Deflective Whiteness weaves together an anti-essentialist analytic across mediated rhetorics; its transmedia methodology is a novel and notable approach to thinking through the intertextual nature of racial formation in the era of “new racism” by studying the ideological functions of decontextualization, the superficial representation of Black and Latinx identity politics used to secure White dominance.

Dear Present Tense Community, Many universities are facing difficulties, and we have encountered challenges particularly tough for an independent journal like Present Tense that depends upon the uncompensated and often invisible labor of junior and senior scholars alike. As a result, we have experienced an unexpected hiatus snowballing from COVID. Nevertheless, today we are happy to announce our plans for moving […]

“Diversity is not an End Game: BIPOC Futures in the Academy” marks the final installment in a conversation across multiple journals that examines the injustices behind crisis-driven diversity initiatives within the academy and how these initiatives impact BIPOC across the fields of rhetoric, composition, and communication. Following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Amhad Aubrey,1 and too many others—as well as the incompetent and often hypocritical responses by institutions across the nation—we deemed it necessary to highlight the myriad ways that BIPOC are forced to experience duress, navigate threatening spaces, and leverage precious resources within the academy. These unjust conditions reflect the harms that we must already strive to survive in everyday life and disprove the myths of meritocracy and academic “safe spaces.”

To clarify our opening, we don’t resent this essay. We resent that to make Indigenous space with a bunch of well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning folx is to brace ourselves for an act of settler colonial violence and white nonsense. Whether we are trying to do our own work and just need some damn permit approval, are staging institutional interventions, or invested in long-term collaboration, our everyday work feels like one meeting to get the task done and three meetings to educate settlers on Indigenous beliefs, practices, and communities. Or, we learn that people are trying to do this work on their own in the name of not putting more emotional labor on BIPOC and then they’ve gone and pissed off the elder they are working with or didn’t practice the right protocols for consultation and input and someone—whether it’s an Indigenous person or not, has reached out to us to come and fix it. Even aunties don’t got time for that shit. What follows are a series of statements, practices, and observations on how we want to move forward in regard to working or not working with settlers in our institutions and professions.

This text explores our work as Women of Color (WoC) nurturing spaces and practices in response to the mirages of support, the inadequacy of resources, and the tepid responses to systemic oppression within the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts of our university, a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) in the Midwest. Via reflective vignettes, we discuss developing a community art collaboration as a counterspace, defined by various scholars as “social spaces … which offer support and enhance feelings of belonging” (Ong, Smith, and Ko 2018, 207) for minoritized students. Throughout this text, we discuss the potential of art-based projects shaped by an anti-racist praxis as resistance to the “check-the-box” institutional diversity efforts, and as transformative spaces to imagine alternative academic futures for Women of Color staff, faculty, and students.

Scholarship in rhetoric and composition explores intersections between race and gender, especially within writing program administration (Craig and Perryman-Clark “Troubling the Boundaries; Craig and Perryman-Clark “Boundaries Revisited). While exploring intersections between race and gender, particularly in conjunction with BIPOC experiences, the focus often shifts to microaggressive experiences, pain, and hopeful processes for healing (Carey “A […]

My argument is that the ableist rhetorical framing of disability in the 2020 campaign trail has predominantly been used to delegitimize candidates for alleged disabilities—and in doing so, has contributed to an ableist project further stigmatizing disabled people and situating them as outside of the possibility of democratic agency. Furthermore, I argue that this ablenationalist project by which disabled bodyminds are delegitimized is more difficult to critique in a political culture of demagoguery which ultimately dismisses critiques of ableism as partisan critiques against a political party as well as uses authoritarian dismissal of disabled people as rhetorically suspect.

