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5442 articles2021
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The Response to the Call for RAD Research: A Review of Articles in The Writing Center Journal, 2007–2018 ↗
Abstract
The study examined in this article explored the impact of RAD research on articles (N = 97) in a 12-year period of The Writing Center Journal (WCJ), in 2007–2012 and 2013–2018, to achieve four purposes: 1. to document the amount of replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research published in WCJ in two equal periods before and after Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s (2012) call for RAD research in writing center scholarship; 2. to identify how WCJ articles score in individual areas specified in Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s RAD research rubric; 3. to provide an understanding of methodological trends in research published in WCJ by examining the most common methods of inquiry; and 4. to understand trending research interests in the field by highlighting themes running through the research articles. The analysis demonstrated important differences between WCJ articles published in these time periods in all four areas examined, i.e., the amount of RAD research, changes in individual RAD rubric scores, methods of inquiry, and research trends, illustrating that the field is taking up Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s call for more such research. This article includes a discussion of findings, acknowledgement of study limitations, and suggestions for future research.
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Abstract
In face-to-face writing center tutorials, tutor praise is an action that builds rapport and motivates writers (Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2013). Drawing on and extending prior interactional analyses of praise, this article examines writers’ responses to text-based praise across 10 tutorials, with a particular focus on interactional segments in which writers reformulate their previously mentioned concerns in response to tutor praise. Unlike more common responses that signal acceptance of the praise, such as appreciation, overt acceptance, and alignment, this responding action reflects some momentary misunderstanding between tutor and writer in the tutorial interaction. Despite this, these segments also show writers taking a more active role in critically evaluating their own papers and identifying areas for revision. In addition to surveying writers’ varied responses to praise and exploring future research directions, this article also raises pedagogical implications for writing center tutoring and the one-to-one teaching of writing, specifically about how certain ways of designing and delivering praise can contribute to ambiguity and can run the risk of foreclosing or precluding opportunities for writers to articulate the kind of assistance they need with their drafts.
December 2020
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Abstract
The present paper offers a subjective overview of approaches to affect. Research on affect accelerated in the last two decades within several disciplines, in response to different concerns and research questions, energized by new research in psychology and, more recently, neuroscience. But while affect studies scholars agree that emotions, amplified by the media, course through all social relations and electrify our entire bodies, scholars attracted to specific clusters of theories have little to say to each other. To remedy this situation, I attempt to bridge several seemingly incompatible strands of research on affects in psychology, cultural studies, and media studies, in order to bring out commonalities and patterns that may prove useful for reading literature and other cultural artifacts. Defining affects, I refer to the practice of tuning musical instruments to a specific pitch as an analogy for the way affects resonate from the macro to the micro levels of social life.
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Abstract
The construct of identity in the space of English as an Additional Language (EAL) Higher Degree by Research (HDR) writing has been widely researched with studies exploring students’ identities as constructed through and in the process of writing. However, these studies are often presented in ways that focus on the challenges the writers face citing language barriers and cultural differences and ascribing these students “closed subject positions” with “limited ways of talking about themselves” (Koehne, 2005, p. 118). In response to such deficit views, various studies have explored the multiple and varied identities of HDR EAL as evident in their written reflections and other work, offering a wider range of views. We argue that there is a need for additional nuanced views of these student identities and how they are formed. In this paper we demonstrate how these can be gained by examining student identities as they emerge through spoken interaction. Applying a sociocultural linguistic framework that understands identities as emerging, situationally and relationally dependent (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), we report how two students formed identities for themselves by talking to us about their experiences of writing using EAL. Our analysis provides nuanced understandings of the multiple identities of EAL HDR students that move beyond the deficit ones we were, and still are, frequently hearing in institutional discourses and demonstrates how the application of this framework can help articulate richness, variety and resourcefulness and challenge essentialised identities of EAL doctoral student writers.
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Abstract
Evaluating Academic Literacies Course Types
 This poster represents a mixed methods study conducted at the University of the West Indies (UWI), which seeks to determine the merits of two types of Academic Literacies (AL) courses in promoting successful academic outcomes. Its focus is the first quantitative research phase in which the grade point averages after the first year of study of Social Sciences students successful either in the general purposes Foun1019 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Disciplines’ course or in the faculty-specific purposes Foun1013 ‘Critical Reading and Writing in the Social Sciences’ course are compared. The second, qualitative phase will be presented in future publications. This study is a response to an unimplemented recommendation of an external 2018 Quality Assurance Review (QAR) of the UWI, Mona campus, English Language Section, that students successful in the first semester of Foun1019 switch in the second semester to their faculty-specific AL courses. The QAR rationale for the recommended course switch is that the non-faculty-specific nature of the second semester of Foun1019 is academically disadvantageous to students who have shown promise in its first semester. This study is relevant to the debate over the use of general versus disciplinary AL approaches, one publicized by Jordan (1997) and revived by de Chazal (2012) who makes a pedagogical and practical case favouring a general purposes approach. Underlying the study is the premise at the heart of AL courses: that by preparing incoming students, supposed novice writers and readers at the tertiary level of study, these courses serve to maximise their academic performance. Indeed, this is the premise upon which the required pursuit by university students of AL courses is based.
