Full abstracts are available for each of the paper sessions at the 2026 Symposium in Portland, Oregon.
The following abstracts are for Panel 4: Writing Histories of the Present from 10:15-11:30 a.m. on Friday, May 22.
To navigate back to the main program, click here.
“Rhetoric of Historical Revisionism” — Louise Zamparutti (University of Wisconsin—La Crosse)
Abstract: In the context of current devaluing of what is considered historical “fact,” rhetorical inquiry can examine how hegemonic powers deploy affective topoi that make lack of knowledge more persuasive than empirical evidence. This paper is a case study of one instance of historical revision: the issue of the “foibe” in Italy. The foibe refer to the killings of Italian Fascist officials and sympathizers by Yugoslavian antifascist partisans during World War II. Popular media presents this as a “genocide” of innocent Italians. Italy’s current prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) party advance this claim by commissioning public memorials, popular literature, and films that depict Fascist soldiers as martyred victims. While scholars try to disprove the “genocide” myth by pointing to the lack of physical evidence or documentation, their research has little effect on mass acceptance of this myth. I argue that, in fact, the lack of evidence functions as evidentia and produces enargeia, “the ability to make a topic not only evident, but palpable, ‘vivid’” (Ginzburg 29). I investigate the use of mystery as a topos that enacts enargeia, summoning a method of believing that echoes a religious fervor and disarms scientific inquiry. This rhetorical analysis of historical revisionism pinpoints specific tactics that devalue questioning and make lack of evidence more palpable than science. I conclude this paper by proposing some ways that rhetorical scholars might help produce an alternate enargeia, one that disarms the persuasive appeal of exclusionary, extremist, and oppressive power systems.
“Rhetorical Illusion: Interpellation through the Unseen Forces” — Shatha Alhubail (Independent Scholar)
Abstract: This paper interrogates rhetorical strategies and the persuasive power of religious political rhetoric by analyzing Khomeini’s revolutionary discourse in Shia Islam. It draws from an ongoing project on Islamic Shia rhetoric, with special attention to how sacred symbols, collective memory, and doctrinal as well as ideological rhetoric function persuasively within political discourse. The project contributes to rhetorical history by examining a relatively underexplored domain of contemporary Shia political rhetoric while also participating in methodological conversations by offering an approach that integrates religious ritual, historical memory, and ideological formation as persuasive forcesAt its core, this study contends that Khomeini’s rhetoric draws on centuries of Shia historical memory and symbolism, reactivating them to generate rhetorical power and produce political subjects. Using a historical rhetorical methodology, it scrutinizes religious texts, speeches, and performances to trace the cumulative effect of rhetorical traditions over time and invites interdisciplinary conversations about religious rhetorical power, the relationship between propaganda and religion, memory and persuasion, and the powerful interaction between religious ideology and rhetoric when employed within the political sphere. Informed by Althusser’s notion of interpellation, the paper argues that Khomeini’s rhetoric represents a potent form of ideological subject formation. By adopting a divinely ordained persona and invoking sacred authority, his discourse blurs the boundaries between political loyalty and spiritual devotion, cultivating internalized obedience in his audiences. Through close analysis of Shia narratives such as martyrdom, suffering, and Messianic hope, this study illustrates how audiences are rhetorically “hailed” into subject positions where submission becomes a sacred obligation.
“Literacy as Artificial Intelligence: An Ancient Perspective” — Adam Cody (Virginia Military Institute)
Abstract: The 2024 special issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly titled “Rhetoric of/with AI” indicates the salience of artificial intelligence—and especially of large language models—for rhetorical studies. This paper argues that historians of rhetoric may be well-positioned to study and engage the topic of generative AI by tracing the development of rhetoric through analogous shifts in social, political, economic, and technological circumstances. One such analogous shift with which rhetorical scholars may be acquainted is the development of literate culture in 5th-century BCE Athens. The declamation On the Writers of Written Speeches by the 4th-century BCE sophist Alcidamas provides an opportune vantage point from which to survey the tension between orality and literacy during this period. I analyze Alcidamas’s speech through the terminological framework of RSQ’s 2024 “Rhetoric of/with AI” special issue. My analysis of On the Writers of Written Speeches offers at least two contributions to this contemporary concern for rhetorical studies. First, although Alcidamas identifies with regard to writing many of the same challenges and opportunities associated with generative AI in rhetorical studies, his misgivings do not seem to be commonplace among scholars of rhetoric today. It may come to pass that large language models could be regarded in rhetorical studies with a similar legitimacy. Second, following the trajectory of Alcidamas’s argument back beyond literacy and orality points toward a fundamental and ineluctable humanity in rhetoric distinct from any specific communication medium.
“The Stable of Volatility: Corporeal Rhetoric and the Digital Performance of Far-Right Femininity” — Cassie Kutev (Texas Woman’s University)
Abstract: This research-in-progress investigates the rhetorical strategies utilized by high-visibility women within the far-right, such as Erika Kirk, Nancy Mace, Kristi Noem, and Candace Owens, to construct identity and moral authority on Instagram. I argue that their digital performances represent a modern adaptation of historical movements centered on biological perfection and ancestral preservation, specifically drawing parallels to the Fitter Families competitions of the American Progressive Era and the Lebensborn movement’s emphasis on idealized maternity. Central to this project is a corporeal analysis that treats the physical body as a primary rhetorical text. Using Foucault’s “medical gaze,” the study interrogates how identity is performed through bodily regimentation and cosmetic conformity, signaling a sacred gender partition rooted in the preservation of lineage. This visual discipline serves as a form of digital panopticism where lifestyle curation, including pastoral domesticity, stylized maternal narratives, and physical vitality, functions as a marker of movement belonging. By linking the perfected digital body to historical pursuits of social and biological optimization, the study reveals how contemporary aesthetics render rigid gender politics emotionally resonant and aspirational.