John Sloop
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Item "A Van with a Bar and a Bed": Ritualized Gender Norms in the John/Joan Case(National Communication Association (U.S.), 2000-04) Sloop, John M., 1963-Through a critical reading of the mass mediated discourse that arose in the wake of the John/Joan or "twins" case, this analysis investigates contemporary iterations of gender performativity, gendered morals and feminism. The author calls for a complication of gender culture and feminism in the public sphere.Item "Apology Made to Whoever Pleases": Cultural Discipline and the Grounds of Interpretation(Eastern Communication Association, 1994) Sloop, John M., 1963-After reviewing contemporary cultural and media scholarship that emphasizes the role of audiences in creating resistant readings of texts, this essay suggests that such audience-oriented theories should be re-supplemented with a concern for the ways in which texts, the grounds of interpretation, are constrained by cultural forces. Through a critical analysis of the controversy that ensued after Public Enemy's Professor Griff made universalizing claims about Jews, the essay investigates the economic, political, and ideological mechanisms that encouraged the band to withdraw the text (Griff's comments) and replace it with a text more consistent with the dominant cultural ideology of liberalism.Item Disciplining the Transgendered: Brandon Teena, Public Representation, and Normativity(Western States Communication Association, 2000) Sloop, John M., 1963-Item The Politics of Authenticity in Postmodern Rock Culture: The Case of Negativland and The Letter "U" and the Numeral "2"(Speech Communication Association, 1998-03) Sloop, John M., 1963-; Herman, Andrew, 1957-Based on recent concerns with the notion of authenticity and effective politics in contemporary popular culture and scholarship on culture, this essay uses a case study of the legal and popular controversy surrounding the Negativland recording, "The Letter 'U' and the Number '2'." The analysis points to the organic development of alternative logics in the changing landscape of popular culture. Moreover, we point to the relationship between the "pastiche" style of the Negativland recording as a metaphor for authenticity and justice in postmodern rock culture.Item Critical Rhetorics of Controversy(Western States Communication Association, 1999) Sloop, John M., 1963-; Ono, Kent A., 1964-We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the many issues raised in Kendall Phillips's (1999a) essay "A Rhetoric of Controversy" and Thomas Goodnight's (1999) essay/response "Mssrs. Dinkins, Rangel and Savage in Colloquy on the African Burial Ground: A Companion Reading." Our interest in "controversy" and "the political," among other issues they raise, leads us to respond to their arguments, to draw some connections to our own work where relevant, and, hopefully, to expand the terms of the conversation between Phillips and Goodnight in order to encourage other scholars interested in these subjects to participate in the discussion.Item The Critique of Vernacular Discourse(Speech Communication Association, 1995-03) Sloop, John M., 1963-; Ono, Kent A., 1964-Critical rhetoricians should, by criticizing vernacular discourse, follow the path of those who have discussed the rhetoric of the oppressed. The critique of powerful discourse has broad "historical" impact and therefore has been the primary mode of critique within rhetorical criticism. In addition to the critique of widely disseminated texts, critics should examine texts that profoundly influence vernacular communities and communitas. We conceptualize how a study of vernacular discourse could be carried out by defining vernacular, describing the critique of vernacular discourse, explaining the purpose of such criticism, and illustrating our approach through a brief study of one example of vernacular discourse: World War II representations of women in the Pacific Citizen, a Japanese American newspaper.Item "The Parent I Never Had": The Contemporary Construction of Alternatives to Incarceration(Central States Communication Association (U.S.), 1992) Sloop, John M., 1963-This essay is developed along two lines. First, I investigate contemporary arguments and public discussions from which the concept of "alternative punishments" is being constructed and speculate about the influence of these constructions on how prisoners, laws, and morality are viewed publicly. I suggest that the current construction of alternatives to incarceration encourage all members of our culture to accept and encourage dominant definitions of "proper" behavior. Second, I use the essay as a representation of the utility of recent moves to incorporate poststructuralist themes into communication studies, most notably those emerging from the recent discussion of a "critical rhetoric."Item Riding in Cars Between Men(National Communication Association (U.S.), 2005-09) Sloop, John M., 1963-Through an analysis of public discourse surrounding two different controversies featuring professional race car driver, Deborah Renshaw, this article foregrounds contemporary relationships between gender and (auto)mobility. It draws on both theories of gender performativity and media ecology to outline the ways in which the automobile as a technology influences gender performance and the ways in which the automobile is understood through cultural discourses that are already largely gendered. The essay uses the discourse surrounding the Renshaw case to problematize both contemporary gender norms and understandings of the relationship between prosthetic media and the body.Item "What Lips These Lips Have Kissed": Refiguring the Politics of Queer Public Kissing(National Communication Association (U.S.), 2006-03) Sloop, John M., 1963-; Morris, Charles E., 1969-In this essay, we argue that man-on-man kissing, and its representations, have been insufficiently mobilized within apolitical, incremental, and assimilationist pro-gay logics of visibility. In response, we call for a perspective that understands man-on-man kissing as a political imperative and kairotic. After a critical analysis of man-on-man kissing's relation to such politics, we discuss how it can be utilized as a juggernaut in a broader project of queer world making, and investigate ideological, political, and economic barriers to the creation of this queer kissing "visual mass." We conclude with relevant implications regarding same-sex kissing and the politics of visible pleasure.Item The Emperor's New Makeup: Cool Cynicism and Popular Music Criticism(Bowling Green State University. Dept. of Sociology, 1999) Sloop, John M., 1963-