 This Foun1019 general purposes course, introduced for students from all faculties who fail an English language proficiency entrance test (ELPT), places emphasis in the first semester on developmental reading and writing in English as well as on overcoming writer apprehension. Furthermore, a dual language identity – Standard Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole – is conferred on students. This is because whereas English is Jamaica’s sole official language, Jamaican Creole – which has an English lexicon but distinctly un-English grammar, syntax and phonology – is the first language of most of the students. The work undertaken in the first semester functions as a bridge for students, building their linguistic self-esteem and improving their English language proficiency in order to ease them into what is considered the bona fide AL focus of the second semester: ‘Writing from Sources’. This latter focus is shared with one-semester, faculty-specific purposes AL courses, populated by students who pass or are exempt from the ELPT. These courses seek to respond to the AL development needs of individual faculties’ constituent departments. To do this, they employ as much of a specific purposes AL approach as is possible given the wide range of parent disciplines involved. The Foun1013 course featured in this study, which is pursued by Faculty of Social Sciences students exclusively, falls into this faculty-specific category of UWI AL courses.
 The Foun1019 and Foun1013 Year 1 student groups being compared have both been certified at the end of their first year of study to possess a satisfactory level of English language proficiency on the basis of attaining passing grades at the end of Semester two in their final and major AL assignment: a 1200-word documented expository essay scored via a common holistic rubric. To ensure further comparability of the two groups, control of the potentially influential independent variables of Socioeconomic Status (SES), Gender, Intellectual Aptitude (as estimated via matriculation qualifications) and other selected variables is accounted for by the multiple regression analysis component of the overall study design. To address the unevenness of the size of the two study populations, that is, the relatively small number (51) of Year 1 Foun1019 Social Sciences students versus the high number (630) of their Foun1013 counterparts, the Tukey test of statistical significance for unequal group sizes will be applied.
 To assess the groups’ relative academic performance, the official UWI measurement standard, Grade Point Average (GPA), is used. This measurement shows the typical course result of a student for a semester or year, and ultimately determines the quality of degree awarded (for example, First Class Honours, Lower Second Class Honours, Pass). This measurement encompasses nine bands ranging from 0.00-1.29 to 4.00-4.30 points. The points in question represent the numerical value given to letter grades, e.g. C+ (55-59%) = 2.30 points, F2 (40-44%) = 1.30 points. Grade points are determined by multiplying the points earned by the credit weighting of the course, which is based on the duration of the course (whether one or two semesters). Students earn three credits for one-semester courses, and six credits for two-semester ones. 2.00 is the minimum grade point deemed acceptable (University of the West Indies, 2014). 
 The investigation reveals that the overall Year 1 student pass rates for Foun1013 and Foun1019 at the end of the second semester of the 2017/18 academic year were 60.2% (630/1047) and 62.2% (51/82) respectively. Preliminary findings on the GPAs of the passing groups are as follows: 1) Foun1013 students’ GPAs are more widely spread across the band ranges than those of Foun1019 students; 2) The modal band range of the two groups is 2.30-2.99: 42.6% (269/630) of Foun1013 students versus 54.9% (28/51) of Foun1019 students; 3) The GPAs of 41.9% (264/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the four highest band ranges (3.00-4.29) versus 25.5% (13/51) for Foun1019 students; 4) The GPAs of 10.6% (66/630) of the Foun1013 students fall into the 2:00-2:29 (just acceptable) band range versus 15.7% (8/51) for 1019 students; 5) The GPAs of 4.9% (31/630) of Foun1013 students fall into the three lowest band ranges (0.00 -1.99) versus 3.9% (2/51) for Foun1019 students. Thus, overall, the Year 1 Foun1013 specific purposes students outperformed their Foun1019 general counterparts with respect to their higher band ranges, but the modal range of scores for both groups (a low but acceptable one) was the same; in addition, the Foun1019 group had slightly better outcomes in terms of its lower proportion of students with poor GPAs (under 2.0). Therefore, this cross-tabulation of the two groups’ GPAs reveals that student success in the general purposes course is not more highly correlated with Year 1 academic failure than student success in the faculty-specific purposes course, but it may hold implications for the passing grades received. Corresponding results for Year 2, 3 and 4 students, along with these Year 1 results, will be subjected to the finer-grained statistical analysis needed to reach definitive conclusions, while the qualitative phase of the study will use course content analysis and questionnaire and interview data from students and academic staff to seek explanations for the conclusions drawn.
