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"Finnegan, Cara A"
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Visual Rhetoric in Flux: A Conversation
In this conversation series, we discuss some of the enduring and evolving
interests that the subfield of visual rhetoric provokes for us. We begin with
how we found visual rhetoric; questions of disciplinarity and methodology;
issues of archive and field; concerns about the objects and scenes for visual
rhetoric; and conclude with a focus on the future, core and evolving concepts,
and pedagogy.
Journal Article
Making Photography Matter
Photography became a dominant medium in mass culture starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship. Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.
eBook
Slave Photographs in Lincoln
In interviews, Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner said that he experienced a breakthrough during the writing process when he realized that the story of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is largely a story about white men who had no personal experience of slavery.1 In light of this realization, and the filmmakers' related choice not to include slaves themselves as a part of the story, the film's use of slave photographs is worth exploring. By depicting young Tad Lincoln and President Lincoln consuming photographs of slaves, the filmmakers use photography to put characters in visual relation to slavery and invite reflection on photography's capacity to fuel the desire to look. Furthermore, the slave photographs erupt into the story at moments when the filmmakers want to emphasize how timely political calculation needs to be balanced with moral imperative.
Journal Article
Origin Stories and Dreams of Collaboration: Rethinking Histories of the Communication Course and the Relationships Between English and Speech
Scholars exploring the history of collaboration between English and Speech have studied the \"communication courses\" that emerged in the twentieth century and combined instruction in speaking and writing. The history of the Verbal Expression course at the University of Illinois challenges our dominant narratives about the origins of these courses. For example, while most scholars pinpoint their origins to World War Two, our study of the Illinois course shows that it emerged as a result of the Great Depression and the general education movement. We offer a corrective to previous histories by showing how local, institutional structures and pressures often have as much influence on pedagogy and collaboration as do external disciplinary structures. We argue that such correctives are especially valuable at a moment when rhetoricians in English and Speech are becoming more invested in combing the past for ideas about how best to collaborate in the present.
Journal Article
Recognizing Lincoln: Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture
This essay studies letters written to McClure's magazine in response to its 1895 publication of a previously unknown photograph of Abraham Lincoln. The letter writers mobilized what I call \"image vernaculars,\" enthymematic arguments grounded in their social knowledge about photography, portraiture, and \"scientific\" discourses of character such as physiognomy. Armed with these image vernaculars, viewers argued the photograph was evidence of Lincoln's superior moral character, and they used it to elaborate an Anglo-Saxon ideal national type at a time when elites were consumed by fin-de-siècle anxieties about the fate of \"American\" identity.
Journal Article
Art Controversy in the Obama White House: Performing Tensions of Race in the Visual Politics of the Presidency
In 2009, two works by African American artists selected for display in the White House produced controversy among critics of the president. Our analysis explores how media discussion involving a Charles Alston bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and an abstract painting by Alma Thomas unearthed cultural tensions involving the practice of imitation, the value of presence, and the role of Black art and artists. Such tensions shaped the debate about the art works chosen by the Obamas and raised the question of how to define and place a Black president in the first year of his first term.
Journal Article
