Publications

Current Work

I am currently completing a book manuscript entitled Abstinence Cinema: The Rhetoric of Sexual Purity in Contemporary Film. This project works at intersections of critical rhetoric and media studies by examining how renewed public discourse about feminine “purity” and abstinence-until-marriage augment cultural narratives of virginity in contemporary US films. Case study chapters include rhetorical analysis of films such as The Twilight Saga, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Taken, Thirteen, American Pie, Teeth, The Possession, and The Last Exorcism. The book argues that beginning in the early 2000s, the rhetorics of the sexual purity movement began to migrate into popular culture and have had a profound impact on the cultural meaning of virginity.   

Articles coming soon! 

RRSQ   Kelly, C.R. (2014). “Détournement, decolonization, and the American Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969-1971).” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 44, (April).

cq   Kelly, C.R. (In Press). “We are not free”: The meaning of <freedom> in American Indian responses to President Johnson’s War on Poverty. Communication Quarterly.

rfms   Kelly, C.R. (2014). Feminine purity and masculine revenge-seeking in Taken (2008). Feminist Media Studies, 14 (in press). 

*Available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2012.740062#.Uwja1P2yNg0

 

Selected Publications

·          Kelly, C.R. (2015) Bizarre Foods: White privilege and the neocolonial palate. In Mary Triece and Michael Lacy (eds.). Race and Hegemonic Struggle: Pop Culture, Politics, and Protest. Fairleigh Dickinson Press.

·     Kelly, C.R. (2014). Strange/Familiar: Rhetorics of exoticism in ethnographic television. In R.L. Schwartz-DuPre (ed.), Communicating colonialism: Readings on postcolonial theory(s) and communication. New York: Peter Lang.

·     Kelly, C.R. (2014). “True” love waits: The construction of facts in abstinence-until-marriage discourse. In Catherine Palczewski (ed.), Disturbing Argument. London: Taylor & Francis (in press).

·     Kelly, C.R. (2012). Neocolonialism and the global prison in National Geographic’s Locked Up Abroad. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 29, 331-347.

·     Kelly, C.R. & Hoerl, K. (2012). Genesis in hyperreality: Legitimizing disingenuous controversy at the Creation Museum. Argumentation and Advocacy, 48, 123-141 (*Lead article)

·     Kelly, C.R. (2011). Blood-speak: Ward Churchill and the racialization of American Indian identity. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8, 240-265.

·     Kelly, C.R. (2010). Orwellian language and the politics of tribal termination (1953-1960). Western Journal of Communication, 74, 351-371.

·     Hoerl, K. & Kelly, C.R. (2010). The post-nuclear family and the depoliticization of unplanned pregnancy in Juno, Knocked Up, and Waitress. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7, 360-380.

·     Kelly, C.R. (2009). Women’s rhetorical agency in the American West: The new Penelope. Women’s Studies in Communication, 32, 201-231. *Finalist for the ORWAC Feminist Scholarship Award

·     Kelly, C.R. (2007). Rhetorical counterinsurgency: The FBI and the American Indian Movement.  Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 10, 223-258.     

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