Brett Ommen publications

Publications

Brett Ommen, Ph.D

The Constrained Liberty of the Liberal Arts and Rhetorical Education, Rhetoric Society Quarterly 47.2 (2017)

Rhetorical studies has long worried about its identity as a critical discipline and a practical art. Since the Great Recession of 2008, a myriad of social and political forces has provoked a discourse about the vitality of the liberal arts, which brings this identity crisis to the fore. Defenders of the liberal arts have deployed a negative critical stance, positing the liberal arts as external to liberalism as a public culture. This stance limits criticism’s political potential because it ignores the productive role of liberal cultural constraints in forming social bonds and creating self-understandings. As the liberal arts grapple with an evolving liberty to learn, so too might the rhetorical arts commit to the productive possibilities of simulation and judgment. This path would respond to the needs of students, who find themselves between structural constraints and contingent possibilities for change.

The Politics of the Superficial, University of Alabama Press, 2016

"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." —Lawrence Prelli, author of A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse and editor of Rhetorics of Display

"This is an engaged and engaging work. It speaks in provocative and important ways to many of the key concerns of theorists of design and especially rhetorical/cultural theorists." —John Louis Lucaites, coauthor of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy

"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." —Lawrence Prelli, author of A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse and editor of Rhetorics of Display

"This is an engaged and engaging work. It speaks in provocative and important ways to many of the key concerns of theorists of design and especially rhetorical/cultural theorists." —John Louis Lucaites, coauthor of No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy

In Defense of Political Cartoons, The Notebook of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, February 2011

"Signe Wilkinson gave a talk to the communications class at University of North Dakota in Grand Forks on January 17. Brett Ommen, the professor who introduced her, gave a summary of cartooning that she called 'a stirring and insightful defense of our trade.' At her suggestion and with his permission, we are sharing it here."

LeBron James and the Protocol of Display, Public Culture 22.2 (2010)

As visual images increasingly cover the façade of social space and public life, the utility of these surfaces-of-display must be examined beyond displayed content. The preponderance of surfaces says something about the publics that stand before the invitation of visual communication. Before an encounter with content, there is the encounter with surface. As the Nike, Inc. advertising campaign “Chamber of Fear” reveals, that encounter serves a vital purpose in the relationship between publicity and visual communication.

On the Relationship between Voice and Authority in On Message Communication, Javnost-The Public 17.4 (2010)

On Message communication allows political authority to fill the demand for authorised speech with a stable message reinforced by uniform performances. The strategy indicates the ways in which changes in the material and institutional mechanisms of discursive practice fundamentally alter the categories by which we understand, analyse, and respond to rhetorical productions. The essay suggests that On Message communication, illustrated by George W. Bush’s administration, functions as a particular form of prosopopoeia, the verbal equivalent to wearing masks. The project charts the variable relationship between political authority and performance to suggest that On Message communication refigures the classical account of prosopopoeia and alters the relationship between publics and political authority.

One Fish, Two Fish; Red State, Blue State, POROI 5.2 (2008)

As a representation of complexity, Purple America refuses the insulation guaranteed by indexical identifications. Our citizenship is complicated; and Obama is correct when he asserts, “We worship an ‘awesome God’ in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States” (2004). But Purple America would make private enjoyments like coaching Little League into political spectacles. Anything can be politicized; but in our practice, citizens compartmentalize their private interests and selectively expose their public concerns. Thus they mark themselves as invested in our troops by slapping ribbons on their cars then privately singing along with the radio inside.

Posture's Plasticity and the Faithful Pose: The Revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the Discourse of Bodies, Journal of Communication and Religion, 29.2 (2006)

The publication of revisions to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), the guide for the practice of the Catholic Mass, serves to reaffirm the meaningfulness of faithful bodies. This essay seeks to examine how conventions of vision serve to make bodies meaningful, as well as how the GIRM and critiques of the document negotiate the meaning of faithful bodies and how those contested meanings create different notions of individual and corporate identity. With a conception of how bodies become meaningful, the essay seeks to account for how discourses about bodily comportment inform and stand in for other discussions that confronts Catholicism in America.

Share by: