PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

29the Peace Corps remain today and are working in concert with a much more pragmaticAmerican society.Peace Corps’ history is well documented by scholars and writers. These booksare informative and important, but none of these authors have published since 1998. 88And those books speak only to the politics and history of the Peace Corps of the past.This absence of scholarly attention reflects a lack of public interest, a public interest thathas waned significantly since the 1960s. Today the organization struggles to fulfill itsgoals and fights with Congress to increase spending.This introduction frames the central focus of this study: the Peace Corps in the21 st century. This paper focuses on both what has not been previously documented andthe intricate relationship between the face of today’s American culture and the face of thePeace Corps in the early 21 st century.Justification for this studyIt would be quite easy to say that a study of the contemporary Peace Corps shouldbe done because it would be the first of its kind. This justification might simply meanthat no one else is interested in the topic, and therefore, no one has taken the time toanswer the larger question. Why? Why is the Peace Corps silently continuing itsoverseas campaign to give aid to developing nations without scholarly attention? Whyare people still joining the organization? How does the organization go about recruitingpeople to an organization that so quietly exists? One way to answer these questions maybe to turn toward Peace Corps’ history. The Peace Corps has a long-standing tradition inAmerican history. As the longest running foreign aid organization, the Peace Corps