Academic Work Samples
“The Umbrella Revolution: Hong Kong’s Resistance Through the Politicization of Daily Life.”
Paper presented to the Rhetoric and Public Address Division of the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association convention, San Diego, CA, February, 2016.
ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2014, one of the world’s most orderly and dynamic cities became a battle zone. Overnight, the humble umbrella—one of the ubiquitous aspects of everyday life in Hong Kong—was transformed into a symbol of defiance and solidarity. This paper traces the origins of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution and analyzes how the increasing grip of “mainlandization” led Hong Kongers to turn to an unusual form of resistance by politicizing everyday cultural objects. The rhetoric of these objects is analyzed in order to theorize how Hong Kongers embraced innovative methods of protest. The paper also explores the possibilities for the Umbrella Revolution’s iconic artwork and images to develop into what Hariman and Lucaites (2007) describe as forms of visual eloquence that transform the banal and disruptive to act as signposts for public memory that can “bear witness to something that exceeds words” (p. 3).
References
Hariman, R., & Lucaites, J. L. (2007). No caption needed. Iconic photographs, public
culture, and liberal democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
“Romancing the Chinese Identity: Rhetorical Strategies Used to Facilitate Identification in the Handover of Hong Kong.”
To be published in Foss, S. K. (2016). Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice, 5th ed., Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association, Spokane, WA, February, 2015. Received Top Student Paper Award.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, I analyze the speech of the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, at the handover ceremony of Hong Kong to China in 1997 to discover how Jiang attempted to entice the citizens of Hong Kong to adopt a Chinese identity. My analysis led to the development of a schema comprised of four tenets that form a communication strategy for the adoption of a new national identity following the narrative of a romantic relationship. I propose that this strategy may be used to facilitate the engagement of national identity in times of conflict and uncertainty in the future.
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