 References 
 de Chazal, E. (2012). The general-specific debate in EAP: Which case is the most convincing for most contexts? Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2(1), 135–148. http://pops.uclan.ac.uk/index.php/jsltr/article/view/90/37
 Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge University Press.
 University of the West Indies. (2014). Grade point average regulations (Internal document). UWI. https://www.uwi.edu/gradingpolicy/docs/regulations.pdf
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Building Bridges: The Effective Learning Adviser as Trans-cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Communicator ↗
Abstract
Out of 31,060 students currently enrolled at the University of Glasgow, about 25% are classed as international, reflecting a nationwide trend. In response to this situation, researchers and practitioners have stressed the need to improve the way universities accommodate multicultural student bodies. At the University of Glasgow, such efforts manifest in an expansion and diversification of the department facilitating student learning development: The Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Service (LEADS). LEADS is home to two Effective Learning Advisers (ELAs) who work with international students from all subject disciplines. Their work entails the creation and delivery of academic writing classes, the development of electronic resources and one-to-one tutorials. Due to the diversity of the international student cohort in terms of educational, cultural and subject backgrounds, a significant proportion of the international ELAs’ day-to-day job is to explain generic academic writing conventions pertinent to the UK Higher Education context to those coming from other educational cultures. Their role then is that of multicultural and cross-disciplinary communicators. This article outlines and reflects on the professional practice of the international ELAs and seeks to stimulate discussion around appropriate and effective practices of teaching academic writing to students from a multiplicity of backgrounds and disciplines.
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Abstract
T he Community Literacy Journal is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes both scholarly work that contributes to theories, methodologies, and research agendas and work by literacy workers, practitioners, and community literacy program staff. We are especially committed to presenting work done in collaboration between academics and community members, organizers, activists, teachers, and artists.
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Abstract
Background: Visualizations are used to communicate data about important political, social, environmental, and health topics to a wide range of audiences; however, perceptions of graphs as objective conduits of factual data make them an easy means for spreading misinformation. Research questions: 1. Are people deceived by common deceptive tactics or exaggerated titles used in data visualizations about non-controversial topics? 2. Does a person's previous data visualization coursework mitigate the extent to which they are deceived by deceptive tactics used in data visualizations? 3. What parts of data visualizations (title, shape, data labels) do people use to answer questions about the information being presented in data visualizations? Literature review: Although scholarship from psychology, human-computer interaction, and computer science has examined how data visualizations are processed by readers, scholars have not adequately researched how susceptible people are to a range of deceptive tactics used in data visualizations, especially when paired with textual content. Methodology: Participants (n = 329) were randomly assigned to view one of four treatments for four different graph types (bar, line, pie, and bubble) and then asked to answer a question about each graph. Participants were asked to rank the ease with which they read each graph and comment on what they used to respond to the question about each graph. Results/Discussion: Results show that deceptive tactics caused participants to misinterpret information in the deceptive versus control visualizations across all graph types. Neither graph titles nor previous coursework impacted responses for any of the graphs. Qualitative responses illuminate people's perceptions of graph readability and what information they use to read different types of graphs. Conclusions: Recommendations are made to improve data visualization instruction, including critically examining software defaults and the ease with which people give agency over to software when preparing data visualizations. Avenues of future research are discussed.
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Abstract
This index covers all technical items - papers, correspondence, reviews, etc. - that appeared in this periodical during the year, and items from previous years that were commented upon or corrected in this year. Departments and other items may also be covered if they have been judged to have archival value. The Author Index contains the primary entry for each item, listed under the first author's name. The primary entry includes the co-authors' names, the title of the paper or other item, and its location, specified by the publication abbreviation, year, month, and inclusive pagination. The Subject Index contains entries describing the item under all appropriate subject headings, plus the first author's name, the publication abbreviation, month, and year, and inclusive pages. Note that the item title is found only under the primary entry in the Author Index.