Cloud, Dana. Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture. Ohio State UP, 2018. As a nation, the US is obsessed with facts. Punch the terms “Trump” and “fact check” into any search engine, and you will discover a litany of websites and articles annotating the misinformation circulated by the […]

Hlavacik, Mark. Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Harvard Education Press, 2016. Mark Hlavacik’s Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform is an in-depth analysis of conversations of and about the public school system in America, done through recounting advocacy acts and reforms that have impacted the system. By revealing major historical management issues […]

Hawhee, Debra. Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation. University of Chicago Press, 2016. Debra Hawhee’s extraordinarily complex, theoretically layered work Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation explores the ancient and ongoing contributions of nonhuman animals in rhetorical production, joining other rhetoric and writing scholars who have taken up the convergences between […]

“We’re excited to announce our two new Co-Managing Editors: Jessica Clements, an Associate Professor of rhetoric and composition, and previously a Style Editor for Present Tense, and John Pell, an Associate Professor of rhetoric and composition and Associate Dean.”

“With such a small, affluent, and diverse group of readers, a tiny circulation, and an obvious absence on myriad bookstore and grocery store shelves, Bitch Magazine would likely be less effective in its goal of responding to popular culture using a radical feminist lens.”

“Robbins’ greatest contribution in this book is her ability to move analysis beyond a passive stance, showing how archives can teach and inspire collaboration beyond their initial historical moment through the use of reflection.”

“While sexism is a backdrop for diverse women’s professional narratives in Elizabeth A. Flynn and Tiffany Bourelle’s collection Women’s Professional Lives in Rhetoric and Composition, Kirsti Cole and Holly Hassel’s edited collection, Surviving Sexism in Academia, brings sexism uncompromisingly into the foreground as contributors define, explore and strategize responses to sexism in higher education.”

Our managing editors will be taking a short break between approximately June 16th and July 22nd, 2019. We will still be accepting submissions during that time, and we will be happy to process them for review when we return in mid July. Thank you for your understanding as we take this time to work on […]

“In this special issue, the authors examine a range of contexts of care to show how technical communicators and rhetoricians of health and medicine can work at the intersections of health, wellness, and culture to contribute to healthcare practice.”

“At La Escuelita, culture consists of everyday practices shaped by collective traditional beliefs and attitudes passed down from generation to generation and expressed organically by members of a community. Members participate in activities and events that reclaim, embrace, and promote shared cultural experiences that solidify traditions.”

Present Tense would like to welcome our new Annotated Bibliography Editor Matt Cox, an Associate Professor at East Carolina University. Matt has a background in Cultural Rhetorics and in technical and professional communication and will take over the responsibilities of providing developmental editing assistance for all new annotated bibliographies. Currently, Dr. Cox is working on […]

Present Tense would like to congratulate Patricia Fancher for being accepted into The Best of the Journals in Rhetoric & Composition, 2018 (Parlor Press). Patricia’s article, “Composing Artificial Intelligence: Performing Whiteness and Masculinity,” was published in Vol. 6 Iss. 1. Congrats!

“As the book evidences, the difficulties in making change in the healthcare system are many; however, Arduser’s rhetorical work here that bridges patient agency with patient empowerment and shared decision-making aligns well with the recommendations of policy analysts as well as the U.S. government agencies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.”

“While I do not propose that the signage is simply a denial of the ontological character of the surrounding spaces, I do assert that the signs create an ontological impression that we experience as a result of the rhetorical absences in the narrative.”

“Rhetoric and other humanities instructors eager to teach topics on sustainability and food systems, which some call the most significant environmental issues of our time, can rely on campus experts with practitioner knowledge of these topics as well as campus activists engaged in these issues.”

“It is critical that scholars explore not only the emergent movement to end aging but also the phenomenon of aging itself, and that they do so from humanistic as well as scientific perspectives.”

Present Tense would like to welcome two new editors: our new Multimedia Editor Shreelina Ghosh and our new Review Editor Ryan Skinnell. Shreelina is an Assistant Professor at Gannon University and Ryan is currently Assistant Professor and Assistant Writing Program Administrator at San Jose State University. We’re thrilled that they have joined the Present Tense […]

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society invites proposals that investigate, theorize, and/or analyze the rhetorical work of platforms. By platforms, we draw on Tarleton Gillespie to mean “sites and services that host public expression, store it on and serve it up from the cloud, organize access to it through search and recommendation, or install […]

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society is currently looking to bring two new editors to our current editorial team: Multimedia Editor and Review Editor. Multimedia Editor: The Multimedia Editor serves as the chief decision-maker for the technical and stylistic use of video, audio, and other means of persuasive presentation. As a member of the editorial staff, this person […]

“This issue features a range of topics, but despite their diversity, the articles share a common thread of embodiment and affect, two areas toward which much current rhetorical scholarship is directed. While theories of embodiment and affect frame just a few of these essays, all of them reflect the centrality of bodies and emotion in discourse.”

