From studying the comedy of Sarah Silverman to gender roles in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” communication studies professor, Dr. Valerie Renegar, is working to further understand how rhetoric fosters social change. Dr. Renegar is in her fourth year at Southwestern and specializes in rhetorical theory and criticism, gender communication, and leadership communication.

SU: What made you choose to study Sarah Silverman’s comedy, and what did you learn?

I am intrigued by the rhetorical processes that foster social change. Stand-up comedy presents an opportunity for a comedian to highlight what can be disturbing problems in our culture. When a comedian makes fun of these problems, the problems can become smaller and more manageable. Cultures have a way of making current practice seem like “the way it has always been.” Something with that kind of constancy is often hard to tackle. But we know, thanks to history and long memories, that the way things are now is not the way they have always been. Culture does change and people change along with it. Comedians are one of the gateways of change because they can hold up our culture and expose the absurdities in it to us in a way that helps us see it with fresh eyes.

Sarah Silverman uses an ironic persona to make jokes about gender and ethnicity that highlight the sexism and racism entrenched in our culture. When she satirizes these sorts of things, we can laugh at them and laugh at ourselves. At the same time, we become more aware with how messed up our culture is in regard to these issues, and how much work we still have to do. Ultimately, our cultural norms are the butt of her jokes, and her comedy demonstrates how backwards some of our thinking about race and/or gender really is.

SU: Why is it important to research rhetoric as it shapes culture and fosters social change?

VR: Communication is one of the most compelling and important aspects of social change. Before a culture can shift, first people have to conceive of an alternate reality, and then begin sharing those thoughts with others. People change for good reasons; reasons that are developed, refined, and promulgated through communication. 

For example, women in the United States spent more than 70 years actively seeking the right to vote. Part of the reason that this change took so long to happen was that women had to change attitudes about the nature of women and womanhood before they could begin to move toward political equality. In the early 1800s, women were considered the property of their fathers or husbands, couldn’t own property or enter contracts, and were usually unable to receive anything beyond a basic education. This version of women needed basic civil rights before voting could even be considered. 

Women had to talk about their situations and show others the shell of an existence that these kinds of social and legal hurdles created. In other words, the culture had to come to value women as fully human before they understood the need for civil rights. And once women convinced others of the need for civil rights, they could articulate the need for political equality. We see this happening now with regard to fair pay. There is a sense that the wage gap is unfair, but we haven’t quite reached a level of consciousness that we, as a nation, are committed to doing something about it.

Another way of putting it is that we have to create the language of the reality we want to inhabit. Fairness, equality, value, and agency are all built into the vocabulary of the world that many of those interested in social justice hope to bring into being.

SU: How does your research capture the integration of liberal arts and sciences?

VR: Rhetoric and communication are at the nexus of the liberal arts. Communication is the vehicle by which disparate fields come into conversation with one another, and the way that new connections can be forged. Rhetoric has been termed “an interdisciplinary and synthetic art capable of bringing together knowledge and ability in various fields with audiences and exigencies of various kinds.” (Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies). So, for me, rhetoric is the core of a liberal arts education.

My research examines the way communication fosters social change. While I typically focus on popular culture as a means of communicating gendered expectations, I have also conducted research on greenwashing as a means of stifling action on climate change by examining the BP Helios advertising campaign and tourism as a toxic activity. Communication is necessary to foster change in any area, from economic policy to scientific discovery. So, by its very nature, communication allows for the integration of the liberal arts and sciences.

SU: How did you become involved with the president’s Thinking Symposiums?

VR: For the last two years, President Burger has allowed the students in my Communicating Leadership class to pepper him with questions for over an hour about his leadership experience and his perspective on leadership. In other words, I owe him the favor of speaking to his class.

SU: What do you hope students take away from your guest lecture?

VR: I like the idea of demonstrating the way different folks from different disciplines and career tracks frame the puzzles they encounter. The way a puzzle is framed also suggests how it can best be tackled. I see puzzles from a communication perspective, while my colleagues come at some of the same puzzles from an entirely different angle. I appreciate that students will see that there is no single approach that solves all problems, but having the ability to frame things differently or using a different set of theoretical tools can lead to new insights, alternative solutions, and critical thinking.

SU: What may students not know about you, but find interesting?

VR: My family and I all love board games and reality show competitions. We play games often, and when we watch competition programs, we up the level of competition. For example, when we watch the Amazing Race, we draft teams and then root for our teams until they are eliminated. Our ability to predict winners is not always finely honed, however. One year, the cat (who gets the teams that are not drafted) won the season. She won a can of tuna.