November 2020
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Abstract
In Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (1996), Quentin Skinner argued, first, that Thomas Hobbes's philosophy is best understood when placed within the context of the study of rhetoric in Early Modern England and, second, that Hobbes's attitude toward rhetoric changed in the course of his career: that he passed from a period in which he embraced civic humanism, with its emphasis on rhetoric (in the 1620s and early 1630s) to one of adamantly rejecting rhetoric in the late 1630s and 1640s, only to reembrace rhetoric in his Leviathan (1651). In his Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes, Timothy Raylor challenges Skinner's influential thesis, arguing for more continuity in Hobbes's attitude toward rhetoric throughout his corpus.Raylor's biographical first chapter provides evidence of the kind of scrupulous scholarship characteristic of the book as a whole. Raylor leaves no question unanswered without the most thorough effort to address it, no assumption unexamined. When Hobbes undertook the tutelage of William Cavendish, Second Earl of Devonshire, in 1608, what curriculum did he design for his charge? To find out, Raylor surveys the books purchased by the Cavendish household in the years immediately following Hobbes's hiring, records that remain at Chatsworth House, the Cavendish family estate. As a result of his painstaking review of family accounts, Raylor finds nothing terribly surprising—mostly standard collections and dictionaries were purchased—but nonetheless, now we know what works Hobbes thought essential to education: the curriculum that Hobbes, as tutor, was creating for his young charge, while not neglecting the humanities, emphasized mathematics, logic, and the modern languages (Raylor 37–38).The heart of the book is Raylor's engagement with Skinner, whose work provides the skeletal architecture for Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes. In chapters 2 and 3 on Hobbes's early work, Raylor argues, contra Skinner, that Hobbes never embraced civic humanism or the place of rhetoric in it. He finds other motives than the humanistic ones assigned by Skinner for Hobbes's translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War (1629) and for his poem De mirabilibus. That translation of a Greek or Latin work was a stage in the studia humanitatis was the basis for Skinner's claim that Hobbes was attempting to establish humanist bona fides in undertaking his translation of Thucydides (Skinner 238). Moreover, Cicero had praised history as “magistra vitae” (life's teacher) as a warrant for his translation that Hobbes sites in his prefatory “To the Reader.” Finally, Hobbes's defense of Thucydides against his critics in his introductory “Life and History of Thucydides” conforms in its organizational pattern to the prescriptions for the genus iudiciale in the Ad Herennium, with Hobbes taking the role of the defense against Thucydides's critics (Skinner 246–47). Taking issue with Skinner, Raylor emphasizes that Hobbes was likely attracted to Thucydides because his theory of history emphasized identifying the causal laws that explain events, a more scientific view of history that Bacon modeled in his History of Henry VII (Raylor 68–69). True, Hobbes may have praised history as teacher of moralisms, but that was in the preface where authors praise a subject to attract readers to its importance (Raylor 71). Hobbes's translation cannot stand as particularly humanist. In chapter 3, Raylor similarly finds in Hobbes's poem De Mirabilibus Pecci (On Marvelous Peaks) an emphasis on natural history and the influence, again, of Bacon, not an exercise in epideictic that checks off an achievement within the studia humanitatis (Raylor 105–9).Chapter 4's focus is on Hobbes's famous Briefe of Aristotle's Rhetoric (based on Theodore Goulston's Latin translation of 1619), which Hobbes published in 1637. By Skinner's reckoning the Briefe falls within Hobbes's second period, following what Leo Strauss called Hobbes's “Euclidian conversion” in a Genevan library in 1630, which resulted in his turning away from humanism and rhetoric and toward scientism (Raylor 127). Raylor notes that Hobbes scholars (J. T. Harwood and Pantelis Bassakos, as well as Skinner) “have scoured the [Briefe's] many omissions and its less frequent additions for signs of hostility to the enterprise of rhetoric, reading Hobbes's subsequent ‘rejection’ of eloquence back into it” (150). Skinner, laboring this antirhetoric thesis, maintained, for instance, that there “is nothing in Aristotle corresponding to Hobbes's contention in chapter 1 [of the Rhetoric] that judges are incapable of following scientific proofs, and that advocates are consequently obliged to take ‘the Rhetoricall, shorter way’” (Skinner 257). But Hobbes's rendering seems fair to what Aristotle writes at I.i.12.1355a: that rhetoric is useful because, while (in Freese's Loeb translation) “scientific discourse is concerned with instruction,” for the typical audience for rhetorical discourse such instruction “is impossible,” thus necessitating a rhetorical approach. Similarly, those who see in Hobbes's Briefe an antirhetoric bias point to Hobbes's translation of the first sentence in book II, chapter 1, that “‘rhetoric is that faculty, by which we understand what will serve our turn concerning any subject to win belief in the hearer.’” Skinner reads this as Hobbes's “sneering conclusion” that rhetoricians “are only interested in victory and not in truth” (257). In defense of Hobbes's neutrality, Raylor points out that in Aristotle's account of rhetoric, rhetorical discourse depends on doxa, not apodictic premises, and has persuasion, not the discovery of truth, as its end; furthermore, the