[EDITED BY KAYLA HALL] This essay explores how class distinctions can rhetorically shift from issues of income to social stratification in the United States. This process depends upon and affects particular regions and populations. Focusing here on Appalachia, I attend to the 1967 murder of Hugh O’Connor in rural Kentucky and media accounts in the murder’s aftermath as a nodal point in this continued stratification process.

[EDITED BY KAYLA HALL] This essay examines how contemporary environmental activists identify with violent historical labor disputes in West Virginia. As activists tap into the region's violent past, they are faced with rhetorical opportunities and challenges. In analyzing this phenomenon, I contend that kairic folds occur when contemporary rhetorics draw directly upon historical events in a way that underscores salient contextual factors that shape rhetorical choices.

[EDITED BY KAYLA HALL] This essay analyzes the resistive tactics of the Gulabi Gang in rural India between approximately 2006 and 2013, asserting the Gulabi Gang as a counterpublic that used violence to negotiate and achieve its counterpublicity. The Gulabi Gang represents a nodal point in a rich and complex history of resistance against gender- and caste-related violence in India. Through this analysis, I contend the group implicitly challenges the prearranged distinction between violence and legitimacy, which undergirds popular discourses, orientalist stereotypes, and much of rhetorical theory.