Rhetoric CFPs & TOCs

Rhetoric CFPs & TOCs
Photo: Kristoffer Trolle (creative commons)

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Book Announcement The Politics of the Superficial: Visual Rhetoric and the Protocol of Display

Book Announcement

The Politics of the Superficial: Visual Rhetoric and the Protocol of Display

The University of Alabama Press has published The Politics of the Superficial as part of its Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique Series. You should buy it. Then you should read it. My son’s friend points out that you can also check it out from a library and then read it. So maybe ask your library to buy it. Then lots of folks can read it. What’s it about?

The Press says: “By examining graphic design—as a profession, practice, and academic field—as the nexus for understanding visual display in public culture, The Politics of the Superficial develops two arguments about contemporary visual communication practices: first, that the study of visual communication privileges visual content at the expense of other dynamics, such as context; and second, that interpretations focusing on content conceal the most persuasive and subversive dimensions of the visual.

Wide-ranging and stimulating, The Politics of the Superficial ultimately posits that, far from serving as a communal oasis for public imagination, contemporary visual culture offers the possibility for politically engaged communication and persuasion while simultaneously threatening the health of public discourse by atomizing its constituent parts. It will serve as a vital contribution to the field of visual rhetoric.”

A reviewer says: "The book is tightly argued and well written. I felt engaged as though in a dialectic with it; I would mentally pose objections only to have the author address them nearly immediately in subsequent arguments. This is a fine book."

The author’s mother says: “This is what you’ve been working on for all these years?”

You can order through the University of Alabama Press website or where fine books are sold. http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Politics-of-the-Superficial,6422.aspx

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