A hallmark of business and professional communication is an emphasis on pragmatic but theoretically grounded work. Thus, business and professional communication scholars are ideally suited to turn the theories found in disability studies into practice. In this article, I do just that by creating a theory—orienting access—that draws on concepts from disability studies. Orienting access calls for business and professional communication faculty to consider alternate pedagogies to ensure that our classrooms are truly accessible to all students. It also models the behaviors to teach how to design and create information that is accessible for all audiences.

This article investigates how normative attitudes about work construct barriers to workers who are blind and visually impaired. The researcher collected narratives about rhetorical experiences from blind and visually impaired participants in the United States and analyzed accounts of these workplace interactions to identify rhetorical commonplaces that drive arguments about work. These commonplaces reveal the ableist assumptions that construct access barriers and constrain rhetorical possibilities for disabled workers’ self-advocacy. The author proposes that business and professional communication students and practitioners should engage in collaborative approaches to flexible thinking and leadership necessary for reimagining work in ways that promote accessibility.

This study examines design aspects that shape human/machine collaboration between wearers of smart hearing aids and their networked aids. The Starkey Halo hearing aid and the TruLink iPhone app that facilitates real-time adjustments by the wearer offer a case study in designing for this sort of collaboration and for the wearer's rhetorical management of disability disclosure in social contexts. Through close textual analysis of the company's promotional materials for patient and professional audiences as well as interface analysis and autoethnography, I examine the ways that close integration between the wearer, onboard algorithms and hardware, and geolocative telemetry shape everyday interactions in multiple hearing situations. Reliance on ubiquitous, familiar hardware such as smart phones and intuitive interface design can drive patient comfort and adoption rates of these complex technologies that influence cognitive health, social connectedness, and crucial information access.

For many, the results of the 2016 election brought a shock and much-needed wake-up call, as residents of the U.S.(and other nations across the world) faced a reality that can be easy to forget and ignore: White supremacy still reigns, both in the U.S. and abroad. While the results of the election appeared to surprise residents and poll analysts alike, for many marginalized communities, the election of a President with a history of racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia was merely another reminder of the discrimination embedded in our daily realities; a reminder that as marginalized people living in the United States, our fight for survival and agency is far from over.

This article offers a case study of the development and implementation of a free activist and leadership course for members of the community planning on running for elected office. The article describes how the course was developed, including an explanation of the partnership between the Latino Leadership Institute (LLI) and the University of Central Florida’s United Faculty of Florida (UCF-UFF), which resulted in the creation of an Orlando LLI chapter. The Electoral Activism and Leadership Academy (EALA), as the course was called, was motivated by two disability methodologies: first, a “madness narrative methodology” (Fields), wherein “representations are fragmented and nonrational,” even “resisting objectivity, linearity, and rational progression,” and secondly, a “nothing about us without us” methodology (Fields), which advocates the need for open discussions about action with populations who would be affected by such action. These methodologies helped reduce anxiety around the subject, offering a space for instructors and participants to participate as and when they could, share their stories, and get advice. This paper demonstrates that when oppressive cultural and political climates fragment bodies and identities of marginalized people, that fragmentation becomes the catalyst for opportunities of resistance. These fragmentations ultimately are representative of the cracks in oppressive systems, giving rise to the urgent need for the inclusivity of underrepresented or neglected perspectives, voices, and bodies to achieve everyday rhetorical resistance.

Shannon Walters’ Rhetorical Touch stretches the consideration of embodied rhetorics to embrace the sense of touch through both classical rhetoric and contemporary disability studies. Key to Walters’ project is a rereading of Aristotle’s pisteis—logos, pathos, and ethos—through the sense of touch. To examine the productions of a variety of disabled rhetors, she draws upon rhetoricians from Empedocles to Burke, on phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, and on disability-studies scholars such as Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Brueggemann. This broad, disciplinary-crossing quality of her scholarship makes sense because she situates touch as “a sense that transcends bodily boundaries; it demands an approach that also transcends boundaries” (8). Though her project is solidly within the realm of disability studies, it can and should affect how we do scholarship in rhetoric.Through an understanding of Empedocles’ sense of logos, Walters argues that touch is the broadest means of persuasion, and, furthermore, that it is the sense that ties all humans together, those who are disabled as well as those who are temporarily able-bodied. In so doing, Walters calls for a radical repositioning of all rhetorical appeals as fundamentally rooted in the sense of touch. This is the most radical and fascinating claim of the book, and it holds up for both individual rhetors as well as amorphous rhetors who are harder to identify. Walters not only uses this understanding of rhetoric to guide examination of Helen Keller, Temple Grandin, and Nancy Mairs, but also in her examination of the birth of the Disability Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s through the 1977 demonstrations for the enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. At times, her broad historical and theoretical approach weaves together unevenly, but the overarching argument’s contribution to reimagining pisteis is solid and perhaps even groundbreaking.The first chapter examines the tactile experience of Helen Keller’s rhetorical productions through a careful consideration of her texts, the context in which they were produced, and the theoretical implications of her practice. A facet of this chapter that I found particularly relevant and insightful was Walter’s examination of the doubt of authenticity and individual authorship that accompanied all of Keller’s writings. Walters reads the accusations of plagiarism against Keller as stemming directly from Keller’s relationship to communication as tactile and inherently collaborative. Though Keller is an exceptional example of these facets of rhetorical production, we all draw on sources we have absorbed unknowingly, on collaboration with present and distant others, and on a tactile experience. Walters argues we thus must reshape rhetoric to account for this dynamic. To do so, she literally redraws the traditional rhetorical triangle into a doubled triangle, forming either a diamond with an entire side “touching,” representing both traditional ethos and her reinterpretation through mêtis, or an angular and precarious hourglass, intersecting at the point of two interpretations of logos—Aristotle’s and Empedocles’.Chapter two examines the demonstrations by disability activists demanding enforcement of Section 504, simultaneously continuing Walters’ theoretical underpinnings, which rest on an understanding of rhetorical identification largely dependent on Burke, but shaped through theories of touch by Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, and Deleuze. Walters identifies a key problem with rhetorical models of identification: they “do not accommodate the identities of people with disabilities or identifications made possible by the lived experience of disability” (62). Walters’ retheorization seeks to accommodate identification: “Specifically, identification via sensation and touch possesses the potential to reform and reshape the process of identification” (64). Walters suggests Deleuze’s concept of the “fold” as a model of Burkean identification that includes division. Though I find this chapter fascinating and ambitious, I’m left wondering why we must accommodate identification at all. This seems a retrofitting strategy and potentially less radical than an outright dismissal, or even a redefinition, as Walters does so well in her reimagining of pisteis.In the next three chapters, Walters molds the rhetorical triangle into something radically different from what our first-year composition textbooks taught us in order to be inclusive of touch and thus of disabled rhetors. Instead of Aristotle’s autonomous, rational logos, in chapter three, Walters puts forward Empedocles’ felt sense of logos, which is touch-based and enables a facilitated model of rhetoric. She finds this extralinguistic approach to logos more appropriate for rhetors with psychological disabilities and suggests that, “Empedocles’ sense of logos, felt in the heart as much as exhibited by one’s cognition, is physical, psychological, and embodied” (98). Walters then applies this reading of felt logos to online support forums for schizophrenia and depression, in which participants explicitly discuss touch and the lack of it in their lives. This reading is innovative, though perhaps limited in this online form.In the following chapter, Walters pushes her readers to reexamine how we presume an ethos that is neurotypical. She suggests, “Simply put, autistic people are seen as ethos-less when viewed through a narrowly medical or pathological lens” (113). This pathological lens casts autists as unable to identify and connect with others and therefore unable to construct ethos. In this chapter, Walters is doing her most expansive work to develop lines of thought already established in considerations of disability and of bodily knowing within our discipline, such as those developed by Debra Hawhee and Jay Dolmage, who both look to mêtis as an alternative knowledge production within rhetoric that is also based in bodily adaptation. Walters builds directly on this scholarship in order to suggest an approach to ethos that is neuro-diverse: “I redefine mêtis as a tactile relationship of embodied cognition between people and their environments that supports a method of character formation not based on traditional notions of ability and neurotypicality” (118). In this chapter, Walters makes a significant contribution to disability rhetoric as a field by showing how mêtis can accommodate those who use facilitated communication as well as those who are neuro-divergent and may use touch in nontypical ways to build trust and character.In the next chapter, Walters articulates how facility with kairos can make new forms of pathos possible: “I redefine kairos though special attention to the sense of touch, showing how kairos operates tactilely to create new emotional and physical connections among bodies in close proximity and contact” (145). Walters uses the term “redefine” in this chapter and the last in ways that may lead a reader to think she has no regard for rhetorical history. Quite to the contrary, Walters is changing perspective and illuminating a connection to touch that has always been related to the terms she is deploying. For instance, Walters notes that in the first uses of the term kairos, in Homer and Hesiod, the term is “nearly synonymous with ‘disability,’ indicating places of bodily vulnerability and impairment that are penetrable tactilely” (153). Here, Walters traces an etymology that classically may have worked to further disadvantage those who are impaired, but that in current rhetorical scholarship can call attention to the tactile and kairotic ways of employing pathos, which disabled rhetors, such as Nancy Mairs, Harriet McBryde Johnson, and John Hockenberry, have opened as rhetorical possibilities.Her final two chapters work to conclude her reexamination of rhetoric through the sense of touch. Chapter six explores the possibilities of teaching with haptic technologies. Far from an afterthought, this chapter remains deeply theoretical, engaged in historiography, and pulls together her shape-shifting pisteis within the classroom. Walters leads the reader as she leads her students through a critical investigation of haptic technologies, showing the ableist assumptions embedded within them. Not only is this investigation pertinent to disability studies, but it also models the kind of deep critical analysis we should all be guiding our students toward. Walters’ conclusion reminds us that we are all embedded in haptic technologies and the future of communication technology will only embed us further. As we critically engage technology, we need a lens through which to understand touch, which Walters has provided.Rhetorical Touch is an important contribution to the historiography of rhetoric, to rhetorical theory, to disability studies, and to composition rhetoric. I look forward to seeing how other scholars take up this reshaping of the traditional rhetorical triangle. The only disappointment I can manage to find in the book is the continued adherence to identification. However, Walters provides analytical insight and new perspectives on the tradition that are radical and inclusive of diverse bodies and minds. That is what this book offers to the world of rhetoric.

