Interview with Christina Foust
Kamila Kinyon

Christina R. Foust is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Communication Studies. Her research and teaching engage rhetoric, power, and social change in a variety of contexts, including social movements, political discourse and pop culture. Foust has been at DU since the Fall of 2005. She completed her BS in Speech Communication at Kansas State University, her MA in Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and her PhD at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Kamila Kinyon: Im really interested in how you teach rhetoric and writing in the Rhetoric and the Environment class that you have developed here at DU.
Christina Foust: It started in the spring of 2006 which was my first year here. Because only 6 students had signed up, I decided to teach it as a research project driven syllabus. We converted this into a chance to create original scholarly research, as a research team, on the subject of climate change. In that first iteration we were very ambitious. Students really wanted to put together a survey and do a public forum about climate change, so we did both. For the survey we were able to get expedited IRB approval because it was part of a class project and of minimal risk. It was a partly demographic and partly qualitative survey looking at the apocalyptic framing of climate change, so in the survey, we did a quick thematic analysis of qualitative answers and found there was some correspondence between how students thought or talked about the apocalypse and how they thought or talked about global warming. The survey questions were challenging. How do you imagine global warming will happen? Be as detailed as you can. What will the effects of global warming look like for you and your family and your world? Then we asked parallel questions: How do you imagine the apocalypse will happen? What will the end result be? We got very rich answers. We looked at the responses to analyze the crossover. Some people would refer to the survey question. They would say see the other answer for both because they conflated climate change with the apocalypse and identified the two together. For others who self-identified as very religious, there was no correspondence. I remember one person said: Global warming has nothing to do with the apocalypse. Im offended to hear you say that it does. Others talked about the dramatic changes with global warming being similar to the dramatic changes that they envisioned happening with the apocalypse.

So this was the first iteration of the project, and Brian Schrader and I presented a paper on the surveys at the Western States Communication Association conference. As a rhetorician, this was my first foray into survey research, and I was happy to have colleagues to help me because students really wanted to do the survey. Doing qualitative research analysis and doing rhetorical analysis has a lot in common. But when we presented our survey, some in the audience were very skeptical about it. They did not find the survey a valid and verifiable instrument, but we found it pretty interesting and useful. In particular, I have been talking to climate scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (or NCAR) who were desperate for some research on communication and global warming and social change. Rhetoricians and communication people and writers have so much to share.

Along with the survey in that first class, we held a public forum. Students put together poster sessions, and we had a panel discussion with a climate scientist from NCAR (Dr. Lisa Dilling), a Sierra Club organizer (Roger Singer), an environmental journalism professor from CU Boulder (Dr. Tom Yulsman), and a policy specialist (Heidi Van Genderen) who is now Governor Bill Ritters main advisor on global warming. It was really great; we had probably 60 people or so, and the conversation was really good.

When I had the opportunity to teach the class again in the fall of 2007, there were many more graduate students who signed up for it: two seniors, two masters students, and four doctoral students. We wanted a public forum, but we didnt want to stretch ourselves too thin. Each person or research team did rhetorical analysis of some climate change artifact. For instance, one student did a rhetorical analysis of Gores An Inconvenient Truth, another looked at oil company discourse, and a third brought to light the environmental racism and injustices being masked in coverage of climate change. Another team analyzed the Democratic, Republican, and Green Party platform statements. I joined two doctoral students in a fuller analysis of press coverage of climate change to see if it was being framed apocalyptically. Im hoping that the issue of survey method versus rhetorical/critical frame analysis method wont be hindering this iteration of the project quite as much. We found pretty similar themes in the press coverage as we did in the surveys. Apocalyptic elements would be inserted in journalists coverage, but it was not an iron-clad thing. It was not the only frame and way to think about this.

In general, students expressed frustration by the ambivalence they felt. They found the prevalence of nationalism and technology framing discourses of global warming to be troubling in the end. They didnt criticize Al Gore, but they really wanted to. So many of the graduate students in particular wanted to be critical, but we also had the mandate to be instrumental, so what was our role? The climate change scientists are desperate for more instrumental help. How can we persuade on the issue of global warming so people will do something about climate change? At the same time, many of the students and myself see our role as ideological critics and can see the problems with greenwashing. For instance, the vast number of political cartoons Ive read on global climate change frame the issue in terms of free speech and how the government is silencing climate scientists. When you frame the issue like that, we take attention away from doing anything to change our daily habits to reduce or eliminate fossil fuel usage, and instead we focus on free speech. So we were really conflicted on whether to be instrumental or whether to be ideological critics.

I noticed on your web page that you questioned whether the apocalyptic framing of global warming was a help or an impediment to bringing about change. What did you find about that?
Were still kind of up in the air about that. One of the scholars were relying on, Barry Brummett, wrote an article in the 80s talking about different apocalyptic rhetorics and the generic traits of those, and one of the things he talked about had the most telling, if you will, impact on human agency. Apocalyptic rhetoric splits the audience into a bi-polar community of believers and non-believers. There is really no room, especially in the eyes of people who believe, to be anything but a believer or non-believer, and then the agency is very limited, especially for the believers, because they cant really do anything except accept that the words of the prophet are true. Believers may view themselves as correct because they see the signs of the prophets apocalyptic vision materializing around them. But they cant act on their beliefs, except perhaps to hasten the coming of the end, because they will inherit the kingdom once the end arrives, as the prophet predicts.

