Selected Articles and Projects

A small selection of Julie's work.  These writing samples are copyrighted; they may not be reproduced without the consent of the publisher and/or author.

Op-Ed

Original writing

Forecaster Forum: The case for moving Falmouth Memorial Library

The trustees of Falmouth Memorial Library deeply appreciate the Town Council’s November vote that recognized the library’s need for space and goal to identify a flexible solution reflecting the programming space recommendations of library consultant Nolan Lushington.

A diverse group with professional expertise in a number of areas, members of the board volunteered to serve our community because we are readers, we love libraries in general and we appreciate this library in particular.  No trustee set out in this endeavor either with a final vision in mind, cherry-picking data to support it, or because he or she does not like the current library. READ MORE >>

 

Pinpoint Demographics

Original writing

2011 Top Ten Article-Audio Visual Equipment Consumer Spending

2011 Top Ten Article-High College Education

2011 Top Ten Article-Physicians per Capita

2011 Top Ten Article-Restaurants per Capita

2011 Top Ten Article-Supermarkets per Capita 

 

North Carolina Bar Association

Original writing

Staff Training

Do you have a problem training your staff to project the professional image that you work so hard to achieve? Many attorneys find that staff members are not as polished as they appeared on their resume or during their interview. Further, it is difficult to find time to train staff and to break bad habits among all the other things small firm attorneys have to manage. If this sounds like your firm, new materials are available from the NCBA's Solo & Small Firm Resource Center to help you solve these problems. Used alone or in conjunction with one another, they will help you correct problems that may be adversely affecting your client relations and word of mouth referrals. Read More >>

 

North Carolina Journeys

Julie edited and wrote much of the new series of social studies textbooks for Grades 4-8 and served as the off-camera interviewer for the video promoting the books. View the video >>

 

The Southern Ocean

Original writing. A background note included in the teacher’s editions of the North Carolina Journeys social studies textbook series.

The ocean current that flows from west to east around Antarctica plays a crucial role in global ocean circulation. The Antarctic Convergence is located where the cold water of this current meets and mingles with the warmer waters of the oceans north of Antarctica. Scientists have determined that this cold water flowing around Antarctica is a separate body of water and a unique ecologic region.

In 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization formally recognized this body of water as the fifth world ocean—the Southern Ocean.  This new ocean includes the southern portions of the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. The Southern Ocean extends from the coast of Antarctica north to 60ºS. Today, the world’s five oceans―from largest to smallest―are the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Arctic Ocean.

 

The North Carolina Freedom Monument Curriculum Resources

Editing

The research projects offer students an opportunity to do in-depth research on a topic relating to African American history. Students should be encouraged to emphasize the impact of these issues on North Carolina. These projects can be assigned at the beginning of a unit on Civil Rights, African American history, or other related topics, and the individual lessons can be taught in class while the research project is ongoing over a one, two, or three week period. Read More >>

You can also download the entirety of the lessons as a ZIP file (863 KB).

 

Excerpt from Chapter Three, The Use of Condensation Symbols to Develop Presidential Leadership: Bill Clinton’s Appropriation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Original writing. Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997. Thesis director: Cori E. Dauber, Ph.D, readers: William Leuchtenburg, Ph.D.; Eric Doxtader, Ph.D. 

Rhetoricians recognize the use of language to create a sense of identification with an audience as one of the core concerns of the discipline.  A speaker attempts to unite or persuade a group of individuals by evoking a sense of shared characteristics.^[1]  In the same way, a presidential candidate must evoke an image with which Americans can both identify and support. Central to this purpose, the candidate must establish credibility in the campaign so that voters will be comfortable with the image evoked.  In the 1992 election, Governor Bill Clinton needed to create and sustain an image (if not in fact) of strength in both character and leadership.  Not only would he be challenging the incumbent, President George H.W. Bush, but he would also have to withstand a strong attack from the third-party candidate Ross Perot.  Clinton had to adopt a rhetorical strategy that would catapult him to national attention, create a positive image of his character and ability to lead, and garner enough support to win the election. 

In the end, the success of this strategy would be judged partially on his electoral success.  However, one cannot judge rhetorical success in a presidential campaign solely on the day the votes are counted.  For any candidate, campaign rhetoric sets the stage for that which follows. A close examination of the communicative tactics involved in Clinton's campaign reveals problems with definition and interpretation, both of which hold significant implications for the early—and troubled—part of his presidency.

Bill Clinton declared his candidacy for the presidency in front of the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. “With his family at his side, supporters waving  ‘Clinton for President’ placards and a band playing patriotic music in the background, the governor said that he stood for middle-class values, hard work, individual responsibility, family, and faith.”^[2]  For Clinton, this campaign would become the culmination of his political career. 

He has spent virtually all of his adult life in politics and elective office, and, before that, was clearly directing himself for a political career.  At Georgetown University, Oxford, and Yale Law School, he was, in effect, preparing himself to be a political leader.  He did not go to Law School because he wanted to practice law, but because he wanted to understand the American legal system and its framework of laws in the context of government.  It is no exaggeration   . . . to say that Bill Clinton has consciously been preparing himself for the possibility of being president since he was sixteen years old. ^[3] 

Elected in Arkansas in 1978, Clinton was the youngest governor in the United States. Although soundly defeated in 1980, he staged a comeback two years later, becoming the first governor in that state’s history to serve non-consecutive terms.  As governor, Clinton took an active interest in policy issues on both the state and national level. As a member of the National Governors Association, “he was elected Chairman of the Association in 1986 and, in 1991, was voted the nation’s most effective governor by the governors of the other states.  In 1990, Mr. Clinton also became Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.”^[4] “Clinton’s inauguration in January 1983 served as the beginning of the ‘Clinton Decade’ in Arkansas, which ended in January 1993 when Clinton resigned  . . . to lead the nation as its forty-second president.”^[5]

Clinton rose to prominence within the Democratic Party at the same time that the party was undergoing a shift away from a more liberal stance on issues—the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  The policies Roosevelt’s administration instituted during the Great Depression changed the role of government in the daily lives of Americans—creating Social Security,  funding rural electrification, establishing farm and housing loans programs, and building infrastructure through the Works Projects Administration (WPA) and others.  Roosevelt’s “bold, persistent experimentation”^[6] helped improve the overall standard of living of the nation.  The New Deal ushered in liberalism during the 1930s, and liberalism constituted the domain of the Democratic Party throughout the rest of the century.

^[1]Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, in P. Bizzell and D. Herzberg, eds., The Rhetorical Tradition (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1990), 1019.
^[2]Judith S. Trent and Robert V. Friedenberg in Political Campaign Communication:  Principles and Practices (Wesport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 21.
^[3]Jack H. Watson, Jr., "The Clinton White House" in Presidential Studies Quarterly, XXIII, no. 3 (Summer 1993), 430.  Shown at the Democratic National Convention in 1992, the biographical film The Man from Hope features video footage of Clinton meeting JFK when he was sixteen. In the film, he describes his wonder that “somebody like me who came from a little town in Arkansas who had no money, no political position or anything would be given the opportunity to meet the president.”  See Thomas Rosteck, “The Intertextuality of The Man from Hope,” Stephen A. Smith, ed.,  Bill Clinton on Stump, State, and Stage:  The Rhetorical Road to the White House. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994) for an analysis of this film.  Clinton is quoted in Rosteck, 224.
^[4]Ibid, 430–431.
^[5]Diane B. Carlin and Charles C. Howard, “Bill Clinton’s Campaigns for Governor of Arkansas” in Smith, 3–14.
^[6]William Leuchtenburg, In the Shadow of FDR, 276.