For a temporally organized archive of my published research go here. Below is a set of core publications that express my research foci on Materiality, Conviction, Capitalism and Argument.
Conviction
-
With my co-author Darrin Hicks, we are exploring how argument and debate are used to regulate the moral economy of conviction. Lately we have advanced a multi-modal approach to conviction as consisting of 4 modes: propositional, juridical, identitarian, and affective.
-
D. Hicks & R.W. Greene (2015). Managed Convictions: Debate and the Limits of Electoral Politics.Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1010 (1): 98-112.
D. Hicks & R.W. Greene (2010). Conscientious Objections: Debating Both Sides and the Cultures of Democracy. In D. Gouran (Ed.). The Function of Argument and Social Context (pp. 172-178). Washington DC: National Communication Association.
Capitalism
-
This line of research re-situates the study of rhetoric (broadly understood as the study of political language, debate, and persuasion) more intimately within the history of capitalism.
-
M.R. Greene-May (2023). Living and Dying in the Age of COVID 19: Social Murder, Reproduction, and Rhetoric.Cultural Critique 120 (Summer 2023): 126-141.
R.W. Greene & K. Swenson (2018). Precarious Cooperation: Soft Skills and the Governing of Labor-Power. In Wendy Hesford, Adela C. Livonia & Christa Teston (Eds.), Precarious Rhetorics (pp. 234-254). Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
R.W. Greene & S. Nelson (2014). Struggle for the Commons: Communicative Labor, Control Economics, and the Rhetorical Marketplace. In J.S. Hanan and M. Hayward (Eds.), Communication and the Economy: History, Value, and Agency (pp. 259-283). Peter Lang.
R.W. Greene (2007). Rhetorical Capital: Communicative Labor, Money/Speech and Neo-Liberal Governance. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4(3): 327-331.
R.W. Greene (2004). Rhetoric and Capitalism: Rhetorical Agency as Communicative Labor. Philosophy and Rhetoric 37(3): 188-206.
Materiality
-
A core thread of my research concerns the material dimensions of rhetoric. In addition to mapping the subsumption of rhetorical agency as communicative labor (see the essay Rhetoric and Capitalism in the capitalism section) my initial gambit was to reset rhetoric as an institutionally invested governing technology.
-
R.W. Greene (2020). A Materialist Perspective on Argument Networks as Contentious Politics. In C. Winkler (Ed.), Networking Argument (pp. 38-44). New York; Routledge.
R.W. Greene & J.A. Frank (2019). Obama’s Command: Chemical Weapons in Syria and the Global Duties of a Rhetorical Presidency. In Steven E Heidt & Mary E. Stuckey (Eds.), Reading the Presidency: Advances in Presidential Rhetoric (pp. 127-149). NY: Peter Lang.
R.W. Greene (2015). More Materialist Rhetoric. Communication and Critical Cultural Studies 12 (4): 414-417.
M. Bost and R.W. Greene (2011). Affriming Rhetorical Materialism: Enfolding the Virtual and the Actual. Western Journal of Communication 75(4): 440-444.
R. W. Greene (2011). Pastoral Exhibition: YMCA Motion Picture Bureau and the Transition to 16MM, 1928-1939, In C. Acland & H. Watson (Eds.), Useful Cinema (pp. 205-229). Durham: Duke UP.
R.W. Greene (2005). Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral Power. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2(1): 20-36.
R.W. Greene (1999). Malthusian Worlds: U.S. Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
R.W. Greene (1998). Another Materialist Rhetoric. Critical Studies in Media Communication 15(1): 21-40. In 2013 this essay won the Charles H. Wolbert Award Research Award by the National Communication Association.
Argument
-
This line of research isolates the study of argument as a specific communicative phenomenon. By argument I mean claims making activities and I tend to explore empirical studies of argumentative texts, debates, and controversies in order to explore a more materialist orientation for how to pursue a rhetorical perspective on argumentation.
-
R.W. Greene & J.A. Frank (2015). Missiles as Messages: Appeals to Force in President Obama’s Strategic Maneuverability on the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria. In B.J Garssen, D. Golden, G. Mitchell and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans (Eds), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 5180-525). Amsterdam: SICSAT
R.W. Greene & A. Hiland (2014). Aune’s Leadership: Hegemony and the Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation. Argumentation and Advocacy 50 (Spring): 228-233
R.W. Greene & H.A. Hayes (2012). Rhetorical Materialism: The Cognitive Division of Labor and the Social Dimensions of Argument. Argumentation and Advocacy 48 (3): 190-193. Part of a forum on Mercier and Sperber’s “Why Do Humans Reason?”
R.W. Greene (2011). Arguing with Money: Reasonableness and Change in Citizens United v. FCC. In R. Rowland (Ed.), Reasoned Argument and Social Change (pp. 537-544). Washington, D.C.: National Communication Association
R.W. Greene (1998). The Aesthetic Turn and the Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation. Argumentation and Advocacy 35 (1): 19-29. This essay won the Daniel Rohrer Memorial Outstanding Research Award from the American Forensic Association in 1999.
R.W. Greene (1995). Malthusian World(s): Globalization, Race, and the American Imaginary in the Immigration Debates of the Twentieth Century. In Sally Jackson, Ed., Argumentation and Values: Proceedings of the Ninth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation (pp. 191-195). Annandale VA: Speech Communication Association.
R.W. Greene (1993). Social Argumentation and the Aporias of State Formation: The Palestinian Declaration of Independence.Argumentation and Advocacy 29 (Winter 1993): 124-136.