Helene A Shugart
Biographic Data
| ID | 4489437 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helene A Shugart |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helene A |
| FAMILY NAME | Shugart |
| SIGNATURE | SHUGART H A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 144 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Sonja K. Foss: Invitational Rhetoric as a Feminist Challenge to the Rhetorical Tradition
In this essay, Sonja K. Foss is interviewed by Helene A. Shugart about invitational rhetoric, a form of rhetoric rooted in feminist principles that challenges the classical rhetorical tradition’s focus on persuasion. She begins by describing key events that led to her interest in both rhetoric and feminism and notes the feminist and rhetorical contexts in which invitational rhetoric developed. She explains the key tenets and assumptions of invita…
Sonja K. Foss: La rhétorique invitationnelle comme défi féministe à la tradition rhétorique
Dans cet essai, Sonja K. Foss est interviewée par Helene A. Shugart sur la rhétorique invitationnelle, une forme de rhétorique ancrée dans les principes féministes qui remet en question la tradition rhétorique classique axée sur la persuasion. Elle décrit les événements clés qui l’ont amenée à s’intéresser à la fois à la rhétorique et au féminisme, et présente les contextes féministes et rhétoriques dans lesquels sa théorie s’est développée. Elle…
The Ugly Truth: Abject Corporeality as Political Authenticity
In this article, I argue that, as materialized in the figures of current U.S. President Donald Trump and immediate past New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a culturally resonant variant of political authenticity has become aligned with the corporeally abject. In a climate in which conventional cornerstones of political comportment have become suspect, the corporeal abject has become a marker of authenticity, material evidence of resistance to per…
Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics
Food Fixations: Reconfiguring Class in Contemporary US Food Discourse
In this article, I engage the culturally prevalent contemporary discourse in the United States around “good” foods—broadly understood as whole, organic, slow and local—within the broader political economic context of the current economic crisis, specifically as it relates to class. A commonplace in both coverage and public understanding of that crisis is that it has decimated the middle class. Although a number of problematic assumptions inform t…
Mediating Modalities: Practicing Popular Politics
Consuming Citizen: Neoliberating the Obese Body
The public discourse surrounding obesity in the United States reveals a great deal about contemporary cultural tensions and anxieties. In this essay, I assess that discourse as shaped by and in contemporary mainstream media. I argue that the obese body serves as a field on which broader tensions relevant to consumption, which prominently characterize this historical moment in the U.S., are reflected, negotiated, and rationalized. Specifically, th…
Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture
Supermarginal
Managing Masculinities: The Metrosexual Moment
In this essay, I explore the historical moment of metrosexuality in popular culture that, I argue, rather than simply a fad, constituted a logical premise vital to assuaging the “crisis” in masculinity engendered by the phenomenon of commercial masculinity. I trace the ways in which the fleeting trend of metrosexuality was articulated rhetorically in US popular culture in such a way as to rationalise commercial masculinity in targeted, explicit w…
Making camp: Rhetorics of transgression in U.S. popular culture
Crossing Over: Hybridity and Hegemony in the Popular Media
In this essay, I assess how the threat of “hybridity,” as represented in the mediated construction of Jennifer Lopez, is negotiated and contained in the context of contemporary popular culture. I argue that, in this case, hybridity is shored up against a narrative of authentic “otherness,” secured via a particularly gendered and sexualized discourse of excess, in ways that implicitly address a crisis of racial/ethnic integrity and ultimately serv…
On Misfits and Margins: Narrative, Resistance, and the Poster Child Politics of Rosie O'Donnell
This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and s…
A Bit Much: Spectacle as discursive resistance
It's not just Madonna's shtick anymore: From Beyonce's “bootyliciousness” to Janet Jackson's cinematic wardrobe malfunction to Britney Spears' amalgamation of ingenue/sexual sophisticate, the lands
An Appropriating Aesthetic: Reproducing Power in the Discourse of Critical Scholarship
Critical theory and cultural studies have articulated a substantial and vital challenge to the very foundations of traditional scholarship, which remains rigidly scientistic in its orientation. One outcome of this challenge is that claims of subjectivity on the part of the critic are accommodated. The stylistic dimensions of critical scholarship, however, also are noteworthy, and their political implications are perhaps no less significant. The a…