It is in some ways very unethical. Like Brummett, Im speaking of apocalypse in general, as a genre of rhetoric. I dont intend to sound anti-Christian, but the way the rhetoric is structured for the radical believers, all they can do is to say Im right, and the world is ending. Youre wrong. The non-believers are dying and floating in a river of blood. Thats not a very ethical perspective, nor does it have much agency or capacity for human action or change. In terms of climate change, when the rhetoric of apocalypse comes into play, we are worried about agency. Basically, if the scientists are cast as prophets, and we accept the truth of their vision, then how much space is there for human agency? Is agency limited to the believers feeling right along with the scientists?

There are questions that have nagged me and many of the students since teaching the class: "What if global warming really is an apocalyptic event? Are the scientists or journalists amplifying their rhetoric, or how much is really happening? This could really be an apocalyptic event, if you believe some of these predictions are true. How much can we act in the present if we are resigned to what the scientists say is true?"

On the other hand, some folks argue that if you increase the urgency, there is space for agency, as long as the end is not inevitable. Some people who see the prophecy of the terrible end feel they must act, so that maybe people will be changed or perhaps the apocalypse will not come. Translated into global warming, we see how horrible the end is, but we also see that it may not be inevitable. We saw many journalists in our study of press coverage who said global warming need not be the end. The vision of the sea level rising, heat waves, massive increases in disease and extinction, which all sounds apocalyptic, does not need to be this way, or doesnt need to be as bad, if we produce change.

What kinds of writing projects came out of this class? How did you balance academic and public writing?
We centered on building up a scholarly research paper, which everyone embraced. I was pleased that even the undergraduates in the class enjoyed it. In terms of specific assignments, we started with a topic paper where students expressed what they wanted to do and why it matters. We included political, public, and scholarly justifications. We were emphasizing the scholarly, but we were committed on putting a public face on our research and writing. Then we did annotated bibliographies and a writing workshop exchange of their analysis draft. I find it to be very helpful to assign students a writing exchange with their peers. That lead to the final scholarly research product we presented at the colloquium we held, entitled Beyond the Bulb," which included people from Donald Stedmans first-year seminar I Care About Air." We came into the event thinking of it as a colloquium and more of a scholarly conversation, but we also put together handouts for the more public face of the project. The handouts were also fairly instrumental, responding to the climate scientists desire for more persuasive communication. How can effective conversations about climate change take place? Some students wanted to put together some very practical solutions and spoke of how to address these issues with people who do not believe global warming exists. We wanted to give people fact sheets, so they could implement action easily. But one handout goes back to our dilemma of the instrumental versus the critical. Will consumerism solve global warming? Why is it that the environmental racism is not being made public? In the handout, we talked about the different ideological perspectives that would prohibit us from acting on global warming as a moral issue. It was nice to focus on scholarly writing, but it was also nice to have that public outlet, even at the colloquium with the handouts we created. And it was nice to allow our writing to reflect both the instrumental call and the critical impulse.

What are your current research directions? Ive noticed that you work on areas ranging from environment to anarchism and conservatism.
Im currently working on a book project with different theories of resistance and social movements, and thats where anarchism comes into play. Im considering the sorts of challenges that anarchist or anarchistic movements present to traditional rhetorical theories of social movements. And then the conservatism project is part of my big umbrella interest in social change and social movements. In some essays, Im looking at the rise of American conservatism as a social movement. But Im really trying to prioritize the book right now.

Could you describe your writing process in the book project? Do you do extensive revisions?
Its the most challenging thing Ive ever done. Ive been in a reading and drafting phase for the last two months, where Im reading about different movements, or episodes, that might be viewed as anarchistic, and then drafting sections with the historic reading in mind. Its been interesting, and Im glad I have a writing group partner, a colleague with whom I exchange writing every couple of weeks or so. She asked this wonderful question,that lead into a glorious free-writing session. Sometimes you get stuck in a groove and you forget about the other possibilities. I got past synthesizing other peoples opinions and started freewriting about my own ideas thanks to her question. Thats the beauty of bringing other people into your writing process, even in the midst of it. But the book has been challenging because I will literally erase sentences until they are perfect, and I like to have finished products. The book is very difficult because you have months at a time without a finished product.

And you are also teaching a Freshman Seminar about anarchism and conservatism? How is it translating your own research into something freshman can relate to?
It has been great. Often, students come into the class and they really want to explore anarchism or they really want to explore conservatism. But its interesting because most people enjoy learning about the movement they didnt expect to enjoy learning about. Weve been having good conversations in class and interesting papers. One thing that has been helpful has been the rhetorical criticism assignments. They need to choose either an Aristotelian lens looking at logos, pathos, and ethos within the anarchist or conservative text of their choice or I have adapted Kenneth Burkes theory of identification into a lens that they can use to look at identification and creation of friends and enemies. They evaluate the text: Is it persuasive? What are the ethical outcomes, as well as the outcomes in building identity? Last spring, I met with Doug Hesse and talked about that, and that turned into some new assignments for the fall that worked out well. Both the Burkean and the Aristotelian criticisms were so much fun to read and discuss with the students. I really enjoy our conversations about Does the rhetor have the power to persuade the audience? or Are we all actually being constituted by rhetoric? I enjoy all the interesting debates about agency that are really crucial to my work, and the students were able to see the importance and problems of agency much more clearly through Aristotle and Burke. I love teaching the class.

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