of American democracy.

This eye-opening and well-researched companion to the first volume of Executing Democracy enters the death-penalty discussion during the debates of 1835 and 1843, when pro-death penalty Calvinist minister George Barrell Cheever faced off against abolitionist magazine editor John O’Sullivan. In contrast to the macro-historical overview presented in volume 1, volume 2 provides micro-historical case studies, using these debates as springboards into the discussion of the death penalty in America at large. Incorporating a wide range of sources, including political poems, newspaper editorials, and warring manifestos, this second volume highlights a variety of perspectives, thus demonstrating the centrality of public debates about crime, violence, and punishment to the history of American democracy. Hartnett’s insightful assessment bears witness to a complex national discussion about the political, metaphysical, and cultural significance of the death penalty.

The Lost Chance in China and the Rise of Cold War Populism offers a rollicking retelling of the fate of America’s diplomats stationed in China during World War II and the start of the Chinese Civil War, documenting how their efforts to find peace in China clashed with the anti-Communist network of right-wing advocates known as the China Lobby. Fueled by America’s end-of-the-war fury over the loss of China to Mao and the Communists, the on-the-ground experts in Asia lost the public relations battle to Cold War populists, who pushed a toxic version of public anger that built the rhetorical foundation of McCarthyism. Hartnett diagnoses the moment’s political battles by mapping a series of interlocking dispositions, emotion-based reactions that short-circuited critical thinking and empathy, instead feeding strident anti-Communism, xenophobia, and class-based resentments. Hartnett’s masterwork offers a haunting prehistory to our contemporary moment, when populism again stokes outrage and fear at the cost of nuanced international understanding.