Cooper Union as Rhetorical Artifact?

I'm scheduled to go on sabbatical next semester and have been writing a grant proposal for the research project I'll be working on. The project involves the Cooper Union Institute in NYC, which I've written about previously in posts about Lincoln and Manhattan. Here's the proposal:

The project is a rhetorical analysis and criticism of the Cooper Union Great Hall, the site of President Abraham Lincoln’s historic 1860 speech as well as speeches by other important orators. The hall and its accompanying exhibits are located within The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. As described on the Cooper Union website, these orators included “rebels and reformers, poets and presidents” including Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and early advocates for civil rights, workers’ rights, and women’s suffrage. However, most people associate Cooper Union's rhetorical significance with Lincoln alone. The Great Hall represents something quite rare--a monument dedicated to political oratory and social change rhetoric. This raises important questions worthy of rhetorical analysis. How does Cooper Union represent the acts and purposes of oratory? Does the Great Hall celebrate all speakers the same? If not, are certain advocates marginalized or privileged and how do the exhibits’ use of language and images contribute to such outcomes? Does the Cooper Union celebrate its rhetorical history or subordinate it, or both? In what ways does it reflect and participate in the long standing debate about the role of rhetoric in society?

This project engages and contributes to a growing body of scholarly literature studying the rhetorical effects and strategies found within the images and words at museums (Zagacki & Gallagher, 2009; King, 2006; Dickinson, Ott, & Aoki, 2006; Newbury, 2005) and public memorials (Blair, 2007; Grider, 2007; Wright, 2005). Although the Cooper Union Great Hall is not technically a museum or memorial, the Hall and its exhibits perform the same important work of contributing to public memory. Other scholars have published rhetorical analyses of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, but I have found no studies of Cooper Union itself as a rhetorical artifact. Therefore, this study would provide a fresh contribution to my field’s literature and deepen awareness of the cultural and historical significance of this site. Also, because the analysis would focus on both images and text, it would contribute to the growing body of research on visual rhetoric. The ultimate goal for this project is the writing of a work of rhetorical criticism that would be presented at the 2012 National Communication Association Convention and, after receiving and incorporating feedback from peer scholars, submitted for journal publication.

Works Cited

Blair, Carole, and Neil Michel. "The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.4 (2007): 595-626.

Dickinson, Greg, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki. "Spaces of Remembering and Forgetting: The Reverent Eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum." Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 3.1 (2006): 27-47.

Grider, Nicholas. "'Faces of the Fallen' and the dematerialization of US war memorials." Visual Communication 6.3 (2007): 265-279.

Newbury, Darren. "'Lest we forget': photography and the presentation of history at the Apartheid Museum, Gold Reef City, and the Hector Pieterson Museum, Soweto." Visual Communication 4.3 (2005): 259-295.

King, Stephen A. "Memory, Mythmaking, and Museums: Constructive Authenticity and the Primitive Blues Subject." Southern Communication Journal 71.3 (2006): 235-250.

Wright, Elizabethada A. "Rhetorical Spaces in Memorial Places: The Cemetery as a Rhetorical Memory Place/Space." RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 51-81.

Zagacki, Kenneth S., and Victoria J. Gallagher. "Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art." 171-191. National Communication Association, 2009.