This article outlines an approach to teaching a Writing for the Health Professions course and situates this approach within the aims of and tensions between the medical humanities, the rhetoric of health and medicine, and disability studies. This analysis provides a pragmatic walkthrough of how assignments in such courses can be linked to programmatic outcomes (with SOAP [Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan] note and patient education assignments as extended examples) as well as an interdisciplinary framework for future empirical studies.

Readers of A Rhetoric of Motives often acknowledge Burke’s anti-feminist blind spots, but argue that these blind spots need not negate his larger contributions to rhetorical theory. While true, this claim is also dangerous because it assumes that identifying an argumentative blind spot is tantamount to having worked through all its complexities. This article attempts to work through these complexities via a method of mythic historiography grounded in Burke’s concept of the almost universal. This article demonstrates that Burke organizes his philosophy of modern rhetoric and his concept of identification around a deceitful Woman trope in ways that claim a universality that is actually gendered male. By reimagining the relation of identification and myth in A Rhetoric of Motives this article refigures the deceitful Woman trope in terms of its unassimilability within Burke’s modern philosophy of rhetoric and discusses implications for rhetorical studies.

The following is a side-by-side review of two recent additions to the growing “Keywords” genre: Keywords for Disability Studies and Keywords in Writing Studies. Often considered a niche issue, or, in the classroom, solely the concern of specialists, what Keywords for Disability Studies does is reveal the tacit norms behind (dis)ability that inflect all bodies and minds with meaning. Keywords texts offer a number of entry points into their respective fields, and, because of their formal structure, challenge readers and teachers to devise their own pathways through the text. Reading Keywords for Disability Studies alongside Keywords in Writing Studies reveals opportunities for all composition scholars and teachers of writing to both apply an awareness of (dis)ability norms in the field and the classroom and map productive intersections between the two fields of study.

This review of Eli Clare’s Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure (2017) and Eunjung Kim’s Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea (2017) shows how both Clare and Kim critique the politics of cure in the U.S. and Korea. Specifically, these texts reveal the (at times) violent ways that cure has been forced on disabled bodies, and unpack longstanding debates within the political, cultural, and medical sectors about eliminating disability at all costs, and refusing cure. Although both works are oriented towards the field of disability studies, this review highlights the intersectional aspects of both texts and the concrete, practical ways that rhetoric and composition scholars and teachers can benefit from this discourse.

In this essay, I review three recent monographs: Jordynn Jack’s Autism and Gender , Anne McGuire’s War on Autism , and Melanie Yergeau’s Authoring Autism . Each of these texts centers disability—autism in particular—and in doing so, they highlight the insidious ways in which our cultural, institutional, and personal autism narratives support extant social hierarchies that sideline autistic lives in scholarship and beyond. Central to these three books are issues of rhetorical play, textual narrative, and storying in contemporary autism discourse, so in this essay I aim to tie together these fundamental themes, placing them in conversation with one another. I begin the discussion with a brief overview of the history of autism before drawing from Yergeau, Jack, and McGuire’s texts to explore the lay of the discursive field of autism and forms of rhetorical (and physical) violence that are normalized in autism discourse. Finally, before concluding, I explore what the authors of these texts explicate about the rhetors who take part in a shifting discursive field.

This essay offers a review of Jay Dolmage’s Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education and Asao Inoue’s Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future with the intent of reminding composition instructors of the importance of intersectionality and accessibility. Each text encourages us to challenge traditional perceptions of success and failure thereby also interrogating imbalanced power dynamics between instructors and students particularly in regards to writing assessment and other pedagogical priorities. Finding ways to acknowledge difference, and affirm it, is vital to our collective success especially in the writing classroom.

This program profile of the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania focuses on how disability came to be a valued term, a structuring philosophy, and a pedagogical touchstone for the program’s philosophy, curriculum, and practices. After exploring various challenges involved in addressing the needs of students with disabilities, we provide an overview of our program’s efforts to address the needs of students with disabilities. In so doing, we explain how we came to adopt an orientation towards disability that depends for its philosophical force on a return to Derrida’s advocacy of the deconstructive notion of différance . Différance seeks to overturn binary thinking, challenge uninterrogated binaries such as abled/disabled and the normate templates that enact and enforce these, replacing them with a relational, fluid, contextual approach.

The Writing Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver, which serves a diverse population, rejects the accommodation model, which depends upon disclosure of difference, in favor of the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which assumes difference exists and plans in advance for it. Hiring, tutoring, space design, and marketing efforts have been aligned with principles of UDL in an effort to make the Writing Center accessible to people with a wide range of (dis)abilities, including linguistic diversity, social anxiety, and gaps in academic literacy.

