"Given the ever-present threat of world-wide calamity that nuclear weapons present, it is not surprising that they have fascinated fiction writers and filmmakers ever since their development. Nor is it surprising that many of these artists would seek to use their work to influence mass opinion about these weapons. What may be surprising is that few studies have been made of how antinuclear fiction actually attempts to persuade its audiences." "The Rhetoric of Antinuclear Fiction is an effort to do so. Organized around the three traditional modes of rhetorical appeal--the ethical, the rational, and the emotional--the book describes and classifies the persuasive strategies of a wide range of antinuclear fiction from the period 1945 to 1989. Works examined include On the Beach, Fail-Safe, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Dr. Strangelove, The Day After, War Day, Testament, Threads, and Riddley Walker." "During the course of these studies, Patrick Mannix reveals what sorts of fictional characters have been most widely used to deliver antinuclear messages, and he follows the major arguments of the nuclear debate as they have been reflected in fiction. He also shows which emotions are invoked most often to secure the audience's opposition to nuclear weapons and how those emotions have been generated by the creators of antinuclear fiction." "The range of characters that this volume examines includes the pacifistic but loyal Air Force general of Fail-Safe, the pious but shrewd monks of A Canticle for Leibowitz, the suburban housewife of Threads, and even the computer of War-games, which teaches humanity the folly of nuclear war." "We also follow fictional manifestations of the nuclear debate from veiled arguments for world government in The Day the Earth Stood Still, through warnings of the dangers of Mutual Assured Destruction depicted by Fail-Safe, Dr. Strangelove, and Wargames, to attacks on the concepts of limited nuclear war and the Strategic Defense Initiative in War Day." "This study also demonstrates the dynamic of fear in works as diverse as Ape and Essence, The Day After, and Them!, and dissects the powerful use of scorn in Dr. Strangelove. It also shows us the paradoxical role of hope in securing the effectiveness of antinuclear fiction." "While maintaining his focus on the persuasive nature of this literature, Mannix does consider the aesthetic value of the fiction he studies, noting that the relationship between the two elements is complex and often problematical. While admitting that the aesthetic elements of some works would limit their audience and therefore reduce the scope of their rhetorical effect, he demonstrates how the skillful combination of artistic and rhetorical elements raises a film like Dr. Strangelove above the similarly themed Fail-Safe as both a persuasive act and an aesthetic artifact."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The present volume engages visuality in security from a variety of angles and explores what the subfield of Visual Security Studies might be. To structure this experimentation, and to encourage a more careful and multifaceted approach to visuality and security, the main conceptual move in this volume is to envision three different transversal meeting points between security and visuality: visuality as a modality (active in representations and signs of security), visuality as practice (active in enacting security), and visuality as a method (active in investigating security). These three approaches structure the book together with three areas in which we see visuality as especially pertinent in relation to security: in security technologies that (en)vision security and are themselves the objects of visions of security; in spectacles of security and security spectatorship; and in ways of making security visible. In this way, the volume works to sensitize International Relations research to visual forms of knowledge and practice by examining visual aspects of security. At the same time, it allows for debate on how this particular modality of the sensible not only affects what is visible and what is not, but also how authority and truth-claims come about, and how they are compared and evaluated. Through engagement with security via the ‘language’ or ‘code’ of the visual, it is possible to interrogate how scholars in the field understand visuality as well as the economy, grammar, and performativity of visual articulation and the production of knowledge. The volume also examines how visuality can be used as a method in doing research, and as a way of presenting research results. Visual Security Studies is not a new theory of security or its study; instead, the present volume suggests that visuality should be envisioned as an aspect of security studies that can be incorporated into pre-existing approaches. The aim is to highlight how much of contemporary practice is visual and to foster an increased attentiveness to visuality in security politics, security practice, and to the possibilities of employing visual research methods in security scholarship. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security, media studies, surveillance studies, visual sociology, and IR in general.

Cold War Rhetoric is the first book in over twenty years to bring a sustained rhetorical critique to bear on central texts of the Cold War. The rhetorical texts that are the subject of this book include speeches by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the Murrow- McCarthy confrontation on CBS, the speeches and writings of peace advocates, and the recurring theme of unAmericanism as it has been expressed in various media throughout the Cold War years. Each of the authors brings to his texts a particular approach to rhetorical criticism—strategic, metaphorical, or ideological. Each provides an introductory chapter on methodology that explains the assumptions and strengths of their particular approach.

The practices of world politics are now scrutinised in a way that is unprecedented, with even those previously – or conventionally assumed to be – disengaged from international affairs being drawn into world politics by social media. Interactive websites allow users to follow election results in real-time from the other side of the world, and online mapping means that the world ‘out there’ is now available on your mobile phone. Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age engages these themes in contemporary world politics, to better understand how digital communication through new media technologies changes our encounters with the world. Whether the focus is digital media, social networking or user-generated content, these sites of political activity and the artefacts they produce have much to tell us about how we engage world politics in the contemporary age. This volume represents the starting point of a dialogue about how digital technologies are beginning to impact the research and practice of scholars and practitioners in the field of International Relations, with the collection of cutting-edge essays dealing specifically with the intertextuality of world politics and digital popular culture. This book will be of use to International Relations research academics (and critically engaged publics) interested in the core themes of global politics – subjectivity, militarism, humanitarianism, civil society organisation, and governance. The book also employs theories and techniques closely associated with other social science disciplines, including political theory, sociology, cultural studies and media studies.

The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.