Assistant Professor of Communication Emily Crosby
Assistant Professor of Communication Emily Crosby presented her research entitled “It’s Not Just Country Music: The Overlooked Rhetorical Reach of Today’s ‘Bro-Country’” at the 2024 Rhetoric Society of America’s biennial conference. Coined in 2013 by music journalist Jody Rosen as a “frat-boy beach-bum fantasy” for the “young America white dude,” Bro-Country emerged as a widely popular music genre often dismissed as generic and apolitical. However, Crosby traces the genre’s rhetorical shift, which reflects new articulations of masculinity in this political moment. Using country music star Jason Aldean’s 2023 viral, yet polarizing, music video “Try that in a Small Town,” as text, Crosby articulates overlooked themes of antifeminism in the video. Specifically, her research on the depiction of disloyal women sparks discussion about the emergent digital trend of the “trad wife” as an antidote to contemporary feminist politics.