This piece examines the Writing Studies job market from a perspective not addressed in previous literature: accessibility. I draw on work in the field of disability studies to argue that accessibility does not only affect those people who identify as having a disability; rather, it is a concept that speaks to how well all candidates are able to participate in the procedures and expectations for a tenure-track job search. Focusing on interview formats, this article ultimately argues for more generous interview practices that take into account the various ways in which candidates might be disadvantaged by rigid structures.

In this article, I explore normative assumptions regarding multimodality from the perspective of disability studies, and focus particularly on how coherence and wholeness work in disciplinary conversations and professional statements. I offer a reading of the hybrid graphic-written text The Ride Together as a way to resist these normative impulses and to explore a different kind of wholeness at work in the interaction between text and image. I argue for appreciating the rhetorical strategy of dis-closure, which I define as occurring when disability frustrates the normative expectations of multimodal, compositional, and narrative closure in productive and generative ways. I analyze multimodal collaboration and revision in The Ride Together , arguing that insights from comics studies, together with an appreciation of dis-closure, present alternatives to the limiting disciplinary focus on coherence and wholeness.

Informed by my embodiment as a Deaf instructor asking hearing students to challenge captioning conventions, this article shows how hearing composers can reimagine the design of their captioned videos, and appreciate students’ embodied responses to new rhetorical situations. The embodied methodology and methods in this article incorporate embodied differences and are directly influenced by the fields of disability studies, cultural rhetorics, and embodiment. This article foregrounds students’ embodied responses—their individual reactions to the videos and activities—in the form of their reflective letters on the process of designing and analyzing videos with dynamic visual text, or captions that move around the screen in interaction with other modes of communication. In addition to discussing their written responses and the skills they developed, I assess their group videos to show how student composers interpret the process of infusing captions with meaning.

This article argues that teachers and WPAs can “hack” standard curricular spaces and institute more inclusive writing pedagogies. One form of hacking can occur through the design of Writing Studio, a one-hour peer workshop that provides a necessary off-shoot from normative composition instruction. Writing Studio disables composition as standard practice and institutes an open-access curricular space that reconfigures practice as usual. Drawing upon key concepts from disability, this article shows how the studio approach promotes writers’ interdependence, out of which develops writer agency and confidence.

This article offers the term “accommodation transfer” as a way to understand the rhetorical skills disabled students transfer alongside writing knowledge as they access college writing assignments and writing classrooms. This study is based on five qualitative interviews with disabled college students and draws upon both writing transfer research and disability studies. The author explores how participants adapted writing process knowledge and learned how to negotiate their accommodation needs with instructors across their academic careers. Specifically, these negotiations include assessing instructors’ stances towards disability and testing effective genres and vocabulary to communicate about disability with instructors. The article concludes with two suggestions for cripping teaching for transfer: embracing and teaching crip time for writing, and highlighting the relationship between mentorship and interdependence.

In this article, I argue for pedagogies that explicitly center the embodied perspectives of students and their audiences. Using Stephanie Kerschbaum’s concept of “anecdotal relations,” or orientations towards disability that inform rhetorical transactions, I analyze my academic experiences as a Chicana with “invisible” disabilities to highlight how race and disability are both highlighted and erased in pedagogical contexts. I present two personal stories from my time as a student and as an instructor, respectively, to show how instructors’ orientations towards race and disability are typically based around impressions of deficit even as the importance of race and disability as critical heuristics are overlooked. Then I explain how my students and I attempt to build critical embodiment into our writing to compose more inclusively to suggest how we may all become more attuned to our audiences’ embodied needs.

This article shares findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of students with disabilities in college-level writing and writing-intensive classrooms. I argue that normative conceptions of time and production can negatively constrain student performance, and I offer the concept of crip time (borrowed from disability theorists and disability activists) as an alternative pedagogical framework.

As technical communication (TC) instructors, it is vital that we continue reimagining our curricula as the field itself is continually reimagined in light of new technologies, genres, workplace practices, and theories—theories such as those from disability studies scholarship. Here, the authors offer an approach to including disability studies in TC curricula through the inclusion of a “critical accessibility case study” (CACS). In explicating the theoretical and practical foundations that support teaching a CACS in TC courses, the authors provide an overview of how TC scholars have productively engaged with disability studies and case studies to question both our curricular content and classroom practices. They offer as an example their “New York City Evacuation CACS,” developed for and taught in TC for Health Sciences courses, which demonstrates that critical disability theory can help us better teach distribution and design of technical information and user-based approaches to TC. The conceptual framework of the CACS functions as a strategy for TC instructors to integrate disability studies and attention to disability and accessibility into TC curricula, meeting both ethical calls to do so as well as practical pedagogical goals.

Two disabled researchers draw from their experiences conducting an interview study with a population of self-identified disabled faculty members to question some long-held commonplaces about qualitative interviewing. They use the phrase centering disability to emphasize disability as a critical lens and form of embodied experience that has theoretical and methodological implications for qualitative interviewing research design, implementation, and analysis.

The multidisciplinary research presented in this paper focuses everyday life and social practices that can be characterized by the use of one (or more) language variety, modality or register. Conceptual ideas that arise from explorations based upon empirical analysis of situated and distributed so called monolingual and multilingual oral talk, written communication, signed interactions and embodiment in and across virtual and in-real-life settings inside and outside higher education and schools are presented and discussed. Using sociocultural and decolonial perspectives on language-use or languaging, analytical findings from traditionally segregated fields of study – Literacy Studies, Bilingualism, Deaf education, Language Studies – are juxtaposed. An overarching concern here is framed by the continuing dominance of structural linguistic positions and demarcated fields within the Language and Educational Sciences that frame didactical thinking. The work presented here highlights concerns regarding established concepts like ‘bilingualism’ and ‘codes’ and suggests more empirically relevant alternatives like ‘chaining’, ‘languaging’, ‘fluidity’, ‘timespace’ and ‘visual-orientation’ from ethnographically and netnographically framed projects where data-sets include everyday life in virtual settings and educational institutions in the global North. Focusing social practices – what is communicated and the ways in which communication occurs – challenges currently dominant monolingual and monological perspectives on human language broadly and oral, written and signed languaging specifically.

New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 356 ISBN 978-0-19-982728-2

Research problem: Gamification is a concept that originates from the digital media domain. It includes a process of enhancing a service using game design elements in nongame contexts. Although much research exists on gamification, very few studies focus on the application of gamification in the enterprise. Research questions: (1) How do managers currently use and experience gamification as a communication medium? (2) Why is it that few instances of gamification exist in enterprise management? (3) Is gamification's own branding somehow cannibalizing itself in enterprise applications? Literature review: We reviewed gamification literature in the workplace and looked at the applicability of game design elements within the enterprise culture. Enterprise gamification is still considered uncharted territory, and more research on gamification in the enterprise is needed. But existing research studies support our claims that there is high potential for enterprise gamification that needs to be explored. Methodology: Observations were made during fieldwork with an exploratory interview research approach. These observations were put to test via an online psychological single-blind controlled quantitative experiment conducted with 198 survey respondents to investigate the effect of branding on gamification and its perception in the enterprise context. Results and conclusions: The results show that using the “gamification” brand clearly drives lower rates of perceived acceptance of the concept, whereas using an “unbranded” version of the same gamification concepts results in comparatively higher rates of perceived acceptance and a general willingness to adopt within the enterprise context. The results also confirm that “interest” and “branding” are interrelated, and that gamification faces higher rates of resistance, lower rates of adoption, and lower success rates in the enterprise compared to other fields. Thus, enterprise gamification may not be correctly branded, and our research recommends the use of a set of procedural, prepackaged best practices, in the form of an implementation framework, to guarantee optimal design and implementation.

