A long lineage of Women of Color (WOC) feminists illustrates how, despite academia’s insistence on “bifurcate[ing] life into neat categories—scholar, Chicana, mother, or activist,” in the lived exp...

Jewish rhetorics recently garnered critical attention in rhetoric studies, resulting in extensive scholarship attempting to carve out the field’s jurisdiction. Jewish feminist rhetoricians, for example, often use Jewish rhetorics to reclaim women’s religious experiences. But recovering the secular voices of Jewish women is also essential to understanding Jewish rhetorics, evinced by an anonymous group of nineteenth century women. These women use secular Jewish topoi—exile, tzedek (justice), and zikaron (memory)—to articulate their identity as American Jewish women, demonstrating both Jewish rhetorics’ potential as a cultural rhetoric and topoi’s ability to empower marginalized communities through exclusionary practices.

This article calls for an expansion of the inquiry methods used to explore rhetorical education during the Americanization movement of the early twentieth century. It offers the methodology of administrative history as an approach to help scholars gain perspective on why and how local programs were developed and implemented from the perspective of administrators and participants. This approach enables a more robust understanding of not only the complexity of Americanization programs but also the diversity of approaches that were employed.

Scholarship on the rhetoric of reproduction, childbirth, and motherhood has mostly focused on a U.S. context. Drawing on oral histories that we collected from a small group of Estonian women who gave birth during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, we argue that women’s experiences of childbirth in Soviet maternity hospitals and during the postpartum period can be interpreted as micro-rhetorical interactions through which arguments about the worth or value of a particular identity are communicated implicitly and intangibly. The gendered nature of these micro-rhetorical interactions helps to explain the often observed-upon gap between the official Soviet rhetoric of gender equality and the persistently patriarchal nature of Soviet society. Ultimately, we argue that examining the rhetoric of pregnancy and childbirth in an authoritarian political context also necessitates rethinking the functions of and possibilities for rhetorical agency.

Circulation is about flow, movement, dissemination. It averts the gaze from the physical (as in books, magazines) to the intangible (as in algorithms). Laurie E. Gries credits circulation with deve...

Chronos and kairos are often understood as separate from one another in discussions of rhetorical temporality. For online and other highly mediated contexts, however, chronos and kairos can be understood as deeply related and intertwined. Via the concept of transduction, this article introduces machine time, which describes rhetorical time across a broad range of digital contexts, including online discussion forums and computer code.

This essay reflects on a three-part assignment in which students plan, design, and reflect on a text-based videogame. Created originally for a composition course focused on rhetoric and videogames, the assignment lends itself to teaching about the writing process, especially invention and revision, teaching procedural rhetorics, and teaching technical communication concepts such as iterative design and usability. This essay is coauthored by the instructor with two students who took the course in different semesters, highlighting the collaborative nature of even solo-authored game design, as well as how making games can help students take up rhetorical concerns in other genres.

“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.”

This article is an experimental collaboration that blends qualitative data, archival research, and rhetorical theory with autoethnographic writing. Utilizing Jenny Edbauer’s (2005) conceptualization of rhetorical ecologies, we engage strategic contemplation and critical imagination (Royster and Kirsch 2012) to explore Reflections’ past, present, and future rhetorical landscapes. Link to PDF

Since its inception in 2000, Reflections has functioned as a site of synthesis for community-based writing pedagogy, service-learning, public rhetoric, and community-engaged research. Such a diverse range of influences leads to the formation of a journal that is ever shifting in its identity, scope, and mission. Link to PDF

This article celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Reflections Journal, as a premier publication in service learning, public writing, rhetoric, community literacy, and activism. The author applauds Reflections as a space that nurtures emerging voices and professional development, even prior to the printing of individual volumes and issues. Link to PDF

In this interview, Paula Mathieu reflects on the twentyyear history of Reflections. She discusses how the journal has influenced her teaching and research, and she talks about being the co-editor of Reflections as Rhetoric and Composition was developing newer understandings of community-engaged relationships and practices. Link to PDF

This article amplifies the call for a paradigm shift across a range of comparative disciplines relevant to non-European cultures, that decentralizes rhetorical concepts from European traditions in comprehending non-European literary and philosophical practices. Such a post-Eurocentric perspective is necessary to both generate a fair comparative module that centralizes the emic (culture-specific) features of a language and to avoid Eurocentric misrepresentation of the non-European culture under consideration. This paper challenges the common academic position that Eurocentric traditions are foundational to understanding ancient Egyptian and Arabic literary systems. The article also considers the graphic nature of the core hieroglyphic script in comparison with Arabic to refute the modern obsession that concentrates on the verbal layers of the scripts and neglects their visual literariness.