Present Tense will once again have a number of editors attending and presenting at the CCCC Annual Convention and the ATTW Annual Convention, this year in Portland, OR. Be on the lookout for Editors wearing Present Tense pins, stop by the CCCC Editors’ Roundtable, and feel free to ask us questions about the upcoming issue or about your […]

Present Tense is sad to announce that Allen Brizee is leaving his position as Review Editor. He will be pursuing new editing and publishing avenues, though wishes to continue the legacy of editorial work he began at Present Tense. On a related note, Present Tense will soon be issuing a call for new Editors, including Review Editor and […]

“This analysis suggests that, in order to interrupt the injustices that flourish in Silicon Valley and in tech culture, we must rhetorically and systematically disentangle masculinity and whiteness from intelligence.”

“We are emotionally and morally invested in attributing agency, and because of this, it’s important that we also learn to be guarded and cautious about the engagement.”

Present Tense is happy to announce that two of our Editors have found new academic homes this past year. Megan Schoen, our co-Managing Editor, is now an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, and Elizabeth Angeli, our Annotated Bibliography Editor, will be moving to Marquette University. We also say goodbye to Alexandra Hidalgo, our outgoing Multimedia Editor, as […]

“The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) tells us a story through which we can more closely examine how the law has functioned in both constructing and affirming certain cultural discourses about human trafficking.”

“Readers will come away from the book with a better understanding of how the production of good citizens came to be such a common educational objective as well as how citizenship and literacy came to be so tightly bound in a variety of educational spaces.”

“Needless to say, I didn’t make it home that night. Instead I spent over nine hours sleeping on a jail cell floor with a stale roll beneath my head for a pillow because rather than acquiesce to the ways in which white parades as blue, I transgressed.”

On August 27, 2015, Multimedia Editor Alexandra Hidalgo and Guest Editor Donnie Johnson Sackey discussed special issue 5.2 on race, rhetoric, and the state on Twitter. The Q&A has been curated with Storify below in hopes of continuing conversation on states’ questionable treatment of people of color until the issue’s release in late fall. See: […]

We are excited to welcome intern Audrey Strohm to the team. An upcoming senior at Whitworth University, Audrey is an English major with a philosophy minor pursuing graduate studies in rhetoric and composition after graduation. Audrey will be working alongside Present Tense editors throughout summer 2015 as we move toward the publication of our special […]

We welcome our first intern, Shannon Wagner, to the team. A senior at Towson University, Shannon is an English major with a concentration in writing and a mass communications/advertising minor. Shannon is an active member in the Kappa Delta Sorority, and she enjoys writing creative essays and poetry. Shannon will be working with Present Tense […]

“Although Restaino’s treatment of theory could appear tenuous, the text’s weaving of storytelling and philosophy invite readers to examine the necessity of connecting theory to the everyday trials of those who actually practice composition pedagogy in the classroom.”

Present Tense would like to congratulate Rochelle Gregory for being accepted into The Best of the Independent Rhetoric & Composition Journals, 2013 (Parlor Press). Rochelle’s article, “A Womb With a View: Identifying the Culturally Iconic Fetal Image in Prenatal Ultrasound Provisions” was featured in our special Medical Rhetorics Issue.

Present Tense will be at the Editor Roundtable during the Research Network Forum at 4Cs again this year. Stop by to say hello and talk to us about an article.

This issue is our most multimodal collection to date, including our first slidecast essay (“The Quiet Country Closet”) and our first full audio essay (“Voices in Egypt”), as well as a number of other essays that incorporate images, video, and additional modes beyond alphabetic text.

“As I reflect on my experiences with the Kinect ’s depth data, it occurs to me that it is a “degree zero” for experimental work because the data is (in Deleuzian terms) an intensive form, pure potential.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.'”

“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…”