This study explored the effects of transcription on translation products and processes of adolescent students in grades 4 to 9 with and without persisting specific language disabilities in written language (SLDs-WL). To operationalize transcription ability (handwriting and spelling) and transcription mode (by pen on digital tablet or by standard US keyboard), diagnostic groups contrasting in patterns of transcription ability were compared while composing autobiographical (personal) narratives by handwriting or by keyboarding: Typically developing students (n=15), students with dyslexia (impaired word reading and spelling, n=20), and students with dysgraphia (impaired handwriting, n=19). They were compared on seven outcomes: total words composed, total composing time, words per minute, percent of spelling errors, average length of pauses, average number of pauses per minute, and average length of language bursts. They were also compared on automaticity of transcription modes-writing the alphabet from memory by handwriting or keyboarding (they could look at keys). Mixed ANOVAs yielded main effects for diagnostic group on percent of spelling errors,, words per minute, and length of language burst. Main effects for transcription modes were found for automaticity of writing modes, total words composed, words per minute, and length of language bursts; there were no significant interactions. Regardless of mode, the dyslexia group had more spelling errors, showed a slower rate of composing, and produced shorter language bursts than the typical group. The total number of words, total time composing, words composed per minute, and pauses per minute were greater for keyboarding than handwriting, but length of language bursts was greater for handwriting. Implications of these results for conceptual models of composing and educational assessment practices are discussed.

The word "access" means to enter into, participate in, and engage with, and captions for sounds are a way to provide access to video content for persons with disabilities. Trying to capture an absolute way for captioning sounds in video media texts is as illusive, impossible, and unethical as trying to establish or declare a single way to write or to read a text. Sean Zdenek's book Reading Sounds investigates the practices that create captions and examines captions as a rhetorical artifact related to the composition of video. This review will examine Reading Sounds from the perspective of a practitioner in the area of web, classroom, and information communication technology accessibility and an academic focused on communication design and disability, indicating points relevant to both practitioners and academics.

How does one balance dedication to two communities that are never served equally well? I consider a theoretically based response through Gramsci’s hegemony, the Brazilian sociologist José Maurício Domingues’s collective subjectivity, and Laclau and Mouffe’s particular brand of post-Marxism. Together, they provide a way to think about leading, holding onto the traditions of the academy while trying to change those traditions so that those who are perforce Othered can be afforded greater than mere recognition or accommodation. I argue that one must adopt a necessary mindset that places the emphasis on the collectivities to which one belongs, relegating the individual to the backdrop, to the extent that is possible.

This essay examines the rhetoric of an organized group of mentally disabled speakers who share their stories with the public to fight the stigma that adheres to psychiatric diagnoses. Their “deep disclosure” of the sometimes disturbing details of their disability-related experiences can make the speakers and their audience members vulnerable in distinct ways. Vulnerability in these rhetorical situations need not only be viewed as threatening, however. Rather, the essay argues, it has the potential to be highly productive when it encourages the speaker and audience member’s openness to each other’s influence.

This article applies the idea of pivoting to teaching British history and cultural studies, both by focusing on a pivotal year's watershed events and by artfully telling a before-and-after story about a less noteworthy event. My teaching tool in this case was the year 1874, which was pivotal in the first sense of the word owing to Benjamin Disraeli's defeat of William Gladstone and the subsequent decline of laissez-faire and rise of imperialism. I discuss how I use that event as a pivot by referring back to the culture of voluntarism that had promoted Gladstone's popularity and to blind spots in Gladstonian liberalism that rendered him politically vulnerable in 1874. I then turn to my experience teaching a one-week unit on the British annexation of Fiji, which also occurred in 1874. In this unit I assigned some students to report on the career of the first governor of Fiji, Arthur Gordon, who governed five other British colonies before and after 1874, and I asked other students to pre sent group reports on four different perspectives on Fiji that accompanied annexation, by a company promoter, a tourist, a missionary, and an adventure novelist.

This article theorizes teaching as accommodation and argues for a centering of disability in writing pedagogy. It examines how universal design can improve composition classrooms, applying inclusive principles to the syllabus in particular.