Book Reviews A. Quiroga Puertas ed.z Rhetorical Strategies in Late Antique Literature. Images, Metatexts and Interpretation, (Mnemosyne Supplements 406), Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017. 227 pp. ISBN 9789004340091 Gli studi sulla letteratura nel tardo-antico si arricchiscono di un prezioso e agile strumento di ricerca grazie alia pubblicazione, a cura di A. Quiroga Puertas, di una raccolta di saggi su testi e autori di II-V sec. L'approccio esegetico e di natura retorica e tende a individuare nelle fonti le diverse soluzioni adottate dagli scrittori per rispondere alle istanze che le mutate condizioni sociali, politiche e culturali hanno imposto alia comunicazione letteraria. L'introduzione di Lieve Van Hoof (pp. 1-6) apprezza il contributo che la mis­ cellanea porta alia bibliografia di settore: l'analisi di testi trascurati, come il Simposio di Metodio o le Vite di Eunapio, ma anche il ricorso a un'ampia gamma di "interpretative strategies'' che, aggiungiamo noi, e possibile declinare in rapporto ai tre motivi-guida evocati nel sottotitolo. L'interesse per le immagini e in generale per gli effetti di evidenza visiva provocati dal testo sostanzia i lavori di J. B. Torres Guerra, A. Quiroga Puertas, L. Miguelez Cavero. J. B. Torres Guerra (Image and Word in Eusebius of Caesarea, VC 3.4-24: Constantine in Nicaea, pp. 73-89) prende in esame la descrizione dell'ingresso solenne di Costantino al concilio di Nicea nel terzo libro della Vita omonima per analizzare le tecniche ecfrastiche usate da Eusebio di Cesarea per rappresentare vividamente la scena. L'attenzione alia registrazione dei dati visivi si traduce nella costruzione di un autentico tableau vivant in cui ogni particolare assume valore simbolico per esprimere l'idea di ordine e armonia assicurati all'impero e alia cristianita dal monarca. A. Quiroga Puertas (In Heaven unlike on Earth. Rhetorical Strategies in Julian's Caesars, pp. 90-103) ritrova la stessa relazione tra ekphrasis e propaganda politica nelle Vite dei Cesari di Giuliano dove l'allusione si carica di valenze filosofiche legate al Neoplatonismo nella scena del banchetto di dei e imperatori (307c-308b), mentre il riuso dei procedimenti encomiastici codificati dalla precettistica (Menandro) e applicati da Giuliano per costruire la galleria dei ritratti imperiali, talora fortemente sarcastici , e finalizzato alia restaurazione dei vecchi ideali di moralita pubblica e pagana. Anche nello studio di L. Miguelez-Cavero, che considera la des­ crizione della collana di Armonia nelle Dionisiache di Nonno di Panopoli (Harmonia s Necklace, Nonn. D. 5, 135-189: a Set of Jewellery, ekphrasis and a Narrative Node, pp. 165-197), l'analisi delle tecniche di visualizzazione si Rheforzczz, Vol. XXXVIII, Issue 4, pp. 432-442. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 15338541 . © 2020 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http:/ /www. ucpress.edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.Org/10.1525/rh.2020.38.4.432 Book Reviews 433 allarga a considerare le relazioni con il contesto di circolazione dell'opera e Yekphrasis diviene uno spazio per interrogarsi sull'intersezione tra retorica e societa. Attraverso una serie di puntuali raffronti con la produzione artistica di eta imperiale e con la tradizione della manualistica retorica, l'autrice indica gli elementi che realizzano la scrittura visiva di Nonno di Panopoli individuando modelli iconografici e letterari senza rinunciare a contestualizzare il brano nell'economia narrativa del poema. L'intertestualita e l'elemento su cui vertono gli studi di R. C. Fowler, B. MacDougall e J. Campos Daroca. R. C. Fowler (Ecyppoouvr) and Self-Knowledge in Methodius' Sym­ posium, pp. 26-43) si propone di ricostruire l'ampio spettro di significati che il termine acocppoabv^ assume nel Symposium di Metodio e che non e possibile sintetizzare in traduzione con un singolo vocabolo. L'analisi degli echi platonici presenti nell'opera supporta l'interpretazione di questo ter­ mine che non si identifica semplicemente con la castita, ma interessa anche la conoscenza di se e il rapporto che l'uomo ha con la realta circostante . La soluzione adottata da Metodio smorza l'intransigenza di alcune posizioni cristiane in tema di verginita in contrasto...