Performing ambiguity: The passing of Ellen DeGeneres
This essay examines a contemporary case of a lesbian "passing" as a heterosexual woman in order to gain greater insight into the strategic rhetorical performances employed to that end. Specifically, the essay assesses Ellen DeGeneres' performance as a heterosexual woman via her television show, stand-up comedy routines, and interviews prior to her coming out as a lesbian. The author argues that DeGeneres' complex performance of passing constitute…
Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media
In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this…
Parody as subversive performance: Denaturalizing gender and reconstituting desire in Ellen
While Judith Butler identifies parody, particularly as manifest in drag, as an example of performance that effectively exposes gender as performative, interestingly, she does not discuss parodic performances of femininity by women or of masculinity by men. Study of these sorts of parodic performances deepens our understanding of what makes subversive parody distinctive and possesses important implications for the matter of agency in gender perfor…
Isn't It Ironic: The Intersection of Third-Wave Feminism and Generation X
In this essay, I analyze how gender is constructed and communicated by women popularly associated with and thus representative of Generation X in order to assess the nature of the relationship between Generation X and third-wave feminism and to chart the presence of feminism in contemporary popular culture. Ultimately, I argue that the overlap between “third wavers” and Generation X is great and that third-wave feminism is more appropriately unde…
Counterhegemonic acts: Appropriation as a feminist rhetorical strategy
In this essay, the rhetorical strategy of feminist appropriation is explored in order to assess its function as a counterhegemonic tactic. Two instances of feminist rhetorical appropriation are analyzed‐the Australian film, Shame, as an appropriation of the classic Western, Shane; and Margaret Atwood's poems, “Orpheus (1) “ and “Eurydice,” as a collective appropriation of the classical Greek myth. As a result of these analyses, an explication of …
Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media
In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this…
Managing Masculinities: The Metrosexual Moment
In this essay, I explore the historical moment of metrosexuality in popular culture that, I argue, rather than simply a fad, constituted a logical premise vital to assuaging the “crisis” in masculinity engendered by the phenomenon of commercial masculinity. I trace the ways in which the fleeting trend of metrosexuality was articulated rhetorically in US popular culture in such a way as to rationalise commercial masculinity in targeted, explicit w…
Food Fixations: Reconfiguring Class in Contemporary US Food Discourse
In this article, I engage the culturally prevalent contemporary discourse in the United States around “good” foods—broadly understood as whole, organic, slow and local—within the broader political economic context of the current economic crisis, specifically as it relates to class. A commonplace in both coverage and public understanding of that crisis is that it has decimated the middle class. Although a number of problematic assumptions inform t…
Isn't It Ironic: The Intersection of Third-Wave Feminism and Generation X
In this essay, I analyze how gender is constructed and communicated by women popularly associated with and thus representative of Generation X in order to assess the nature of the relationship between Generation X and third-wave feminism and to chart the presence of feminism in contemporary popular culture. Ultimately, I argue that the overlap between “third wavers” and Generation X is great and that third-wave feminism is more appropriately unde…
Performing ambiguity: The passing of Ellen DeGeneres
This essay examines a contemporary case of a lesbian "passing" as a heterosexual woman in order to gain greater insight into the strategic rhetorical performances employed to that end. Specifically, the essay assesses Ellen DeGeneres' performance as a heterosexual woman via her television show, stand-up comedy routines, and interviews prior to her coming out as a lesbian. The author argues that DeGeneres' complex performance of passing constitute…
Consuming Citizen: Neoliberating the Obese Body
The public discourse surrounding obesity in the United States reveals a great deal about contemporary cultural tensions and anxieties. In this essay, I assess that discourse as shaped by and in contemporary mainstream media. I argue that the obese body serves as a field on which broader tensions relevant to consumption, which prominently characterize this historical moment in the U.S., are reflected, negotiated, and rationalized. Specifically, th…
Crossing Over: Hybridity and Hegemony in the Popular Media
