“Our findings suggest that the FDA’s deliberative procedures may more adequately capture stakeholder testimony were it to incorporate a pre-hearing event wherein all parties agree to definitions for key points.”

“Wellness has become pathologized in Western culture, mapped conceptually onto a medically oriented illness model through processes that are fundamentally discursive in nature, centered on persuasion.”

“We argue that abortion discourse on all sides has been too rational and, more importantly, that this rationality has been defined in a male-oriented way.”

“Attending to the most ubiquitous—and hence least noticeable—metaphors within rhetorics of health and medicine can, as Judy Segal notes, shed light on the values that these terms “smuggle into” healthcare policy and practice”

“I use epideictic rhetoric to examine how the intellectually disabled person was over time constructed and deconstructed via praise and blame.”

“On the one hand, pain is an event or condition socially negotiated; for the same reason, the pain patient is socially constituted. On the other hand, pain is experienced individually and, in many ways, privately.”

“Beginning in late the 1970s, rhetoric and composition scholars have had three primary access points from which to approach the study of medicine: canonical rhetoric, technical communication, and the rhetoric of science.”

“Continuing to allow patients to be empowered with their own medical care is key, and getting to know them to see what triggers them to take care of their own needs is huge.”

“Emmons’ discourse-centered approach examines the interrelationships of personhood/gender/mental health and illness and demonstrates how language shapes and reflects gendered depictions of the depressed self.”

“Each of these essays explores the overlaps and tensions of disability and mothering in the context of subject positions and liminal spaces, the complex and often confusing space where the personal and social collide.”

Present Tense editors, Elizabeth Angeli and Allen Brizee, presented their scholarship at the International Association of Research on Service-learning and Civic Engagement conference September 23-25.

Congratulations to the five Present Tense editors who earned PhDs this year and have moved to new academic positions across the country.

Present Tense is proud to announce we are now indexed in several major databases.

We are currently seeking submissions for our upcoming issue. Please see our word cloud of current topic suggestions and our submission guidelines for more information.

Our friends at Enculturation have just published a special issue on Marshall MacLuhan.

Volume 2.1 continues our publication’s trend of especially timely work. The articles of Volume 2.1 describe political and technological developments with ongoing consequences: a US public relation firm’s promotion of Gaddafi’s dictatorship; Arizona’s subjugation of immigrant bodies; epistemological production through social media.

“Nearly a century later, Bernays’s troubling defense of anti-democratic communication as a central component of democratic governance reverberates in a recent public relations campaign to ‘enhance’ Gadhafi’s image.”

“Senator Obama was faced with a complex problem: how to explain a longstanding friendship with a suddenly infamous figure? He had to do this, moreover, within the context of the most delicate issue of his campaign: race.”

“In this article, I reframe recent public debates about emergent literacy practices by situating the movement of short-form to long-form writing work within the disciplinary milieu of Rhetoric and Composition.”

“I ask what kind of citizen is invited to participate in the collective fantasy that is invoked in current immigration law. What kind of imaginary does such a fantasy produce and in what ways does it echo through public discourses?”

“Part scholarly monograph, part handbook, part rallying cry, Reframing Writing Assessment is an important addition to a spate of recent books on assessment that encourage teachers to take back our professional lives.”

“Before we even got to the attendance policy, students were wrestling with an entire semester’s worth of work: they wanted to know how they could make a difference, how to get their voices heard.”

The Present Tense staff would like to welcome the guest editors for our 2012 special issue on medical, gender, and body rhetorics.

We are recruiting submissions on medical, gender, and body rhetorics for publication in a 2012 special issue.

The Present Tense staff enjoyed meeting everyone, chatting about the journal, and hearing excellent presentations at all three conferences.

Issue 2 evinces an explicit commitment to analyzing the ethical contours of emerging rhetorics. The authors of Issue 2 analyze rhetorics and employ diverse theoretical frameworks in a variety of national and international contexts with a general eye toward the ethical implications of social, political, economic, and material structures.

“When the threat of war presents itself, raise the castle drawbridge; bar the fortress gates; circle the wagons. When the scale of warfare is global or hemispheric, seal the borders.”

“Atlas’s majestic shrugging is the ultimate revenge fantasy for those who believe the government and all those who support market intervention have demonized the most useful, creative, and productive members of society.”

“It occurred to us that people learning about our field may benefit from a better sense of where feminism lives in the hidden spaces of rhetoric and composition: in the practices and attitudes of those who constitute the field.”

“After writing about a visit to Bulgaria in 1996, I returned ten years later hoping to judge whether my original application of Baudrillard’s theory on the evolution of consumer society still held up…”

“It is through gut feelings that we begin to think critically, collect and analyze information, and decide. Gut feelings do not stand in opposition to critical thinking; they stand beneath, support, and shape it.”

“At Jesuit universities, the task is not just to form better citizens but also to form persons who use the principles of Ignatian spirituality to ‘perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others…'”

“Each essay reports specific cases of rhetorical intervention in local and global issues. Both professors and students will find models for their roles in the democratic tradition, as public/organic intellectuals, or… ‘part-time peaceniks.'”

In the summer of 2009 we set out to create an academic journal that would address contemporary and timely rhetorical issues through short, online articles. Volume 1, Issue 1 accomplishes this goal by providing seven pieces that analyze emerging rhetorics in a variety of institutional and public contexts.

“We don’t seem to be writing much at all about sovereignty—a term that I shall define here, somewhat simplistically, as the exercise of authority by a nation-state or another sort of regime, not only with respect to its own people but also in relation to similar polities.”

“The new equality does not claim the achievement of racial and social justice. Rather, it offers an ongoing explicit pursuit of personal and systemic change advanced daily—publicly and privately—among black, brown, red, yellow, and white allies…”

“Invention is part of a single act committed by an individual in synchronous time while the returned arrangement is a result of thousands of asynchronous choices enacted collectively by Internet users.”

“In committee meetings, academic and student affairs retreats, or simply in chance encounters with colleagues, a periodic response to the mention the course is polite confusion, misinformation, or even outright dismissal…”

“Through informal conversations about cooking, women have participated in a practice that has allowed them throughout history to connect with other women and validate their own existence in the domestic sphere.”

“Founded on a core belief that student-community interaction is essential to transforming students into global citizens, CSECP also works to establish competencies related to service: leadership… and ethical development.”

“Higher education increasingly follows a fast-capitalist model, according to Tony Scott, and the consequences of this model pervade writing instruction: its curriculum, assessment, and even the workforce of higher education.”