Book Reviews 437 brush to reveal how these women's collective voices defined women's citi­ zenship in an era that suppressed it. Maddux aims to account for women's diverse practices of citizenship and civic roles at the time of the fair. This book is ultimately successful in deepening our understanding of what constitutes citizenship by accounting for multiple practices of women's citizenship. Maddux recognizes that her work can only account for a small fraction of the robust event, but her accounting is fruitful and informative. Her work certainly adds to public address and citizenship scholarship, and offers many points of departure for future study. For example, she includes a brief discussion of the interna­ tional nature of the women's congresses in the conclusion chapter, leaving the door open for others to take up her call to pay more attention to the fair from a transnational perspective. In Practical Citizenship, Maddux achieves her goal of recovering new forms of women's citizenship at the fair, which should encourage future scholarship and therefore an even greater under­ standing of women's contributions to this rich rhetorical event. Anna Dudney Deeb Brenau University Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim, and Beatrice da Vela, eds., The Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric, (Mnemosyne Supplements 403), Leiden: Brill, 2017. 355 pp. ISBN: 9789004334649 This collected volume is an exciting and timely contribution to the study of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric. The introduction lays out the work's premise: oratory, like theater, is always a performance involving a triangular dialogue between performer, opponent or co-actor, and audience. Influenced by the field of Performance Studies, the editors regard rhetorical texts as events rather than objects. As such, the texts can be used to recapture ele­ ments of the original performance and to reveal aspects of performance beyond oral delivery. The chapters represent a wide range of approaches to analyzing performative aspects of oratory. The majority of the chapters are on Attic oratory, with one chapter on Thucydides and five excellent chapters on Roman oratory. The following brief sketches of the contents will demon­ strate the breadth of approaches contained in this volume. The book's first section, "Speakers—Audience," contains five chapters. Ian Worthington suggests that speakers appearing before the Assembly required more skill in acting than those who spoke in the courts because deliberative speakers could be more versatile in responding to the audience and other politicians. Andreas Serafim examines Demosthenes s use of direct address, arguing that Demosthenes uses the address ta VApsc AOfjwioi in order to create a "rhetoric of community," establishing himself and the jurors 438 RHETORIC A as an in-group while excluding his opponent (31). In contrast, the address & devSpec; dixacFToci would remind the jurors that they were themselves being judged by the watching populace. Brenda Griffith-Williams claims that theat­ rical elements in Isaios 6 (the scheming hetaira, the bumbling old man) served to distract from the case's relatively flimsy evidence by building a sense of familiarity among the jurors in their capacity as theatergoers. Guy Westwood considers the dearth of examples of eidolapoeia, the impersonation of a dead person, in Classical Athenian oratory. He suggests that this practice might have been considered undemocratic, if a speaker was thought of as personally appropriating an ancestor who should belong to all. Catherine Steel demonstrates that Cicero's published speeches are misleading: in live performance, informal elements would have interrupted the speakers, requiring them to reveal their ability to successfully interact with the people and to gauge the attitude of the judges and spectators. In fact, oratory is unlike theater in that its performance is never fully scripted. The second section, "Ethopoiia," has two chapters. Christos Kremmydas demonstrates that Thucydides reveals the character and intentions of indivi­ duals and cities through dialogue—especially their style of argumentation and use of gnomic statements—as much as through narrative. Henriette van der Blom shows how Metellus Numidicus reinvented himself after being recal­ led from Africa in 107 bce. An examination of the fragments of his speeches reveals that Metellus used the "rhetoric of inclusion" to bring the people to his side while simultaneously...