[1] Perhaps some of you came here tonight hoping to learn something of the state that would send a woman to Congress; you may have the impression that there is something rather unusual about a state that will select a woman to be its representative in national affairs.[2] I will put you at ease at once by assuring you that Montana is unusual.[3] I am very proud of my native state. I remember when I was a small child going into town from the ranch with my mother. When we went into the store, the storekeeper greeted my mother with the news that Montana had been admitted into the Union. I remember being quite impressed with the idea that we then lived in a state. I am still thrilled by the consciousness that I live in Montana, that Montana belongs to me and I to Montana.[4] However, I hope my pride is not such that will blind me to its many shortcomings. But I trust that it is the kind of pride that will enable me to see its imperfections and spur me on to lend my services toward developing a civilization that is worthy of the great advantage given us in our natural resources, in our vastness, and in our people.[5] At first one thinks of Montana as a mineral state, perhaps because the first settlers came in with the discovery of gold or it may be because we are surpassed by only one state in the production of silver and by another in the production of copper. We produce lead and zinc and have an abundance of coal. We have precious gems, sapphires and rubies. The development of the mining industries have been so rapid and so startling that we were quite dazzled by it and forgot that the other more modest resources were even more valuable.[6] Our forests of douglas fir, western yellow pine and western larch are as beautiful as they are valuable. We have a stand of living timber of merchantable size estimated at thirty-three billion board feet.[7] When Lewis and Clark journeyed up the Missouri river on their way to the coast as the explorers of the Northwest Territory, they encountered insurmountable obstacles in what the Indians call The Great Falls. They were forced to carry their boats twenty miles over land. One of these falls they named the Black Eagle Falls in memory of the Black Eagle they saw hovering over the water. I often wonder what Lewis and Clark would think if they could see the waters of these falls being used to produce thousands of electrical horsepower and could know it was carried over the mountains starting 3,200 feet above sea level going up 5,000 feet higher and then down 2,000 feet traveling 152 miles to the destination where it turns the wheels of machinery and lights the passages of mines thousands of feet underground in one of the biggest mining camps in the world.[8] Some of the reports of my election in the Eastern papers said that I campaigned on horseback. To us, campaigning on horseback is very commonplace. We are amazed and delighted that we can reach almost every point by train or automobile. I traveled 6,000 miles by train and over 1,500 miles by automobile, but I wonder if any candidate in any other state could ride 500 miles through the mountains on an electrified train. The last Saturday night in the Primary, I spoke at Roundup, then went to bed in a comfortable sleeper and arrived at my home 380 miles distant in time for Sunday dinner.[9] Not only do we have electrified railroads, but many women have electrified kitchens. It is the unusual small town which does not boast of electricity. While we have the water power developed to the extent of two hundred thousand electrical horsepower, we have made only a beginning. We have water power enough in our state to cook every meal that is eaten, to do the hard work and heat every home if it were developed and used for the people, besides using it for the industrial purpose we generally associate with electricity.[10] But just as we are beginning to appreciate the possibilities of our water power and electricity we are discovering that we have natural gas in great quantities. Last winter was one of the severest winters we have had for many and the in the town of in the of the state for they the one had to up in the to not even the The are on the gas hundred miles in to it in their It is such a discovery and been at such distant that one even as to the possibilities of But with these the natural is the just the used for We have We have as as the state of or as are with these as Some you will have to toward the last the to so and the is the one is the that to the Last Montana enough to of for every woman and child in the hundred thousand Our of is to that of and put The of and in the and Montana the for the of at the with the idea and with the reports that Montana almost one and a as many of to the as the in the Our to the work of women as as The on the in is by a woman on of and almost of to the We for our we small and I have said of the water power is of resources, we have only made a to of we have two national The where we the into a with of Montana is because of the They from from every state in the from every in the I was in the first of the of the were from every for news and have that for every the to of I have in on in other there been a woman to native state. many such so there is of one one of the the and another the The the of Some came were Some women are there because their came and they could not be but of because they had an abundance of and and could see the in a they had that could not be in an and more and for more that they They came with their and with a to the and the that are to It been that the and women so in a The still have a very of the which women have Some can remember the women the see in the mining camps or on the in the and in the They have the women to the and the are to the One of our women at a said that that a came into and you remember at and am I do to memory a woman one to to the and to a went up the and through the over the down the other the river and the on to the town mining camps had traveled miles on horseback night was The woman the The I am I you were for the and so I I would up and you I am for have been by such but in there is women will not through to such miles may not very to us but it was a way one of my in the last a woman came up to me to that had miles to the and going that woman I came miles in a and miles in a is a miles in an and I am going I could many of the women on our the women came to their and developed We are so the beginning of We have so many in rapid that something us with hope and We are for in living in of in in We being the When I went to and that it would be an to be the first state in that of the to woman one me that they were the first state to the and they to be first in One very of that in the and been a for its The was one had the to from The for were about for the was not enough of a in the of the to a there was more I have you of some of our I will to be and you of our Our are about and with their the last of the of the is We have that our other natural resources are in the of a our water and our the more is by two and small We in other and that the is of their the we that the that the resources of our state are the the resources of the other they the resources of the and they are into other We have our with by in the state and by We have given our almost forced on for Montana had the of the which of thousands of of to the not because of the of but because many of our are made for the and of a We had when the could a for when with The was when the could over to the or the and a ranch for But from the on the ranch we have to the traveling on the these in we the of the of We of in and of of the industries that are of the state because we While the are in and they are very in and there were thousands of of The of the is not of and are very We are beginning to have we have We have of Perhaps not our of but they are We have our our is into the of and is then to the is for a ride on the train and so Our is of Our were from the where it was a to to we have the When our in and are we will still have these and women are to be and be for as When we have once for the of other will be for some way of our we are of a in the We are beginning to that the people, of the our only We can remember the which we saw with our of land. perhaps the the great of and been by the and a of which it in But the of can be It is of and national we the with our of production in such have we to the of it to have so and these the of the for a in their will be we have in in in if we are to have The first be through the they can for It is to the but it is not so The is the great of the We appreciate that the can the While there is to from an and a and of and may the for a However, we learn by our The from in are that to a more in the of to the of The is the by which we into and its been its the time that the of have been we have developed the that from the to the and the in these been the of The the the they or would their the the was given the power to for for and to be the from in of for the of work is and and the is a in into with the of the the time have had the their been for women I have it to be with to appreciate they have been Not only the many of had a a their but the of can boast of the only a I would have more I very it is to the of I was made of when an in of my to one of my to think even the When I the I was of for but in one is of so many it is to The women of are still to their and that they have to It is hard to about such a with the of on there is for the women to to think or to work for their they have the the and the that with the they have The women of have the of or not they were to their for they had of but when was it was However, then the of have given their women and will not be The women have the for the that in then they have it because they are women and have a to They have it because they are to a in be not only at the by and but in and in our national and the of are the will be to with the of our When we for a in the that in many the very of the we are not of what the have in the but we are to be to do our It is not to the to do their work and work and it is work to for the We a great about but are we we that we of we the through which the of the are made other have we the and for It to me that one of the of our civilization is When we that it is only that we have and we see and that the of their to have a still but there can be is an of the of we would have we the of is the of the We to the child an One may be in developing a higher of by a and more in through the will when they have been to The is an of and the are to the in and in or which have to do with the are going to be in when they know these are to They will see that every that in the in the or in the to do or with the They will for the when they appreciate that the is an in their which may be to their is over the can its not even the in the very what to be the of the When I went into was very that I to about woman but at first that was the in the state, and in the I if were a me I you that their just from the of the I about the their the I was very and the and the the is the of the the to have their perhaps the that will be in our national when a woman can be not only by the of women the by the of women and by the of are that the of our be I to that there is for the women to think to or to work for they have their they have the the and the that with the they have state the to for where a of the people, the do not a is not that is if we are to have a in We have the machinery by which the may be One of the and that we have in Montana is the by which a may of where is on election While Montana is a state does not us from traveling The last two election I and women in every town had their in other I a from a small town in which of a to the woman on a the carried a which for for for and to put Montana home is in was the winter in but not with using an the first every and every other was forced to be on election had the as at We have a that been of great to the on election It the of in any even the of to the is and any on election the election of the candidate for it is carried The is in the of the by that the of or for and the the of the and they are for the of in be so However, only a beginning been made a One that will the and be to the candidate it the One that will a of and an of our of is which was will be is the kind of a the is to be the machinery be such that will have a in the of the The more that is the we will to the of the Montana had a for the was to for their The of Montana are that they are of their We know we would have a in if we had a for the last for we one hundred and thousand and had only with only thousand had one in had over the of a in is even more in the just the of and just two and the of so a in the of a in be for on the of the for with the of as of and with in the thousand a state with the of only thousand at the election of would the of the that a and one one Montana a which a in in I that the in of the is but can that it are generally of or are the of some I do not for but Our that may with the of or of to for any on any the candidate may a of the on which to be and a to be on the the candidate or have in a of the and the to a of the in the last The with the The be a is by the state and to every may in in which to their and the candidate for the for the in the is to by the of the They that it is is by the that the do not for While the is for the candidate the work in the by the candidate in the may to are The to the state of two is from a the However, there are of It to me that any which does not the for a of is for any to the other any which will the to a to the will in The of some in the of by the is many thousand it was with the the is to for the great advantage that it the of the of the on the there is way to the of the for will be The will learn by its and it will learn to the more and more We have that the in our state to for on of the are some in every state an election if they had the of a and if the that they had the candidate on being could not by an these are the a great about the not into the for will into to their to the it to Our that the of the be on the was great that the would for the first two there being two at came I that I to the of Montana every time I think of I they would for the first two on the and The for our can The first two about thousand the the the thousand and the thousand the two were and the thousand The and the last were with the a that the on the is of small Some the in so that will an of at the but where the can One of our that is an over the in some is that it does not the to is given the of the At our last there were in the the in the to then was to one in the and two in the The of there being a on the of one to select a candidate in the is for there would be a time when there would be on the state or there was in the for the state on the the was so that which are for for state their there were for great advantage in the is the of being in the that are by the I I will by our last While Montana been state in the the for very in the last there were only two in the came for the candidate for and was a and a went to the women and said was a but to stand for came in first with the of for and a of the by an I came for state and national and for it from the I thousand and the candidate for had the the the so when we for purpose the were in of a forced the to put a in their the are with will that was rather a It was the of the that made such a It the to that the to to were of a of and were to their a there is to the for a there will be for will the to select by the and and they will to do it will have a to the more the of the of the people, the have the of the to the extent of for the of their the would be to some by which they over their they be or The is the which the of have used to the in the other western by While Montana been so to such a we the of it very The a by which the can the they have when or It is on the idea that an is a and can be at any The of the is more the of to the to an the is by the the can at any time so have the to the of a the are the and the is a to a from The machinery of the is very the of a are with they can by and a for from election is and at election the is a candidate and are in the The been in in the enough to its to a of the by its are It is a the very of which the of its only very it been The one the It the from to a or in that it in the power of the other it the from in of the the It a small of from and an when is the of the I of an where a of the town was by a of They to up in to The of the to be They have the if you the The not to the with their for they it was the the as an of the our for the and have The had a very on or the or by a is not in any way by the of the but it may be very through the and the and a by a of It in the of and a may be the or the other the is a any or of may a for a and when they have the of a of they may have it to the at for their or the by the may be carried to the for their going into The the the power over The of such be by the or of from the quite from the great of it is to the it in the to a of their of of are to the people, and the of a is on to the of a of the for through It a and a by the for and an for and development is One of the and been that of more to the of the When it is that by the can be by the in a or that can be if the to the the more and with they would if they there was from the of the Our are to the They their and to the of the so that their will not be through the of and The machinery by which the is by some of the of The is generally by a of are in its the which would the in the the work with a of which a of and in a an be by the work with a consciousness of the that if the is to the of the it be to the the may be not to for a in is that that will or will generally to the The first the is is to the of a of to that there is in a for the of such a as is in the a of for as the the for it is and many of the western the is by a by the state and to every not election the of the and the as it will on the with the and of the as by the and of the an to the and not only the of a into the but it a these of an is to the and an is for the development of and women are with rather with and are to their to the every a to such as to be for the and that the will to a call for when it is by a is by the of our in The a to in Montana was being by a of one of which was in of the with a The other of the were to that they the time to it The was given of the and of the would a and so on and at and a and it with the It is a of the Montana and more one election for the people, and is It would be to in a by the and a by machinery in the of is enough in the to the lead in the and not only a more in the with to but it about a more the and the have been in the of the there is a of their and an to work their It is the of Montana, and to a or the of every state, to work a of by which the power is in the as a and is by or by by I have to point some that to the more power in and even to the extent of the to the which been to the However, the great of work be by and we have that even with the and as a our are still not representative of the We are to the that the in any of the power that been but it rather in the of the of to in their idea of to its is the of the by the When we our we in many of of the by a of the people, a of in of the to the of the for the The of the election of the the the and the the of the had been in the as a of that would have to the and the of the would have and the of the to the the one and the and the still a of in to of the of of in that been in our my is the point in the of representative as and that a of the are my as an I have been by the are about in my and they have been there for the last any more hope of a representative on the of of one in the of Great in been by the of the of so that every in the state may a of or as the may The is that the state is in by from the or the the in is would be the even where are not for our to of the of the is to lead to the to in a of been which that be in the of its to the in a state which for of that of or would be to one every candidate is of and every is to one representative for a of the would be to of to as the with more or been in for some in and The of the in these been the of for the of a in and the The of is an of idea in and is with It is being and and as an of a representative The in are The of and the of the of the of and the of and are to The machinery and the work their if they are to be made to I have some of the to the in the to their of a But in is not We have in as is by the do the that the of the of and of the produce is to be It is by that the of are to be and to be not only by the of and it to of it which is but another kind of is a we into I it as a of what is that we may have in The more we reach in the more will we the time when we will a with the for and with the for