claim that rhetoricians are interested only in victory is Skinner's interpolation, found in neither Aristotle nor Hobbes (Raylor 170). Raylor constantly refers to two facts about the Briefe to explain its character: it is a digest, and it was originally created as an aid for his tutoring of William Cavendish. “Streamlining” and “pedagogical value” can best explain Hobbes's rendering of Aristotle (155). If at particular points in the text Hobbes's version seems to make rhetoric more amoral than the original, it may be because Hobbes, in pursuit of economy, has combined attitudes Aristotle expressed elsewhere in summary fashion in the Rhetoric, a notoriously conflicted text.Chapter 5 is concerned with the view of rhetoric in Hobbes's Elements of Law, Natural and Positive, and in De Cive (On the Citizen), considered by Skinner as part of his middle period. Raylor maintains that Hobbes's works, early and late, reflect a basically Aristotelian view of rhetoric—rhetoric is a means to winning belief, is based on doxa (not the apodictic conclusions of demonstration), and, to be effective, must appeal to the passions of its nonexpert audience. He lines up descriptions of rhetoric and eloquence from Hobbes's Briefe of the Rhetoric, from Elements of Law, and from De Cive. On the face of it, the description in De Cive, later than the other two, seems decidedly more sophistic and lends support to Skinner's thesis that Hobbes lost respect for rhetoric in his middle period. In De Cive, the goal of rhetoric is said to be “‘to make the good and the bad … appear greater or less than they really are and to make the unjust appear just,’” that rhetoric does not begin “‘from true principles but from doxa … which are for the most part usually false’” (quoted in Raylor 178). Hobbes's description does not reflect the neutrality of Aristotle's approach. Raylor maintains that the description from De Cive is part of an argument against democratic assemblies and therefore should be taken not as a definitive for rhetoric generally but as a description of its typical deployment in this context (179). In support, he points out that later in De Cive, Hobbes identifies a second kind of eloquence that emphasizes perspicuity and elegance (182–83).Chapters 6 and 7 focus on Leviathan, addressing the question of whether here, in Hobbes's exemplary work of civil science, he makes room for rhetoric, either in theory or by his practice. Raylor points out that Skinner argued that with Leviathan Hobbes had “changed his mind about rhetoric since apparently rejecting it in the Elements of Law and De Cive, readmitting it as part of a reconstituted civil science” (246). Raylor disagrees: this conclusion depends “upon too strong a construction of what are, in context, rather more limited concessions, hedged about by restrictions” (246). On Raylor's analysis, before and in Leviathan, Hobbes is consistent: rhetoric and rhetorical thinking had no place in scientific discovery or mathematical demonstration, including a civil science that could be based on demonstration. Rhetorical invention fosters an uncritical acceptance of familiar conjectural patterns and associations and does not encourage original investigation (Raylor 220–23, 245), a criticism Bacon levied as well. Hobbes never wavered in his suspicion of rhetorical thinking. Raylor does grant that Hobbes allows a belated role for some aspects of elocutio in the presentational aspects of the genuine sciences, including civil science. While metaphor is verboten, simile, for example, is allowed not as a means of discovery or proof, but as a means for illustration (250; 262). This role for rhetoric, Raylor does concede, is more pronounced in Leviathan, but it was not, he insists, altogether absent earlier. Raylor grants too what Skinner and others also claim: a more pronounced polemical texture and tone in Leviathan, a greater presence of rhetorical figures, especially figures of abuse or ridicule, in the last two books (263–65). In these books, Hobbes acts not as the scientist but as the polemicist, denouncing what he regards as obfuscating abuses, especially of religionists.In my judgment, Raylor shows that Hobbes's take on rhetoric in the Leviathan is not, as Skinner claimed, “antithetical” (Skinner 12) to what Hobbes advanced in Elements of Law and De Cive. Hobbes's changed view is better characterized as Raylor has it—a restricted accommodation to allow rhetorical methods a limited role in the discourse of civil science. But in making political philosophers aware of the way the rhetorical culture of the early modern period shaped debates even into the seventeenth century, Skinner's was a genuine, original contribution. Perhaps we can allow innovators a degree of overstatement.The writer who noted that life in the absence of government would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan I.13) understood the way economy, climax (the figure auxesis), and wryness can make prose memorable. Hobbes clearly benefitted from a humanist education but had scarce respect for it. He had no regard for Ciceronian probabilism and would agree with Descartes that if two people hold opposing views, one or both of them is wrong. He preferred to pragmatic reasoning abstract ratiocination, a deductive method that generally “discovered” that “objective” reality was coterminous with his own thinking. Within the history of rhetoric, Hobbes is best seen as a transitional figure: the belated role he found for rhetoric anticipated what became in the Enlightenment the Campbell two-step: first convince, then persuade. For him, this formulation grudgingly allowed a role for rhetoric when dealing with imbeciles, but it hardly makes Hobbes a legitimate heir of the magnificent rhetorical culture of the early modern period.
