Ben Voth - The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Voth, Ben, 1967

Rhetoric as genocide : death as a text/ Ben Voth.

pages cm.--(Lexington studies in political communication)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-7391-8205-5 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-8206-2 (electronic)

1. Genocide. I. Title.

HV6322.7V68 2014

304.6'63014--dc23

2014013445

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

I thank my family for their support in writing this book. My wife Kelli is a tireless editor and proponent of my writing. She raises the quality of my efforts every day. My three daughters, Rebecca, Sarah, and Anna, motivate and inspire me continually with their zest for life and practical optimism. I am especially thankful for a variety of intellectual inspirations that arose from some great American institutions. The survivors and Ellen Blalock from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC were the primary motivation to this book and the manner in which they serve as witnesses to one of the most devastating genocides of all time principally motivated my further thought and research on this topic. Jackie Johnson who directs the archives at Miami University regarding Freedom Summer 1964 was a great colleague and support to my work in Ohio. The Bush Library and Bush Institute provided great resources and content helping me understand how policy and idealism merge toward solutions of some of the worlds worst problems. SMU provided great support from my division of Communication Studies and the Meadows School of the Arts to allow me to research and complete this work. It is not possible to thank all the undergraduate students, graduate students, and debaters at Miami University and Southern Methodist University who every day of my great life as a professor inspired me to see how the world that is, can be transformed into the world that should be. Teaching is such a joy because the future unfolds before our eyes, and this book was an outpouring of watching how student lives are changing the twenty-first century into a world without genocide.

This book is the culmination of many years spent considering, studying, writing and teaching about the problem of genocide. Most central to its emergence was a teaching experience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington D.C. during the summers of 2006 and 2007. Those pivotal weeks spent with the Holocaust survivors anchoring that institution forever changed my perspective on the power of communication and what its highest purposes can be. Those seminal moments equipping survivors to better have their voice in telling their own stories about such a profound tragedy provided the moral clarity, inspiration, and intellectual framework for this book. In many respects, the events leading to and following that service at the museum are an important analogy for understanding this book.

Prior to my work at the USHMM, I had not had occasion to visit the museum. It was a young passionate student by the name of Terri Donofrio who first asked me what my advice was about accepting an internship position in the Survivors Bureau of USHMM. She was graduating in the fall, and unsure about what to do next. I thought it was worth a try. It was not long before I heard she was hired as a paid assistant.

Terri quickly became convinced that the survivors needed to have public speaking workshops that mirrored ongoing work with their writing of Holocaust memories. Terri was an exceptional student of rhetoric and excelled in both speech and debate competitions while in college. Communication courses convinced her that being able to express oneself in public was critical. She contacted me back in Ohio about how to design a public speaking program for the survivors. We corresponded regularly about the project and I presumed that based upon my recommendations she would find a local instructor of communication and public speaking in the D.C. area and implement the program. When she contacted me to say that her grant had been approved and the project would proceed, I was happy for her. I was not prepared for her conclusion to the call. She wanted me to fly out and do the training of the Holocaust survivors.