The book Rhetorical Touch by Shannon Walters opens with a reference to 18th-century philosopher Etienne Bonnot, abbe de Condillac’s Treatise of the Sensations in which he argues that all other sens...

Background: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a mental health disorder. People diagnosed with ADHD are often inattentive (have difficulty focusing on a task for a considerable period), overly impulsive (make rash decisions), and are hyperactive (move excessively, often at inappropriate times). ADHD is often diagnosed through psychiatric assessments with additional input from physical/neurological evaluations. Written Language Disorder (WLD) is a learning disorder. People diagnosed with WLD often make multiple spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes, have sentences that lack cohesion and topic flow, and have trouble completing written assignments. Typically, WLD is also diagnosed through psychological educational assessments with additional input from physical/neurological evaluation. Literature Review: Previous research has shown a link between ADHD and writing difficulties. Students with ADHD have an increased likelihood of having writing difficulties, and rarely is there a presence of writing difficulties without ADHD or another mental health disorder. However, the presence of writing difficulties does not necessarily indicate the presence of a WLD. There are other physical and behavioral factors of ADHD that can contribute to a student having a WLD as well. Therefore, a statistical association between these factors (in conjunction with written performance) and WLD must first be established. Research Question: To determine the statistical association between WLD and physical and behavioral aspects of ADHD that indicate writing difficulties, this research reviewed methodologies from the literature pertaining to contemporary diagnoses of writing difficulties in ADHD students, and reveal diagnostic methods that explicitly associate the presence of WLD with these writing difficulties among students with ADHD. The results demonstrate the association between writing difficulties and WLD as it pertains to ADHD students using an integrated computational model employed on data from a systematic review. These results will be validated in a future study that will employ the integrated computational model to measure WLD among students with ADHD. Methodology: To measure the association of WLD among students with ADHD, the authors created a novel computational model that integrates the outcomes of common screening methods for WLD (physical questionnaire, behavioral questionnaire, and written performance tasks) with common screening methods for ADHD (physical questionnaire, behavioral questionnaire, adult self-reporting scales, and reaction-based continuous performance tasks (CPTs)). The outcomes of these screening methods were fed into an artificial neural network (ANN ) first, to ‘artificially learn’ about measuring the prevalence of WLD among ADHD students and second, to adjust the prevalence value based on information from different screening methods. This can be considered as the priming of the ANN. The ANN model was then tested with data from previous studies about ADHD students who had writing difficulties. The ANN model was also tested with data from students without ADHD or WLD, to serve as control. Results: The results show that physical, behavioral, and written performance attributes of ADHD students have a high correlation with WLD (r = 0.72 to 0.80) in comparison to control students (r = 0.30 to 0.20), substantiating the link between WLD and ADHD. It should be noted that due to lack of female participation, most studies in the literature only employed and reported on the relationship between WLD and ADHD for male participants. Discussion and Conclusion: By testing ADHD students and control students against the WLD criteria, the study shows a strong correlation between WLD and ADHD. There are limitations to the results’ accuracy in terms of a) sample size (average n=88, mean age = 19, 8 studies used for a meta-analysis), b) analysis (original study reviewing ADHD factors first, WLD factors second), and c) causation (the study only reviews prevalence of WLD in ADHD students, not causation). A clinical trial will validate the data and address some of these limitations in a future phase of the research. A computational causal model will be introduced in the discussion portion to illustrate how causation between writing metrics and WLD as it pertains to ADHD can be achieved. These results open the door to advancing pedagogical techniques in education, where students afflicted with ADHD and/or WLD could not only receive assistance for the behavioral aspects of their disorder, but also expect assistance for the learning aspects of their disorder, empowering them to succeed in their studies.

Abstract This longitudinal mixed-methods study assesses students’ perceptions of the writing center at a large (approximately 11,325 students) multi‑campus two‑year college. The survey was collaboratively designed, with faculty and student participation; it presents findings from 865 student respondents, collected by peer tutors‑in‑training. The study offers a baseline assessment (Fall 2014) of the writing center, prior to wide-sweeping changes in recruitment, staffing, and training models, as well as a post-assessment (Fall 2015) analysis of the changes in student knowledge of the WC and its purpose. It also offers data on the trajectory of student development in relation to number of sessions attended. In 2014, students’ experiences at the writing center were inconsistent; the poorly articulated mission of the WC adversely affected students’ knowledge scores, and the center’s reliance on editorial-like feedback, given predominately by adjunct faculty, contributed to inconsistent reportage in perceived learning by attended sessions. Many of these trends, however, reversed in 2015. This paper seeks to demonstrate the important role that RAD research can play in evaluating student learning within writing center contexts and articulating how and at what moments, and under what conditions, learning and development occurs in the student-writing center relationship. It also offers a replicable experimental method that researchers at other institutions can adapt and apply to their own institutional contexts and programmatic needs.

