The new book “Invoking the Fathers: Dangerous Metaphors and Founding Myths in Congressional Politics” by Dr. Sarah Kornfield of the Hope College communication faculty, published this month by Johns Hopkins University Press, examines the impact of the phrase “Founding Fathers” as code for a particular political outlook.
“On average, the term ‘Founding Fathers’ is uttered by a congressional member every single day that Congress is in session,” the publisher’s overview notes. “Why is this metaphor repeated constantly — and what effect does it have on policy? In ‘Invoking the Fathers,’ communication scholar Sarah Kornfield links this rhetorical strategy to the rise of patriarchal white supremacy and Christian nationalism in the United States.”
“Using the House and the Senate as the objects of her study, Kornfield traces the trope of fatherhood across congressional discourse and theorizes a rhetoric of sovereignty in which the founders’ most obvious heirs — white Christian men — inherit America and its governance,” the description continues. “Ultimately, the book demonstrates how this gendered metaphor creates and reinforces a legislative system in which some are considered more equal than others.”
In his review, Dr. James W. Vining, who is an associate professor of communication in the College of Arts and Sciences of Governors State University, said, “Sarah Kornfield has demonstrated the power of rhetoric to shape our lives and of excellent rhetorical analysis to enhance them. Anyone seeking insights into American politics, the functions of rhetoric in politics, or the art of masterful rhetorical analysis will find ‘Invoking the Fathers’ an invaluable gift.”
Dr. Casey Ryan Kelly, who is a professor of rhetoric and public culture in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and author of “Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood,” noted that “Many scholars who study U.S. public address fail to thoroughly interrogate the strategic uses of the Founding Fathers metaphor and its simplifications of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. Kornfield offers a thoroughly researched map of the uses and abuses of the fatherly metaphor throughout the congressional record and pays careful attention to its context of usage and its simplifications in the service of political power. This book has the potential to stage an intervention with how the disciplines of communication and rhetoric grapple with the hegemonic metaphors that organize U.S. political discourse.”
Kornfield is an associate professor of communication and affiliated professor of women’s and gender studies. She has been a member of the Hope faculty since 2015, and served as director of global learning from 2017 to 2020.
Her research, which she conducts collaboratively with Hope students, primarily focuses on how gender is performed, produced and constructed in the United States. She teaches courses in rhetorical criticism, rhetorical theory, feminist theory, gender communication and television culture.
Her book “Contemporary Rhetorical Criticism” was published in 2021. She is also the author of numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and has made research presentations around the country at the meetings of national professional societies.
Kornfield graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in 2007 with majors in communication and English literature; completed a master’s degree in communication, with an emphasis in rhetoric and media studies, at Texas A&M University in 2009; and completed a Ph.D. in communication arts and sciences with a graduate minor in women’s and gender studies at The Pennsylvania State University in 2012. Prior to coming to Hope, she was a visiting assistant professor of communication at Wheaton College from 2013 to 2015, and a Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University during the 2012-13 academic year.