first efforts

Madison and Wren vs. the first snowfall of the season

I think they'll do just fine this winter...

Book rec

Just finished Kate Christensen's The Great Man. Liked it very much.

Seven post-convention bleats

1. There is no reason - no reason on earth - that anybody should have to spend 5 nights at NCA. None whatsoever.

2. When someone introduces themselves to you at a party by saying, "Oh, you're from the University of Illinois! Do you know that's the only Ph.D. program that didn't accept me?" there's really nothing you can say in reply to that. If you want to be nice.

3. I have said this before, but this time I really mean it: I will never spend 5 nights at NCA again.

4. Laryngitis and NCA do not mix. But it can cause funny things to happen, like Ron Greene having to be me at a business meeting because I could not speak. That was kind of fun.

5. Anybody that makes me spend 5 nights at NCA because they schedule me for stuff that requires me to spent 5 nights at NCA? I will take 'em out at the kneecaps.

6. My fellow Northwestern alums informed me that Rahm Emanuel got his MA from Northwestern's rhetoric program. And Tom Farrell was his advisor. Not only does this not surprise me (one imagines that he and Tom got along swimmingly, in their way), but it also makes Rahm and me scholarly step-siblings. Or something.

7. I really mean it about the kneecaps thing.

Illinois and visual culture studies

I just had one of those moments where I realized how awesome this place is. A student interested in our graduate program wrote to ask if I could provide a short list of Illinois faculty interested in visual culture. He's rightly trying to get a sense of the potential resources available to him not just in the department, but on the campus as a whole.

The list I sent - ripped completely off of the top of my head and woefully incomplete - had more than a dozen names on it. And these folks represent seven different departments. And the minute I hit send I thought of two more people I should have put on the list. If you're a grad student seeking to merge rhetorical studies with visual culture studies, this really is the place. I just convinced myself of that all over again.

"Back off, Mister, or I'll plug ya good."

Yesterday's NYT had a great piece on the forthcoming retirement of "The Thug," the police target range image officially known as "Advanced Silhouette SP-83A." It seems that after more than forty years, The Thug's services may no longer be necessary. He's slowly being replaced by a bald guy nicknamed "Mr. Clean."

The Times has written about The Thug before; the article also links to two pieces from 2005. The first offers theories on who might have been the model for The Thug; some say it was Ernest Borgnine. The other talks to one of the artists who created The Thug, Louis Auleta. Although several folks came forward after the first article to claim that they, in fact, were The Thug, Auleta claims there was no model for The Thug; his partner was just a really good artist.

Ubiquitous image, contested history. I love stuff like this.

[image credit: NYT, 11.14.08]

Brand spanking new visual rhetoric scholarship online: POROI symposium on visual citizenship

After a long delay (caused by its server being trapped in a flooded building this past spring in Iowa City), the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) symposium on visual citizenship is finally up and ready for readers/viewers. Here's a list of the online essays - or, as POROI puts it, the "multimedia inquiries":

Hariman and Lucaites, "Visual Tropes and Late-Modern Emotion in U.S. Public Culture."

Yours truly, "'Liars May Photograph': Image Vernaculars and Progressive Era Child Labor Rhetoric."

Ommen, "One Fish, Two Fish: Red State, Blue State."

Thoughts upon reading a heap of undergraduate papers

My students frequently double-space between paragraphs. They never used to do this. I cannot decide if this is simply a lame attempt to make the paper seem longer or if it reflects something about how young(er) people have acquired writing skills in the Internet age.

They also like to use the word "amongst." Where does this come from? I don't hear them walking around saying "thou" or "forsooth."

I blame Sarah Palin for my students' new love of the phrases "calling out" and "shout-out." As in, "McCain called out Obama on his ties to William Ayres" or "LBJ gave a shout-out to the marchers in Selma." !

Results of the second ever first efforts image challenge

Thanks to everyone who took the challenge by posting stories, links, videos (LOVE that Bill Clinton SNL sketch!), and images (visual and otherwise). You may recall I said there would be two categories for the competition: oldest image and weirdest food. The winner of both is Brett Ommen, who provided us not only with the oldest image (TR eating at a chuckwagon, circa 1902), but also the weirdest image (Jimmy Carter in the shape of a peanut). Nice job, Brett!

    

Brett also passed along these gems...

    

L to R: McGovern eating toast (1972), and Dewey eating cake (1948).

And here's a short slideshow of other contributions...

Change you can see

As my friend The BAG likes to say, he's been looking forward to an Obama presidency partly because the visual palette will change so dramatically, making the study of contemporary visual politics even more interesting. I couldn't agree more. A few examples from recent days...

Folks, this gym rat is your new president (today's NYT):

And here's your first lady, listening to her husband's DNC speech in a painting by Elizabeth Peyton (article here):

 

This last one appeared over the summer, but two of us will be talking about it this afternoon at a campus symposium called "Lincoln and Cultural Value" (background on "Abraham Obama" here):

Image credits, top to bottom: Doug Mills, NYT, 11.7.08; photo of Peyton painting via politico.com courtesy The New Museum, NYC; artist Ron English, abrahamobama.org.

Coming attractions: second ever first efforts image challenge results over the weekend...

Administrative interlude

A quick note between morning meetings...I just came from a meeting where my department head (an *insanely* busy person herself) exclaimed in shock at the length of my To Do list, which I had sneaked out of a folder in order to scribble in another thing To Do. I don't know if she was horrified or impressed, but her reaction did confirm that there are good reasons why I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed this week. Which was validating, in a twisted way.