October 2020
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Abstract
The following commentary follows on and flows out of an initial response to reading “Multiple Voices on Authorship and Authority in Biomedical Publications” by DeTora and colleagues (2020), which appeared in volume 3 issue 4 of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. This response, by rhetorician of science, health, and medicine Celeste Condit, begins by situating questions about authorship and authority in biomedicine against a classical rhetorical source, Plato’s Gorgias. In so doing, Condit identifies a messy truth—that rhetoric potentially can pose dangers when applied to health and medicine. The authors then construct a Platonic dialogue that situates authorship, ethos, and authority in the context of biomedicine. Ultimately, the two authors illustrate the messiness that results when attempting to mount a discussion of these terms across intellectual registers.
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Walleye Wars and Pedagogical Management: Cooperative Rhetorics of Responsibility in Response to Settler Colonialism ↗
Abstract
This essay details a history of environmental violence in Wisconsin, showing the ways that the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) responded during the walleye wars of the 1980s and early 1990s. I show that resentment-laden settler colonialism was engaged by an Ojibwe rhetoric of collaboration, a response that pedagogically emphasizes mutual respect and responsibility. In ongoing relationships with Wisconsin publics, they practice a rhetoric that works counter to the logics of settler colonialism. This essay ultimately shows how GLIFWC’s public outreach during the walleye wars unsettles a settler colonial violence grounded in ignorance and resentment. Such an approach to collaborative relationships enacts a pedagogy grounded in treaty rights between the US and Ojibwe tribes, all the while asserting sovereignty.
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Abstract
Building connections with professionals in subject matter disciplines—practitioners and/or academics—is a growing area of interest for many scholars working in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM). However, strategies for creating and building meaningful, productive interdisciplinary relationships has not been a central theme in RHM-focused scholarship. This entry endeavors to address this gap by using RHM’s emerging version of the “dialogue” genre to describe the author’s experience co-chairing the communications track for an international public health conference. The author weaves in commentary from contributors who participated in the conference and discusses and reflects upon two key challenges that emerged: 1) differences in language choice/terminology, and 2) epistemic conflict. Through this reflective discussion, this dialogue proposes several strategies that RHM scholars might draw from in building their own interdisciplinary relationships moving forward: 1) negotiate shared meanings and goals, 2) find commonalities, and 3) normalize rhetorical inquiry. 
 Featured Contributors: Nicholas Bustamante, MFA; Alina Deshpande, PhD; Amy Ising, MS; Jamie Newman, PhD; Kirk St.Amant, PhD
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Abstract
Other| October 01 2020 Contributors Pedagogy (2020) 20 (3): 569–571. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8544841 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. Pedagogy 1 October 2020; 20 (3): 569–571. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8544841 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 by Duke University Press2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Contributors You do not currently have access to this content.
September 2020
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Abstract
The editor's note for Prompt 4.2.
