Romancing the Difference

Lewis offers a major contribution to the problem of insider-outsider discourses in contemporary public rhetoric. This book goes a long way toward opening new channels to a broader conception of inclusive communication.

~Jimmie Killingsworth, Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs, Texas A&M University

Kenneth Burke warned critics not to summarily dismiss widely-disdained discourses, but to analyze them, investigate their workings, and attempt to understand them. Camille Lewis heeds this advice in considering the discourse of Bob Jones University in Romancing the Difference, deftly deploying Burke's critical arsenal, and adding a fecund conception of 'romance' to carve a middle way between Burke's tragic and comic frames. Scholars of Burke, of rhetoric, and of religious discourse have much to learn from this provocative work.

~Clarke Rountree, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Communication Arts, University of Alabama in Huntsville

[ Romancing the Difference] is smart, direct, and brimming with lucid prose scholars should envy. Moreover, Lewis is a careful reader of Burke and she succeeds in her attempt to expand Burkean theory to account for discursive engagement that supplements his interpretative frames of comedy and tragedy with a third frame, that of romance.

~Enculturation