Across the country, colleges and universities are reporting an increased enrollment of students on the autism spectrum. This is in part thanks to increased efforts in early detection during childhood, where students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are then enrolled in services outside and within public schools to help integrate them into mainstream classrooms. Yet such integrative services, by and large, fall short in higher education, and many students find themselves without the support they once received in their primary school years. Writing demands are indeed challenging for many—without securing basic college-level composition skills, the likelihood of student success is placed in jeopardy. Writing centers can be regarded as gatekeepers for autistic students, since their assistance can greatly impact student success. Yet problems remain with access and inclusion based on rhetorical situations, as well as a lack of tutor education. This paper provides suggestions based on April Mann’s methods of inclusion for writing center tutees with ASD, including spatial awareness and tutor education. I also outline other possible methods, including outreach to students with ASD to prevent further isolation among the university population.

The Pew Hispanic Research Center reports that between 1996 and 2012, enrollment in US higher education among Latinxs between the ages of 18 and 24 increased by 240 percent. In 2012 college enrollment among Latinx high school graduates aged 18 to 24 surpassed that of Whites for the first time in history, and NCES calculations show that more than half of those Latinx students enroll in two-year schools. Hence, in 2015 Latinxs found themselves the explicit targets of community college recruitment efforts aimed to capitalize on the increased presence of students from Latinx backgrounds. Once they pass through the doors, however, Latinx students too often find institutions ill-prepared to support their retention and success. Policies intended to guarantee equity might be effective in an environment where everyone is, in effect, the same, or when people are different in institutionally sanctioned ways, as when a student is diagnosed with a disability. However, in the case of multilingual students, such policies can mean they are consigned to a kind of institutional purgatory. They are neither in nor out; they gain access to college but remain blocked from advancement by required courses or chosen programs of study.

Background: Teams are a basic way of organizing work in many professional and personal settings. However, misunderstandings among team members can lead to poor performance, hurt feelings, and lack of motivation to attack subsequent tasks. A common source of such misunderstandings is miscommunication caused by differences in how people interpret everyday words and phrases. Team members might interpret these differences as a natural occurrence of group work, if they notice them at all. Research questions: We seek to answer two research questions regarding miscommunication within teams: (1) Can a communication exercise create awareness among team members of the danger of miscommunication? (2) What benefits do team members gain from the exercise? Situating the case: We describe a classroom exercise that relies on an integrative model for improving communication within teams. We also present evidence of the exercise's effectiveness in raising awareness and fostering accommodation and social learning among team members. Our approach is similar to that used in other cases. How this case was studied: We used 13 teams from three classes during the course of a regular semester. A communication exercise we have used for many years was conducted as part of team formation activities early in the semester. Team discussions regarding exercise results formed the basis for team members to analyze their communication during the semester. About the case: A significant variance of understanding among people as to the meaning of several of the focal terms can lead to suboptimal outcomes for any given work the team is tasked to achieve. In this case, we describe a study designed to improve communication among team members and, thus, lessen the likelihood of such a negative outcome. Results: Team members reported better awareness of communication issues and improved team functioning as a result of having completed the exercise. Conclusion: We find that a shared understanding of terminology is an important part of training leaders and managers to help teams reduce common miscommunication problems in the workplace.

In a demanding engagement, James L. Kastely offers an exquisite reading, even revision, of the Republic, and through nuanced attention to form, absences, and tangents he begins to answer a methodological question that I have had for a while (Lyon). The Gorgias ends with a failed elenchus, when no one will continue, and then in a methodological shift after the Republic’s first chapter, Plato makes explicit his dissatisfaction with elenchus. Rather than ignore what seemingly stopped Plato twice, Professor Kastely explicates a new, more dialogical method by reading the Republic as rhetorical theory (x, xii). The new method and theory are performed in answering the question of whether it possible to have a political discourse that is not simply a displaced pursuit of private interest (3). Through meticulous reading, Kastely explicates Plato’s rhetorical method from the movement between the performative, mimetic Republic, which concedes the multitude, and the ideal, contemplative Kallipolis, which unifies everything, even gender.Between the two, Kastely locates Platonic persuasion: “Persuasion … can be extended and deepened to being understood as the opportunity and responsibility to shape one’s identity. Persuasion now can be understood as a practice of individual and political constitution” (220).Constituting persuasion does not manipulate the other, but works to change desire and the internal constitution of the individual. That is, this persuasion remakes desires, values, and identities (Frankenstein’s operation). Kastely considers reconstitution as dialogic and participatory and thus better than manipulative, orator-centric persuasion in that re-constitutive persuasion alters and expands “our understanding of what constitutes political discourse” to include foundational values (10–11). Intriguing as this is, I need further evidence for the dialogic nature of constituting persuasion, particularly because it is not achieved through deliberation, but through erasing alternative desires. Given Socrates’ discursive control, belief in Plato’s commitment to dialogue remains difficult, and when I consider the two states together, the Republic and Kallipolis, I instead find that the new method arises through doubleness, a double logos that destabilizes wisdom and sends a frustrated, skeptical reader questing. I offer two examples of Plato’s unresolvable doubleness.In addition to passive spectators, Kastely notes “the creators of discourse” and “the audiences who can listen to or read that discourse with a critical awareness” (xiii). He then develops a theory of cultural criticism for the non-philosopher, but the hierarchy of the philosopher and non-philosopher creates a doubleness, demanding critique from Plato’s critical readers. Even critical readers are not creators of discourse (rhetoricians?): readers do not represent their desires or create discourse, nor do they constitute their own identity or the state’s. Perhaps Kastely finds evidence for Plato’s constitution of “an audience who can rethink its cultural heritage” (80), but would truly critical readers accept the privilege of philosophers who deny their ability to create? The binary of reading and creating seemingly would frustrate truly critical readers. Would they not desire to create?Another doubleness: If mimesis is banned from the ideal state of Kallipolis, then what is its place in the performance of the state of Republic? Kastely writes mimesis into the state, reading The Republic as epic poetry, and hence he reads the dialogic state of Republic in relationship and preference to the monologic Kallipolis. Yet critical ironies abound in the tension between the imagined Kallipolis and the narrated, multifaceted state of Republic. Let me quickly, and perhaps fairly, trace Kastely’s argument for mimesis. He sees Plato’s difficulty with imitative poetry as an interpretive tension between mimetic entertainment and rhetorical, critical reading, writing “(t)o read the Republic rhetorically requires a reader to go beyond the surface and to understand the issues that the surface text both represents and distorts” (112). Ignoring the critique of poetry as counterfeit reality, Kastely argues that the right kind of reading leads to philosophical truth. Mimesis works pedagogically: in the Republic, “the rhetorical action of the dialogue” is “an enactment of persuasion that provides guidance on how to use poetry rhetorically to effect practical and individual change” (62). That is, the audience should read the Republic’s mimesis as an enactment of persuasive technique, not as drama, for Plato would “undo or minimize” cultural influences by acknowledging the rhetoricity of all discourse (79, 101). In Kastely’s epic Republic, readers engage the dialogue’s narrative, and it “educate(s) them on how to interrogate works of cultural rhetoric” (62). Readers thus become suspicious of the forces shaping their souls, moving away from shared culture toward self-cultivation. But do rhetorical reading and self-cultivation save mimesis? Do they respond to or change common culture? Can’t self-cultivation remove a citizen from common concerns and the polity? Is rhetorical reading the controlled action by which critical readers are separated from the creators of discourse? Doesn’t reception differ from production?Kastely appreciates Plato’s desire for a skeptical reader, and his rhetorical reader is a provocative concept, but he tends to interpret the Republic through dialogic resolution and logical consistency. Might I suggest that Plato is sometimes better read sophistically through contradiction, paradox, and bivalence? In doubleness, Plato violates his own dictates. For example, Socrates defends true philosophers through a tale of low, counterfeit reality. He tells the silly tale of a blind, deaf, and ignorant ship owner faced with sailors wrangling to be captain (488). Seeking the job, the argumentative sailors deny any need for knowledge of sailing. Consequently a false definition—captain as a windbag—emerges. Plato calls this analogy, compiled “out of lots of different elements, like the goat-stags and other compound creatures painters come up with” (488a). Analogy perhaps, but also narrative, full of bad behaviors (including murder), an extreme counterfeit reality: in offering such a tale, Plato assumes his audience is already able to critique mimesis, avoid categorical mistakes, and modulate their identifications with bad characters. He assumes that the dialogic pedagogy has worked or is unnecessary, and perhaps he tests our skeptical ability to read goat-stag extremes.Kastely’s systemic reading of the entire Republic brilliantly draws attention to Plato’s performative method, revitalizing and embodying Platonic rhetoric, but it understates Plato’s doubleness, playfulness, puzzlement, and skepticism. Plato, with his longing for total revolution and his fractured fairy tales, is the writerly critic of writing; the dramatic censor of plot, setting, and character; and the myth-teller who denounces mimesis. Given Plato’s denials and dissatisfactions, his doubleness, tensions, and contradictions, Kastely rightly reads him for performance and rhetoricity and wisely confronts the two states, Kallipolis and Republic. Without a doubt, this book begins another millennium of Platonic delight.

