Rhetorical Leadership in the Organic Food Movement

The Farmers’ Museum is celebrating the upcoming publication of Barns of New York: Rural Architecture of the Empire State by Dr. Cynthia Falk, a cooperative venture between The Farmers’ Museum and Cornell University Press. Join us for a series of lectures that showcases some of the resources and academic work on farming.

May 23, 2012
7:00pm
Louis C. Jones Center
Joshua Frye, SUNY College at Oneonta

Jerome Irving or "JI" Rodale advanced the organic food movement in US culture and politics through his rhetorical leadership choices. Social movement followers and journalists nicknamed JI Rodale the "Guru of the Organic Food Movement." In the 1940s United States, organic agriculture was not on dominant cultural and political radars. So how did JI Rodale rhetorically feed organic food to America? Rodale exhibited both prophetic and pragmatic leadership through his use of material and symbolic resources to legitimize organic food in the pre-WWII era. This lecture illuminates how an early social movement leader can help effect widespread cultural and political change.

This program, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities’ Speakers in the Humanities program.

Dr. Joshua Frye is Assistant Professor of Communications at SUNY College at Oneonta. Joshua has a Ph.D. in rhetoric from Purdue University, an MA from Marquette University, and a BA from the University of Minnesota. Joshua's primary research interest is in the production, dissemination, and uptake of persuasive messages, especially of an environmental and political nature. He has published numerous scholarly articles and a book, The Origin, Diffusion, and Transformation of Organic Agriculture.