Professor Kent Ono to speak at the University of Iowa

Professor Kent Ono is set to speak at the University of Iowa this weekend on "'Witnessing' and 'Pledging:' Activist Imagining Sanctuary." After the election of Donald Trump, immigration activists across the United States mobilized and mobilized rhetoric in new ways. In part in response to Donald Trump’s presidential decree on sanctuary, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” activists began providing “how-to manuals” and “tool kits” describing step-by-step processes for transforming churches into sanctuaries. Professor Ono's talk investigates these instruction manuals for building sanctuaries, paying particular attention to rhetorics of “witnessing” the oppression of immigrant people and “pledging” to prevent inhumane treatment of them—two resonant concepts within the contemporary sanctuary movement. Scholars of conscience have much to learn about the rhetoric of this current form of activist civil disobedience.

Professor Ono's lecture is part of the 2019 Samuel L. Becker Memorial Conference, which "honors the life and work of Samuel L. Becker (1923–2012), noted communication scholar and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Iowa Department of Communication Studies. The department has assembled a day of speakers to address the conference theme “Listening for Justice in Public and Private Spaces” from a wide range of perspectives from the field of communication." 

Dr. Kent Ono's research focuses on rhetoric and discourse, media and film, and race, ethnic, and cultural studies.

For more information on this lecture, please click here.