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International Writing Tutors Leveraging Linguistic Diversity at a Hispanic-Serving Institution’s Writing Center ↗
Abstract
The University Writing Center (UWC) at The University of Texas at El Paso, located on the U.S-Mexico border, employs mostly tutors who are bilingual, Spanish-English; however, there are a significant number of international tutors with different linguistic backgrounds. Using a qualitative method approach, this article discusses findings from focus groups and interviews with international multilingual student tutors who worked at the UWC. Through our analysis of the data, we found that international tutors face a unique set of challenges, but also bring a wealth of knowledge to working at the writing center. This article focuses on three major themes discussed by participants: varying degrees of confidence, feelings of being othered, and issues related to linguistic diversity that arise during tutoring sessions. Tutors’ experiences in leveraging linguistic and cultural differences prompted the need for the UWC to implement changes to its tutor training and policies to support international tutors. As institutions in the United States become more diverse, writing centers need to challenge who best practices in the discipline were created for and who they serve, all while critically examining how we can leverage the experiences of international tutors to reshape writing center pedagogy. Keywords : international writing tutors; multilingualism; linguistic diversity; Hispanic-Serving Institution; writing center pedagogy; tutor training The University Writing Center (UWC) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is located in El Paso, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. El Paso, combined with its sister city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, make it one of the largest bi-national areas in the world. Residents of Juarez frequently commute over the international bridges daily for work; many of these commuters include students at UTEP. UTEP is a Hispanic-Serving Institution where 80% of the student population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx (UTEP, 2019). Furthermore, 20% of these students are students from Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and an additional 5% of students are international students from around the world (UTEP, 2019). Due to the diverse and complex linguistic and cultural lived experiences of students at UTEP, the UWC is informed by theories on multilingualism, antiracism, and equity. It is often cited that writing centers are not just places that enact marginalization, but centers for those who are often marginalized in academia. The UWC has drawn from these theories to develop its programmatic identity, including its goals, tutor training and pedagogies, and professional development, in order to adopt socially just practices. This work, and the theories motivating the work at the UWC, serve as a direct response to our institution and to the students it supports. In a typical semester, the UWC assists over 8,000 students with their writing. The UWC offers face-to-face and synchronous online tutoring, employing about 30 writing tutors, undergraduate and graduate. The undergraduate writing tutors are all hired directly by the UWC, and the graduate students are those who have been awarded a master’s or doctoral teaching assistantship through the English Department or the Creative Writing Department. This year alone, over 40% of the 30+ tutors working at the Writing Center are international students and bi/multilingual with languages ranging from Spanish to Nepalese. Needless to say, this creates a linguistically and culturally diverse work environment as international writing tutors assist students with their writing at the center. This diversity of languages is at the core of our approach to training and pedagogy for writing center tutors. An intricate dynamic develops between writing center tutors and students who often have different home languages, many of whom are English language learners often working towards enacting Academic English as their writing assignments require. While the majority of writing center pedagogy focuses on how to tutor English as a Second Language students and many tutoring books include chapters on working with ESL students or multilingual writers (Bruce & Rafoth, 2009; Gillespie and Lerner, 2009; Ryan & Zimmerelli, 2015; Bruce & Rafoth, 2016; Lape, 2020), very little has been written on the experiences of international tutors from the tutor side. This project started in 2017 when the UWC Director and Assistant Directors were approached by several international students who had been writing tutors, one who is currently the Assistant Director of the UWC and co-author of this piece, asking how training would account for the linguistic differences between the new students joining us from Nepal and the majority of the Spanish speaking students who visited the writing center. Through multiple conversations with international student tutors about their experiences working at the UWC, we were confronted with addressing the following questions: What are the experiences of international tutors working at the UWC? How do non-native English speakers navigate assisting students who are native English speakers, or, in the case of our institution, many non-native English speakers with a different home language? The UWC’s week-long training at the beginning of each academic year includes an entire day focused on tutoring multilingual students, with a larger emphasis on Spanish speakers and writers. However, this was a destabilizing question and set us on the path to try and learn about the experiences of international tutors working at the writing center. In an effort to learn how international writing center tutors navigate concerns about language usage, the UWC needed to reconceptualize training to better account for linguistically and culturally diverse interactions during tutoring sessions. Our article’s contributions to both this special issue and the writing center community opens with an overview of the theories which inform our work at the UWC. First, we came to realize that applying writing center theory and best practices in the UWC was problematic, as some of these best practices did not resonate within the context of UTEP and the UWC–a clear indication of the highly contextualized linguistic ecologies of writing centers on college campuses. Most importantly, these best practices were developed from the ground up and informed by the experiences of students and tutors. Next, we provided a brief description of our study and data collection process. We then structured our data findings into three themes: varying degrees of confidence, feelings of being othered, and issues related to linguistic diversity that arise during tutoring sessions. Lastly, after discussing the most insightful aspects of our findings and how they informed changes to tutoring training at UWC training, we offer readers insight for how writing centers can reconceptualize and reframe the linguistic and cultural knowledges of international tutors as rich resources to learn from, and move away from the deficit rhetoric that has traditionally circulated about non-native English tutors.
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Abstract
As a writing center community, we are constantly striving for ways to address underrepresentation to help restore justice in our centers. In this article, I discuss how the current makeup of writing center administrators does not reflect the U.S. student population. As a response to this historic underrepresentation in writing center administration, I propose that we utilize structures from mentorship theory to develop actionable ways to bring diverse student voices to the forefront of writing center leadership. These methods for increased representation include tutor-led Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound (SMART) projects, tutors serving as professional development facilitators, and rap sessions. Ultimately, this article should serve as a guided starting point to help writing center administrators to continually critique and reflect on how they represent the voices of the student populations they serve. Keywords : administrative underrepresentation, peer mentorship, professional development, student diversity, writing center leadership
August 2020
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Abstract
On June 12, 2020, the SIGDOC Executive Committee issued the following Response to Injustice on the SIGDOC website. We reprint the statement here in its entirety.