Book Reviews 435 Nazianzo attraverso le categorie della stilistica antica sulla falsariga della polemica tra retori asiani e retori atticisti! Questo volume, che si conclude con utili indici di nomi e luoghi notevoli, offre un'interessante sintesi suggerendo con i suoi contributi proficue linee di indirizzo e metodologie d'indagine per le future ricerche sul tardo-antico. Francesco Berardi University of Chieti Kristy Maddux, Practicing Citizenship: Womens Rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. 256 pp. ISBN: 9780271083506 The 1893 Chicago World's Fair lasted a mere five months, but the copi­ ous records of speeches and programs from the event capture the tremen­ dous social, economic, and political evolution that took place during the Gilded Age. In Practicing Citizenship: Women's Rhetoric at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Kristy Maddux zeros in on this fascinating period during which women were "caught in a dilemma of citizenship" (vii), meaning that they were legally full citizens but were not allowed to vote. The fair marked an almost unprecedented occasion for women's public address. Close to 800 women spoke as part of the fair's congresses on issues such as education, government, and religion. Maddux argues that the participation of these women enacted diverse citizenship practices that complicate previous understandings of women's citizenship in this era. To uncover how women negotiated greater participation in public life, Maddux analyzes a large batch of texts to identify "interrelationships or overlaps and how they wor­ ked together to project ideas of women's citizenship" during the fair (46). Maddux brings together the subjects of practicing citizenship, which has been of ongoing interest to rhetorical scholars, and women's public address at the fair, which is a subject that is ripe for analysis but has yet to receive extensive consideration from rhetorical scholars. Maddux conducts a rhetorical analysis of a discursive event that has largely been the purview of English and history scholars. She also moves away from what has been a traditional focus on suffragist rhetoric and toward previously unconsidered or undervalued women's citizenship practices. She argues that scholars have previously limited their focus to women's citizenship as the fight for suffrage, which fails to account for all the other ways in which women were organiz­ ing together and defining their public roles in the late nineteenth century. To recover women's citizenship practices, Maddux considers the fair as a "multivocal projection of the circulating discourses of the Gilded Age," rather than more common readings of the fair as a representation of contem­ poraneous ideas or an illusory vision of a perfect United States (25). Maddux identifies four practices of women's citizenship that frame the remaining analysis chapters: deliberative democracy, racial uplift, organized womanhood, 436 RHETORICA and economic participation. In Chapter 2, Maddux analyzes programs and promotional documents that demonstrate how the fair's congresses "pro­ jected a vision for deliberative democracy" for women (52). The congresses served as spaces for women's self-government and for defining their civic role. Women could celebrate their identities as women but also depart from their gendered identities when they spoke about their accomplishments in civil, scientific, and educational work. Chapter 3 considers how sixteen Congress speeches characterized acts of racial uplift as practices of citizen­ ship. For these women, the goal of racial uplift was to help women of vari­ ous ethnicities, races, and classes succeed, which in turn would benefit all of humankind. African American and white women forwarded discourses based on evolutionary progress against a backdrop of racial oppression that infused the fair and projected a model of racial uplift through working together. Chapter 4 examines how women considered membership and ser­ vice in voluntary organizations as platforms for citizenship. Women partic­ ipated in civil society and shaped their futures, and the futures of their nations, through organized womanhood. Finally, Maddux focuses on women's industrial participation and financial leadership as political prac­ tice in Chapter 5. Through speeches based in liberalism and republicanism, says Maddux, "these speakers offered models of female financial leader­ ship" and portrayed this leadership as an act of citizenship (172). The con­ clusion attends to...

Readers can explore 13 teaching innovations presented at the 2019 Association for Business Communication annual international conference in Detroit, Michigan. These assignments are designed to add fuel to oral and written persuasion, including the practical use of rhetorical tools. Ideas to advance learners’ professional development are presented. Also, clever experiential learning techniques are designed to inculcate team-building skills. This article is the second in a two-part series. The first appeared in the June 2020 issue. Additional teaching materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on the Association for Business Communication website: https://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments

Research Article| September 01 2020 The Complicity of Racial and Rhetorical Pessimism: The Coherence and Promise of the Long Civil Rights Movement David A. Frank David A. Frank David A. Frank is Professor of Rhetoric in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, Eugene. He thanks Professor John Hatch and Charley Leistner for their help in constructing this manuscript. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2020) 23 (3): 553–586. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0553 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation David A. Frank; The Complicity of Racial and Rhetorical Pessimism: The Coherence and Promise of the Long Civil Rights Movement. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2020; 23 (3): 553–586. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0553 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| September 01 2020 Racial Reconciliation Revisited John B. Hatch John B. Hatch John B. Hatch is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2020) 23 (3): 527–528. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0527 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John B. Hatch; Racial Reconciliation Revisited. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2020; 23 (3): 527–528. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0527 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

