Rhetorical Society of America Conference

May 21-24, 2026

Portland, OR

“An Unassailable and Monumental Dignity”: Baldwin’s Rhetoric of Struggle

In 1963, speaking to a group of Oakland high school students about organizing for rights, suffrage, and economic change James Baldwin remarked that, “The measure of one’s dignity depends on one’s estimate of one’s self.” Dignity, for Baldwin, was born of independence, and forged through struggle against an oppressive social structure. 

As Davis Houck has argued, one primary method through which Baldwin engaged in political and social struggle was with the power of rhetoric. He went on multiple speaking tours for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. With thematic repetition, provocative paradox, and a self-conscious eloquence we might call gilded rage, Baldwin developed a formidable speaking practice, one which drew from and fed into his writing both before and after that crucible of a decade. 

This panel will focus on Baldwin’s rhetorical style, primarily in his speeches and interviews. Additional approaches may include: 

⁃       Baldwin’s anger

⁃       Baldwin’s sadness

⁃       The performativity of writing 

⁃       The writing of performativity

⁃       Television, Radio, and Politics

⁃       Personality and Civil Rights

⁃       Speech as dialogue

⁃       Interview and Q&A as rhetorical performance

⁃       Sermons and Speeches: sacred and secular as political speech

⁃       Baldwin’s hope 

Please send abstracts of 150 words to kylep@wustl.edu no later than August 6, 2025. Include a short bio and/or relevant institutional affiliation.