Rhetoric, Race, Religion, and the Charleston Shootings : Was Blind but Now I See

This book considers the 2015 Charleston mass shooting from a rhetorical perspective and offers an appraisal of the discourses that cradled and emerged from it. It argues that Charleston was different from other mass shootings in America and that the differences can be heard and seen in that rhetoric.

Rhetoric, Race, Religion, and the Charleston Shootings: Was Blind but Now I See is a collection focusing on the Charleston shootings written by leading scholars in the field who consider the rhetoric surrounding the shootings. This book offers an appraisal of the discourses – speeches, editorials, social media posts, visual images, prayers, songs, silence, demonstrations, and protests – that constituted, contested, and reconstituted the shootings in American civic life and cultural memory. It answers recent calls for local and regional studies and opens new fields of inquiry in the rhetoric, sociology, and history of mass killings, gun violence, and race relations—and it does so while forging new connections between and among on-going scholarly conversations about rhetoric, race, and religion. Contributors argue that Charleston was different from other mass shootings in America, and that this difference was made manifest through what was spoken and unspoken in its rhetorical aftermath. Scholars of race, religion, rhetoric, communication, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.