AbstractThe city of New Orleans has long narrated its own demise through reference to “the Big One,” a singular hurricane that would destroy the city for good. The “catastrophe to come” is a more or less permanent spectral presence for many of its residents, evidence of which can be traced as far back as the city’s founding in 1718. When it comes to memorialization of Katrina, the central question of this essay is: how does one analyze public memory of an event so thoroughly anticipated, indeed, whose historical anticipation is fundamental to the later memory of it? Rather than merely acting as the historical context within which public memory comes to be interpreted, this anticipation and the anxiety that marks its form figures directly into the reading of the later memory object itself. In this essay, I argue that the repeated narrativization of the Big One is an anxious rhetoric that prefigures post-Katrina memory objects through a process of melancholic rhetorical incorporation. I first engage the history of New Orleans and this anxiety, extrapolating my usage of anxiety and melancholy as rhetorical concepts along the way. Then, I tender a critical analysis that first reads two narratives of such destruction to describe memory’s prefiguration and then turns symmetrically to two post-Katrina memory objects to demonstrate the work of incorporation in the production of memory objects.

Research Article| September 01 2020 “Childish Things“: Tragic Conservatism, White Evangelicalism, and the Challenge of Racial Reconciliation John B. Hatch John B. Hatch John B. Hatch is Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He would like to thank Prof. Martin Medhurst for dedicating space in Rhetoric & Public Affairs both to the present and previous forums on racial reconciliation, and thank Mark McPhail and David Frank for modeling consilience, mutual respect across differing views, and dialogic coherence in pursuing racial justice and healing. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2020) 23 (3): 587–616. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0587 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John B. Hatch; “Childish Things“: Tragic Conservatism, White Evangelicalism, and the Challenge of Racial Reconciliation. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2020; 23 (3): 587–616. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0587 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract The Memex is an icon in the history of computer technology. It was first presented to the public in a 1945 Life Magazine article as “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” The Memex itself was never built, but the image of what machines like it could do captured the imagination of a generation of computer engineers. The Memex was designed by an engineer and science administrator named Vannevar Bush, but he had actually designed the Memex to address inter-war America: the Memex article was written during the tumult of the late 1930s and largely untouched during World War II. This article examines the Memex within this interwar context, paying particular attention to how Bush used the design of a technological prototype to imagine how machines could help humans navigate the modern world. I argue that this effort was an act of rhetorical invention and show that the design of the Memex was a vehicle for Bush to endorse technocratic authority over American life.

Abstract While scholars have studied Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Israel from a diplomatic, strategic, or political lobbying perspective, few have examined this relationship rhetorically. I argue that despite Reagan’s private disagreements with Israel, his public rhetoric consistently depicted Israel within the mythic terms of the Cold War as a heroic democracy like the United States. Drawing on discourses of American exceptionalism, terrorism, and Holocaust remembrance, Reagan’s rhetoric constrained his diplomatic ability to deal with Israeli aggression and continues to shape American presidential discourse.

Research Article| September 01 2020 (Re)-Signing Reconciliation: Reading Obama’s Charleston Eulogy through a Rhetorical Theory of Adaptive Racism Mark Lawrence McPhail Mark Lawrence McPhail Mark Lawrence McPhail is a Senior Research Fellow in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs at Indiana University. I wish to thank Professor Martin Medhurst for his sustained and ongoing commitment to inclusive excellence, diversity, and equity, Professors Aaron David Gresson, III, John Hatch and David Frank for their courage, commitment, and integrity, and Dr. Evelyn Boise Bottando for showing me the clear connection between white privilege, innocence, and sociopathy. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2020) 23 (3): 529–552. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0529 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mark Lawrence McPhail; (Re)-Signing Reconciliation: Reading Obama’s Charleston Eulogy through a Rhetorical Theory of Adaptive Racism. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2020; 23 (3): 529–552. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0529 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Preview this article: Theorizing Rhetorical-Affective Workflows: Behind the Scenes with Webtext Authors1, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/83/1/collegeenglish30929-1.gif

Drawing from an interpretive decolonial framework that understands multimodal writing as the act of creatingco-composedknowledge, this article analyzes Chicanx murals as multimodal compositions that exemplify the continuation of the Aztectlacuilolitztlipractice of writing with images. This work also invites rhetoric and composition scholars to reexamine Western understandings of history, particularly the history of writing.

Women continue to be underrepresented at the highest academic rank of full professor. Studies show that once women earn tenure, they are inundated with teaching, service, and administrative responsibilities, which take time away from research and publication—the primary criteria for promotion. We believe that rhetoric and writing studies (RWS) faculty are uniquely situated to confront this challenge because of our disciplinary expertise, our experience administering writing programs, and our interest in equity. With the goal to increase the number of women full professors at our university, we created a year-long writing program for women associate professors. Based on results from this pilot study, we argue that RWS faculty can use their expertise to decrease the disparity at the highest academic rank and make the university more diverse and equitable. Moreover, we believe that RWS scholars can use their disciplinary expertise to address a range of other institutional and systemic challenges.

