Host William Hudson is joined by Professor Andrea McDonnell, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of PC’s Communication Program to discuss her new research. Dr. McDonnell has been a guest on this podcast previously to discuss the decline of local news and her 2023 book A Gossip Politic. In today’s podcast she discusses her more recent work on what she calls "discursive self-cleaving," a rhetorical strategy celebrities employ to counter accusations of sexual misconduct. In a forthcoming book, she takes an in depth look at the way three celebrities have deployed this strategy to protect themselves from such accusations. Among the three is former president Donald Trump, a master of discursive self-cleaving, who will be the focus of our conversation. Our conversation shows how various developments in communications in the 21st century, a post-truth information eco-system, bullshitting, and public gaslighting, have enabled this strategy. We conclude with comments on how Trump has expanded discursive self-cleaving from being a response to allegations of sexual misconduct to a routine tool in campaign image making.

Although most of us associate the People’s Republic of China (the PRC) with its officially sanctioned atheism, the government tolerates a variety of religious practice within the country. Regulating and controlling religious practice to assure that it does not pose a threat to the dominance of either the Chinese state or the ruling Chinese Communist Party is an on-going challenge to both party and state. Professor Susan McCarthy, the PC political science department’s China expert and a leading authority on ethnic and religious minorities in China, has returned to Beyond Your News Feed to discuss recent developments in the PRC’s efforts to regulate religious practice. Our discussion centers around two of Dr. McCarthy’s recent papers on the topic: “Liberating Party Animals: Cultural Governance and ‘Life Release’ Rituals in China” published in July 2022 in The China Journal and a yet unpublished paper: “Sinicizing China’s World Muslim City: Spatial Politics, National Narratives, and Ethno-Religious Assimilation in the PRC”.

This episode features, Zachariah Wheeler, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College. We discuss his research on the evolution in coalitions within the Democratic Party, how elite discourse about class, race, climate change, and other issues have shaped those coalitions, and the way these changes reflect the impact neo-liberal ideology and globalization has had on American politics and culture. A main focus of our conversation is his recent paper entitled “The ‘Emerging Democratic Majority’, New Class Divisions, and the Meritocratic Left.”