In this essay, I assess how the threat of “hybridity,” as represented in the mediated construction of Jennifer Lopez, is negotiated and contained in the context of contemporary popular culture. I argue that, in this case, hybridity is shored up against a narrative of authentic “otherness,” secured via a particularly gendered and sexualized discourse of excess, in ways that implicitly address a crisis of racial/ethnic integrity and ultimately serv…
A Bit Much: Spectacle as discursive resistance
It's not just Madonna's shtick anymore: From Beyonce's “bootyliciousness” to Janet Jackson's cinematic wardrobe malfunction to Britney Spears' amalgamation of ingenue/sexual sophisticate, the lands
Parody as subversive performance: Denaturalizing gender and reconstituting desire in Ellen
While Judith Butler identifies parody, particularly as manifest in drag, as an example of performance that effectively exposes gender as performative, interestingly, she does not discuss parodic performances of femininity by women or of masculinity by men. Study of these sorts of parodic performances deepens our understanding of what makes subversive parody distinctive and possesses important implications for the matter of agency in gender perfor…
Counterhegemonic acts: Appropriation as a feminist rhetorical strategy
In this essay, the rhetorical strategy of feminist appropriation is explored in order to assess its function as a counterhegemonic tactic. Two instances of feminist rhetorical appropriation are analyzed‐the Australian film, Shame, as an appropriation of the classic Western, Shane; and Margaret Atwood's poems, “Orpheus (1) “ and “Eurydice,” as a collective appropriation of the classical Greek myth. As a result of these analyses, an explication of …
On Misfits and Margins: Narrative, Resistance, and the Poster Child Politics of Rosie O'Donnell
This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and s…
An Appropriating Aesthetic: Reproducing Power in the Discourse of Critical Scholarship
Critical theory and cultural studies have articulated a substantial and vital challenge to the very foundations of traditional scholarship, which remains rigidly scientistic in its orientation. One outcome of this challenge is that claims of subjectivity on the part of the critic are accommodated. The stylistic dimensions of critical scholarship, however, also are noteworthy, and their political implications are perhaps no less significant. The a…
The Ugly Truth: Abject Corporeality as Political Authenticity
In this article, I argue that, as materialized in the figures of current U.S. President Donald Trump and immediate past New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a culturally resonant variant of political authenticity has become aligned with the corporeally abject. In a climate in which conventional cornerstones of political comportment have become suspect, the corporeal abject has become a marker of authenticity, material evidence of resistance to per…
Supermarginal
Counterhegemonic acts: Appropriation as a feminist rhetorical strategy
In this essay, the rhetorical strategy of feminist appropriation is explored in order to assess its function as a counterhegemonic tactic. Two instances of feminist rhetorical appropriation are analyzed‐the Australian film, Shame, as an appropriation of the classic Western, Shane; and Margaret Atwood's poems, “Orpheus (1) “ and “Eurydice,” as a collective appropriation of the classical Greek myth. As a result of these analyses, an explication of …
Parody as subversive performance: Denaturalizing gender and reconstituting desire in Ellen
While Judith Butler identifies parody, particularly as manifest in drag, as an example of performance that effectively exposes gender as performative, interestingly, she does not discuss parodic performances of femininity by women or of masculinity by men. Study of these sorts of parodic performances deepens our understanding of what makes subversive parody distinctive and possesses important implications for the matter of agency in gender perfor…
Isn't It Ironic: The Intersection of Third-Wave Feminism and Generation X
In this essay, I analyze how gender is constructed and communicated by women popularly associated with and thus representative of Generation X in order to assess the nature of the relationship between Generation X and third-wave feminism and to chart the presence of feminism in contemporary popular culture. Ultimately, I argue that the overlap between “third wavers” and Generation X is great and that third-wave feminism is more appropriately unde…
An Appropriating Aesthetic: Reproducing Power in the Discourse of Critical Scholarship
Critical theory and cultural studies have articulated a substantial and vital challenge to the very foundations of traditional scholarship, which remains rigidly scientistic in its orientation. One outcome of this challenge is that claims of subjectivity on the part of the critic are accommodated. The stylistic dimensions of critical scholarship, however, also are noteworthy, and their political implications are perhaps no less significant. The a…
Performing ambiguity: The passing of Ellen DeGeneres
