2.04.2006
Deadline: July 1, 2006

CALL FOR CHAPTERS:
PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC IN SOCIETIES IN TRANSITION

The end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century have been marked by political transitions in Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. As many scholars have already noted, these transitions have also been accompanied by deep transformations in discourse.

The editors invite proposals for chapters that explore the diverse character and roles of presidential rhetoric in the context of political transformation. Presidential rhetoric studies have focused largely on the role of presidential rhetoric in the political cultures of established Western democracies (especially the United States and France). The planned volume aims to examine presidential rhetoric in societies in transition. Such an examination may present new perspectives or challenges for presidential rhetoric studies, provide comparative data, test established notions, or help develop new ones. The focus of the volume is on Eastern and Central Europe and post-Soviet countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Russia, the Ukraine, and countries of former Soviet Union) where political independence, democratization, marketization of the economy, globalization, and geopolitical reorientation within new political and economic alliances present new challenges to presidential discourse and action.

Chapters may focus on the changing character, roles, strategies, and meanings of the presidency and of presidential rhetoric, the character of presidential leadership, the relationships between presidential rhetoric and power, as well as between presidential rhetoric and the changing meanings of the presidency, and other problems of presidential rhetoric in transformational contexts. The editors especially encourage contributions that emphasize the relationship between presidential rhetoric and historical context, as well as contributions that focus on specifically transitional figures such as Lech Walesa in Poland, Vaclav Havel in, first, Czechoslovakia and then in the Czech Republic, or Boris Yeltsin in Russia, as well as figures that present interesting issues for presidential rhetoric studies.

Please direct proposals or inquiries to Noemi Marin, Florida Atlantic University (nmarin@fau.edu) and Cezar Ornatowski, San Diego State University (ornat@mail.sdsu.edu). Deadline for submission of proposals: July 1, 2006.