Comparative Literature Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Comparative Literature Theses and Dissertations by Author "Crosswhite, James"

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    Speaking After Silence: Presidential Rhetoric in the Wake of Catastrophe
    (University of Oregon, 2019-09-18) Myers, Bess; Crosswhite, James
    This dissertation examines eulogies President Barack Obama delivered after instances of human-perpetrated catastrophe: violent events so cataclysmic that they rendered the rhetorical arena unsafe and thus impeded productive communication. Each chapter explores one of Obama’s speeches delivered after instances of gun violence—his speech in 2011 in Tucson, Arizona after the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords; his speech in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 after the shooting at Emanuel AME Church; and his speech in 2016 concerning common-sense gun safety reform—through the lens of what I argue are the three primary functions of post-catastrophe eulogy: pedagogical, deliberative, and unifying. Obama’s speeches recall the classical Athenian funeral oration (epitāphios lōgos) and, in particular, Pericles’ epitāphios in Greek historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. This dissertation explores how Obama negotiated classical and contemporary models of democratic citizenship, and illustrates how Obama’s post-catastrophe speeches are a model of one possible process of rebuilding communication on a national scale, the aim of which is the continued deferral of reactive violence. This dissertation reveals how approaching ancient and modern political rhetoric from a comparative perspective highlights the ostensibly shared mission of such rhetoric, while also uncovering sites where the presidential rhetorical tradition subordinates and suppresses nonwhite, non-masculine identities in its establishment of a single national identity.