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Abstract
This experience report shares lessons learned from a multi-staged prototyping process, over a five-year period, that involved the creation and iterative development of a mobile platform and dozens of prototype examples of interactive locative-media artifacts, including locative journalism. Thematically linked to a public art collection, the mobile app was designed as a research instrument aimed at an external audience of passersby, actively using smartphones. This paper documents and outlines key decisions made about the platform and content in response to observed experiences. It also identifies emergent areas of research potential intertwined in the undertaking of such a prototyping process.
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Abstract
Coalitional politics have largely been examined across social and cultural differences that serve shared political commitments, and the rhetorical force of situated and material locations remains an open question. To provide a theoretical analytic for these excesses, I offer pluriversal and rhetorical understandings of divergence and diplomacy for coalitional politics. I demonstrate these concepts through a rhetorical analysis of a community organization from San Antonio, Texas, and their coalitional politics, which partially emerge as a response to extreme weather events and urban development. The upshot reveals that rhetorical approaches to divergence and diplomacy can help capture the material obligations and constraints across heterogeneous yet interdependent worlds. Such theoretical tools will be increasingly important for coalitional rhetorics and politics responding to climate breakdown.
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Abstract
“Showcasing the many intersections of public rhetoric, current controversies, and effective pedagogy, the authors in this issue of Present Tense bring to light some remarkable instances of persuasive techniques and offer nuanced critiques of those moments in less than 2,500 words.”
July 2020
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Abstract
In recent decades, phrases such as “mass incarceration” and “prison industrial complex” have become part of our national vocabulary, indicating a growing awareness about the cost (in lives and dollars) of maintaining the world’s largest prison population. Indeed, 2019 has seen increased attention to issues of incarceration and justice from both conservative and liberal media… Continue reading Guest Editors’ Introduction by Wendy Hinshaw & Tobi Jacobi
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Abstract
From Guest Editors Wendy Hinshaw & Tobi Jacobi This workshop is our connection to the outside world. A chance for us to be heard, something that teaches us how to connect through our writing. —SpeakOut writer Miami inmates are what becomes of the chicken before I fry it up. —Thant T. Lallamont, Exchange for Change… Continue reading Introducing Reflections 19.1, Special Issue on Prison Writing, Literacies and Communities
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Review: Prison Pedagogies: Learning and Teaching with Imprisoned Writers edited by Joe Lockard and Sherry Rankins-Robertson by Charisse S. Iglesias ↗
Abstract
Demands for more innovative approaches to prison education have flooded the calls for papers in rhetoric and composition journals (Hinshaw & Jacobi 2018; Smith McKoy and Alexander 2018), marking a necessary push toward more dialogic prison engagement and collaboration. Specific to this special issue, Hinshaw and Jacobi (2018) hope to curate pedagogical awareness to include… Continue reading Review: Prison Pedagogies: Learning and Teaching with Imprisoned Writers edited by Joe Lockard and Sherry Rankins-Robertson by Charisse S. Iglesias
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Lifeworld Discourse, Translingualism, and Agency in a Discourse Genealogy of César Chávez’s Literacies ↗
Abstract
Translingual scholarship emphasizes the temporal dimensions of language use, and frame language practices as emergent phenomena shaped by repertories of discursive activities sedimented through prior experience. This essay adapts Gee’s concept of lifeworld Discourse in order to theorize (1) how Discourse competencies are cultivated through the sedimentation of discourse practices over time, and (2) how actors occupy thresholds or dwell on borders while they draw on repertoires sedimented through prior experience in response to emergent rhetorical situations. I activate the lifeworld Discourse conceptual framework in an analytical approach that I call a Discourse genealogy in order to trace out the palimpsestic emergence and blending of Discursive competencies throughout labor and community organizer César Chávez’s life. The argument focuses on the archival record of Chávez’s literacy practices in order to understand his emergent lifeworld Discourses from birth in 1927 through the late 1950s, up to the point at which he began to organize the migrant farmworkers under the auspices of the Community Service Organization in Oxnard, California (1957-8). Using textual analysis of Chávez’s writings and oral history records, the following essay shows how one thread of Chávez’s lifeworld Discourse – responding to social injustice – binds together a number of Chávez’s varied Discursive repertoires. My central argument is that when we occupy thresholds that connect Discourses, our repertoires of practice may be blended with new practices to form emergent potentials for responding to rhetorical situations. The thread of repertoires sedimented throughout a lifetime bind together the various social Discourses we encounter and engage with in our public lives.