Tractor Supply Company’s “For Life Out Here” and the construction of rural consumption

“Rural lifestyle” brands are big business. In this collaborative project, my co-authors and I are examining a nationally successful brand and the image it creates of rurality, rural America, and rural lifestyles.

The South Dakota Cement Plant

Before its sale to GCC in 2001, the South Dakota Cement Plant was the nation’s only state-owned cement plant, and something of an oddity in South Dakota, a state many assume to be generally opposed to state ownership of businesses. Over the past couple of years I’ve been working on a number of project related to this under-attended institution, including a timeline of the institution, and a comparison of speeches that established and disestablished it. There is a lot of work to be done in this area, so please use the timeline as you see fit!

The Missouri Valley Authority

Adapted from a chapter of my dissertation, this project argues that the debate over two plans to develop the Missouri River, the Pick Sloan Plan (which came to pass) and the Missouri Valley Authority (which did not), are an instructive example of different attempts at regionalization. While both projects envisioned the same borders and population of the region, they differed in key ways on how this region could be assembled, and thus what rhetorical appeals were legitimate.

Recent projects

Memories on Steel and Vinyl

This project examines a peculiar rhetorical artifact: A vinyl record issued in 1964 to commemorate the centenary of the chartering of the Northern Pacific Railway. Following work by Woodward & Bartmanski, I argue that the materiality of vinyl records involves the listener in the narrative of westward expansion proposed in the music of this record. The bodily involvement of this “liturgy of vinyl” blurs the distinction between the archive and the repertoire (see Diana Taylor), making this material support of memory notably different than other sonic media.

Definitions of “rural” in communication scholarship

Along with other members of the Rural Communication Scholars Cohort, hosted by Tarleton University, I am working on interrogating the different ways in which communication scholars approach rurality in their work. My particular contribution is analyze the rhetorical and symbolic uses of “rural.”

Northern Great Plains Archipelago

Prompted by Jenny Rice’s observation that rhetorically-constituted regions need not be contiguous, this project articulates four distinct areas as one region: The Black Hills (SD/WY), Little Rockies (MT), Bears Paws (MT), and the Cypress Hills (AB/SK). Three of them have geologic similarities, two of them transgress political borders, and all of them have a past and present of conflict with indigenous peoples. By considering them together, my hope is to demonstrate the rhetorical potential of novel regional articulations. I presented on this project at the Rhetoric Society of America’s 2022 convention.

Northern Plains Border Radio

In response to a CFP for the 54th annual Dakota Conference on the Northern Plains entitled “Radio Comes to the Northern Plains,” I examined the region-articulating and border-transgressing effects of early 20th century radio along the 49th parallel. The project begins with an examination of KFBB in Havre, Montana, which went on the air in 1922. This work will also be presented at a South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Brown Bag session in October 2022.

Irish Script on Screen

In a rhetorical analysis of on ongoing project to digitize some of Ireland’s most valuable medieval manuscripts, I argue that Irish Script on Screen should be understood as a site of double-remediation. Just as many of these texts purported to record oral knowledge into written knowledge, they now remediate written knowledge into digital knowledge. Thus remediation, including digital remediation, is the historical rule, rather than an exception.