This essay examines a contemporary case of a lesbian "passing" as a heterosexual woman in order to gain greater insight into the strategic rhetorical performances employed to that end. Specifically, the essay assesses Ellen DeGeneres' performance as a heterosexual woman via her television show, stand-up comedy routines, and interviews prior to her coming out as a lesbian. The author argues that DeGeneres' complex performance of passing constitute…
Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media
In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this…
On Misfits and Margins: Narrative, Resistance, and the Poster Child Politics of Rosie O'Donnell
This essay addresses why Rosie O'Donnell's “coming out” as a lesbian, as a gay parent, and as an advocate for gay adoption generated such little and lukewarm response, arguing that O'Donnell's lesbianism was rationalized in the public discourse by powerful preexisting narratives that constructed her as both maternal and childlike. These narratives converged with the narrative alterity of O'Donnell's homosexuality in such a way as to sharpen and s…
A Bit Much: Spectacle as discursive resistance
It's not just Madonna's shtick anymore: From Beyonce's “bootyliciousness” to Janet Jackson's cinematic wardrobe malfunction to Britney Spears' amalgamation of ingenue/sexual sophisticate, the lands
Crossing Over: Hybridity and Hegemony in the Popular Media
In this essay, I assess how the threat of “hybridity,” as represented in the mediated construction of Jennifer Lopez, is negotiated and contained in the context of contemporary popular culture. I argue that, in this case, hybridity is shored up against a narrative of authentic “otherness,” secured via a particularly gendered and sexualized discourse of excess, in ways that implicitly address a crisis of racial/ethnic integrity and ultimately serv…
Managing Masculinities: The Metrosexual Moment
In this essay, I explore the historical moment of metrosexuality in popular culture that, I argue, rather than simply a fad, constituted a logical premise vital to assuaging the “crisis” in masculinity engendered by the phenomenon of commercial masculinity. I trace the ways in which the fleeting trend of metrosexuality was articulated rhetorically in US popular culture in such a way as to rationalise commercial masculinity in targeted, explicit w…
Making camp: Rhetorics of transgression in U.S. popular culture
Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture
Supermarginal
Mediating Modalities: Practicing Popular Politics
Consuming Citizen: Neoliberating the Obese Body
The public discourse surrounding obesity in the United States reveals a great deal about contemporary cultural tensions and anxieties. In this essay, I assess that discourse as shaped by and in contemporary mainstream media. I argue that the obese body serves as a field on which broader tensions relevant to consumption, which prominently characterize this historical moment in the U.S., are reflected, negotiated, and rationalized. Specifically, th…
Food Fixations: Reconfiguring Class in Contemporary US Food Discourse
In this article, I engage the culturally prevalent contemporary discourse in the United States around “good” foods—broadly understood as whole, organic, slow and local—within the broader political economic context of the current economic crisis, specifically as it relates to class. A commonplace in both coverage and public understanding of that crisis is that it has decimated the middle class. Although a number of problematic assumptions inform t…
Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics
The Ugly Truth: Abject Corporeality as Political Authenticity
In this article, I argue that, as materialized in the figures of current U.S. President Donald Trump and immediate past New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a culturally resonant variant of political authenticity has become aligned with the corporeally abject. In a climate in which conventional cornerstones of political comportment have become suspect, the corporeal abject has become a marker of authenticity, material evidence of resistance to per…
Sonja K. Foss: Invitational Rhetoric as a Feminist Challenge to the Rhetorical Tradition
In this essay, Sonja K. Foss is interviewed by Helene A. Shugart about invitational rhetoric, a form of rhetoric rooted in feminist principles that challenges the classical rhetorical tradition’s focus on persuasion. She begins by describing key events that led to her interest in both rhetoric and feminism and notes the feminist and rhetorical contexts in which invitational rhetoric developed. She explains the key tenets and assumptions of invita…
Sonja K. Foss: La rhétorique invitationnelle comme défi féministe à la tradition rhétorique
Dans cet essai, Sonja K. Foss est interviewée par Helene A. Shugart sur la rhétorique invitationnelle, une forme de rhétorique ancrée dans les principes féministes qui remet en question la tradition rhétorique classique axée sur la persuasion. Elle décrit les événements clés qui l’ont amenée à s’intéresser à la fois à la rhétorique et au féminisme, et présente les contextes féministes et rhétoriques dans lesquels sa théorie s’est développée. Elle…
Sociology (14 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Literature (6 works) · Politics (6 works)