Samantha Senda-Cook, University of Utah

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, a financial success in the box office, stirred controversy and conversation among US American publics. Using Kenneth Burke’s pentad, the author demonstrates how Moore situated the act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose in the film’s two major narratives--that of George W. Bush and that of the poverty-stricken people of Flint, Michigan. By naming the dominant term in each pentad, the author argues that Moore relied on the same philosophical school identified by Burke, the mystic perspective, to highlight what Moore constructed as the motivations of the agents of these two pentads. This supported Moore’s thesis of identifying the United States as classist and underlies his attempt to compel audience members to challenge this system. Additionally, the author explores Moore’s use of perspective by incongruity with his employment of the film format and his juxtaposition of the two pentads. Finally, the author contends that scholars should attend to the complexities, as well as the effects, of political entertainment to better understand the strategies of this powerful genre. Key words: Kenneth Burke, pentad, Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, politics, entertainment, classism, perspective by incongruity.

Hans Lindquist, Lund University (Sweden)

Kenneth Burke’s theory of rhetorical form helps us understand the creation of gourmet experiences by the Swedish chef Mathias Dahlgren. Dahlgren was the only Swedish gold medal-winner at the (unofficial) World Championship Bocuse d’Or, named after the French chef Paul Bocuse from Lyon. He has also been chosen “Chef of the chefs” four times during the last ten years. Mathias Dahlgren’s former restaurant Bon Lloc––which is Spanish for “good place”––was a top restaurant in Stockholm with a star in Guide Rouge for a decade. His new restaurant at Grand Hotel--the hotel where the Nobel Prize-winners stay--already is famous.

Camille K. Lewis, Independent Scholar

Abstract: When I published my 2001 dissertation through Baylor University Press, I had no idea that my then-employer Bob Jones University would consider it a threat. They would tolerate the book Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism as long as I dropped the final chapter. In that chapter I argued that while Burke's Augustine and BJU privilege a tragic mortification of the flesh, Scripture can express a robust, comic alternative. Their final ultimatum nonetheless forced my hand, and that chapter, too menacing to be published within the BJU cloister, is now available publicly.

This "Burke in the Fields" essay by Robert Wade Kenny examines the persistence and depth of acknowledged Burkean thinking in sociology, to get a feeling of where Burke and Dramatism stand in relation to Marx, Weber, Durkheim, George Herbert Mead, Talcott Parsons, and, more recently, Anthony Giddens and Jeffrey Alexander. The essay begins with a brief examination of what sociology is, as a discipline, and what it does.

The future of Burke scholarship is in the hands of young scholars who build on an early interest in Burke and develop research agendas that use Burke’s teachings for critique and that contribute to our unending conversation about Burke and his ideas. To encourage and promote these scholars, we have requested profiles of scholarship from recent graduates of doctoral institutions who focused their dissertations on Burke, and we present more than a dozen of them below in alphabetical order. They come from a variety of fields: art, communication, composition, environmental planning, and literature. We hope that the Burke community will get to know these scholars and their work, seeking them out when putting together edited books, seeking them out when putting together panels for conferences, and seeking them out as co-authors. We have included their contact information to facilitate such scholarly relationships. We encourage them to submit their future work to KB Journal, so that our audience of Burke scholars from various disciplines can become interlocutors learning from and contributing to this scholarly conversation.

Darr, Christopher R. "Civility as Rhetorical Enactment: The John Ashcroft 'Debates' and Burke's Theory of Form." Southern Communication Journal 70 (2005): 316-328

Reviewed by Maura J. Smyth, Indiana University

Mark E. Huglen, University of Minnesota, Crookston
Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama, Huntsville

As we hand off editing duties to Andy King at the end of our tenure as inaugural co-editors of KB Journal we believe it is fitting to point toward what we see as the future of the field that Kenneth Burke called “Burkology.” In our “Editors’ Essay: Towards the Next Phase” in the inaugural issue we envisioned the Burkean corpora as a paradigm in the Kuhnian sense of the term, rich with teachings and insights that could be used productively in a manner in which KB envisioned: as operational benchmarks or springboards for further exposition, critique, interpretation, and insight. With several purportedly anomalous limitations emerging throughout the years to challenge the paradigm, we will temper our enthusiasm to provide a realistic yet hopeful vision of the direction for those working the paradigm, based upon past work within the field as a whole, KB Journal publications, and recent doctoral dissertations.

Howard, Robert Glenn. "A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the 'Sinner's Prayer' Online." Folklore 116.2 (2005): 175-91.

The Seventh Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society welcomes proposals for papers and panels on any Burkean subject. Especially welcome are proposals that address the conference theme: “Kenneth Burke: Transcendence by Perspective.” The conference will take place from June 29-July 1, 2008, at Villanova University, just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2008. View the conference flyer.