We surveyed 803 undergraduates at a large public university about their online writing practices. We find that despite wide platform access, students typically write in a narrow range of spaces for limited purposes and audiences, with a majority expressing rhetorical concerns about writing in digital spaces. These findings suggest rich opportunities for writing instructors to better help students negotiate the terrain of online public discourse.

The field of Writing Center Studies continues to develop new frameworks and points of entry for engaging intersectional identities like race, class, sexuality, and gender; however, the field has not yet developed a similar discourse on the intersections of disability and writing center work. This article interrogates this gap in the field’s scholarship and provides a new point of entry for writing center professionals who seek to foster access: the writing of an Accessibility Statement. Engaging in the process of creating an Accessibility Statement is an act of restorative justice because only through examining how our practices, beliefs, or research act as gatekeepers to inclusion can we truly restore dignity, community, and agency to all writers. The article contains two major sections: an overview of the critical theory and research that inform our perspectives on writing centers and disability, and then a praxis section providing guidance to those interested in writing an accessibility statement for their center. we argue that to engage the work of fostering access is a form of restorative justice; only upon examining how our practices, beliefs, or research act as gatekeepers to inclusion can we truly restore dignity, community, and agency to all writers. We want to acknowledge, as this article begins, that we made several intentional rhetorical moves in the essay that you might find unusual or surprising. Some of these moves are textual: for example, we have included numerous hyperlinks in text to help readers find further information or explanation if they need it and we have broken the article into multiple headlined sections for ease of access. Some of these moves are tonal: we wrote this article believing it will have multiple audiences with multiple points of entry or reasons for reading, and we wanted to write for / include all these audiences; shifts in style and voice represent different purposes in the writing and perhaps different readers of that writing. We feel it extremely important to ensure that as much of this article’s language as possible is clear, accessible, and share-able amongst communities of readers and writers. Lastly, our audio components for this article were broken into shorter sections as well in an attempt to create ease of access.

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.

The writing center and multimodal projects play an integral role in restoring justice to students and giving them ownership over their own voices. Too often, students, especially students who need extra writing support, come into the composition classroom believing that they are “bad writers” because they struggle with the traditional academic essay. Oftentimes, these students initially feel overwhelmed by any assignments they are asked to complete in a composition course. Prior to college, many students only have exposure to the traditional academic essay, which epitomizes “good writing” for them, and this lack of exposure to other kinds of composing causes students to carry the baggage of failure. This is where the writing center comes in. Providing additional training to writing tutors to prepare them to work with students on multimodal projects allows them to begin the work of restoring justice because the “job of the tutor is to help human beings…” (Fitzgerald & Ianetta, 2016, p. 167). Students sometimes show up in the writing center with an assignment that asks them to make a poster presentation for their biology course, a podcast for their English course, or a video for an education course. By coaching students on multimodal assignments and working students through feelings of intimidation and the baggage of previous writing courses, the writing center teaches students to repurpose their existing skills and overcome obstacles to become confident, capable writers and composers. Keywords : writing center, multimodal, justice, voice, rhetoric, visual design, coaching, multimodal assignments, multimodality

Recent calls for a statement of ethics for RHM research claim that a statement is needed in order to have a “place at the table” for collaborative medical research. I argue two problems exist with this call. First, the motive for creating a statement reflects criticism of rhetoric’s epistemic and ethical virtues raised by Dilip Gaonkar and Plato, respectively. Second, ethics statements do not adequately address the range of research practices found in transdisciplines like RHM. Drawing from RHM scholarship and my own experiences, I argue that these criticisms are unfounded and that RHM’s ethical value is found in our analysis and criticism.

Bayes's theorem allows us to use subjective thinking to find numerical values to formulate assessments of risk. It is more than a mathematical formula; it can be thought of as an iterative process that challenges us to imagine the potential for "unknown, unknowns." The heuristics involved in this process can be enhanced if they take into consideration some of the established risk assessment and communication models used today in technical communication that are concerned with the social construction of meaning and the kairos involved in rhetorical situations. Understanding the connection between Bayesian analysis and risk communication will allow us to better convey the potential for risk that is based on probabilistic assumptions.