By examining the literate practices of persons with aphasia, or language disability after stroke or other brain injury, this essay develops the concept of literate misfitting—the conflicts readers and writers encounter when their bodies and minds do not fit with the materials and expectations of literacy. I analyze how literate misfitting reveals both how persons with disabilities are often excluded from normative conceptions of literacy and how their experiences adapting and innovating in the face of literate misfits offer vital insights into the social and material aspects of literacy.

Book Review| June 01 2016 Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks. By Jordynn Jack. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014; pp. 320. $95.00 cloth; $30.00 paper. Jennifer A. Malkowski Jennifer A. Malkowski California State University, Chico Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (2): 353–356. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0353 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 Jennifer A. Malkowski; Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2016; 19 (2): 353–356. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0353 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. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| June 01 2016 Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics. By Shannon Walters. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014; pp. 257. $49.95 cloth. Amy Vidali Amy Vidali University of Colorado Denver Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (2): 350–353. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0350 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 Amy Vidali; Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 June 2016; 19 (2): 350–353. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0350 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. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

When I first learned of Dave Tell’s project, I expected his book to be dominated by religious exegesis. I suspect I am hardly alone in this assumption. Nowhere is confession a more preeminent and slavish requirement than in religious practice, specifically in the Judeo-Christian idioms that dominate the American psyche, and our blind(ing) faith in religion’s standard of confession affects the public’s consumption of media. Consider American Crime Story (FX) portraying the O.J. Simpson trial, Confirmation (HBO) about the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Making a Murderer (Netflix), a documentary series on the trials of Steven Avery, or Serial, a podcast series—the fastest to garner 5 million downloads—covering the murder of Hae Min Lee for which Adnan Syed was convicted. The popularity of these shows manifests the ubiquity of what Tell calls “confessional hermeneutics,” the “collaborative but always contested activity of deciding which texts do, and which texts do not, qualify as confessions” (3). In Confessional Crises and Cultural Politics in Twentieth-Century America, Tell outlines various forms of confessional hermeneutics to foreground the cultural significance of confession.The point Tell drives home repeatedly is that confession matters; it is a critical cog in the machinery of American social life. In the twentieth-century, Tell finds that confessional hermeneutics “concretely shaped the public understanding of six intractable issues: sexuality, class, race, violence, religion, and democracy” (4). Understanding confession’s role relative to these six crucial cultural topoi requires “those of us invested in public discourse to understand the confession, not as a stable, ahistorical form, but as a practice informed by competing traditions” (144). Failing to do so risks ignoring the “genre politics” (183) that make confession “a powerful but volatile political resource” (187), an “important, if often overlooked form of cultural intervention” (184). To support this argument, Confessional Crises rehearses six key confessional crises spanning the twentieth-century: Bernarr Macfadden’s 1919 launch and subsequent transformation of True Story; William Huie’s 1956 publication of the confessions of Emmett Till’s murderers; the publication in 1967 of William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner; and the confession controversies sparked by Jimmy Swaggart and Bill Clinton. For Tell, cultural politics trump generic constraints: each case illustrates that “the rhetorical function of a confession is determined more by the political needs of the confessant than by the formal features of the text” (124).Take, for example, chapter one on the subjective sexual moralism in Macfadden’s launch of True Story magazine. As Tell recounts, Macfadden reasoned that the best way to inoculate the public against sexual malaise was by presenting them with the unvarnished truth about sex. For Americans to avoid the sexual pitfalls Macfadden adduced to ignorance and scripted silences around the body, “the American people needed a moral reeducation” on matters of sexuality and “just as insistently that they needed a rhetorical reeducation” (28). Why the rhetorical reeducation? Because Macfadden needed real-life stories to advance his moral-political agenda. Through sidebars and editorials, Macfadden coached readers on how to read the stories he published as authentic accounts of ordinary people. The arrangement was straightforward: the “unvarnished prose guarantee[d] the authenticity of the tales, and the authenticity of the tales guarantee[d] the propagation of moral virtue” (41). Frank testimony about bodily fantasies and functions was Macfadden’s antidote to ignorance about sexual matters.In the 1930s, Tell finds that Macfadden pivoted from sexual politics to class politics, changing the import of confession. This is the story of chapter two. As millions battled the scourge of the depression, True Story began to foreground “a well-remunerated working class, the desires of which True Story perfectly expressed” (47). Why would as staunch a moralist as Macfadden engage in such a mendacity? Herein lies the re-conscription, Tell holds, of confession, except this time with capitalism not moralism as the telos. Macfadden needed to transform his readership into a consumer class so he could sell access to advertisers. Just as he had instructed the public in the appreciation of plain speech, Macfadden directed his rhetorical pedagogy at America’s captains of industry: “he told executives that if they squinted just right, if they learned to read True Story properly, they could see between the lines of his true stories millions of affluent, docile and eager, consumers” (55). Using Macfadden’s example, Tell articulates confession to both sexual and class politics.Or take the controversies about William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner, the subject of chapter four, which Tell uses to connect confession to the politics of violence. Two arguments about the reception of Styron’s Confessions form the vectors of this connection. First is that whether one deemed Styron’s book an expression of Turner’s admission turned less on the fidelity of Styron’s content to Turner than it did on the politics of the different respondents. At stake was how one understood the nature of slavery and the status of the African-American within it: “was the American slave a ‘Sambo,’ a happy-go-lucky, bumbling fool, given to petty thievery but fundamentally docile” owing either to racial inferiority (as Ulrich Phillips believed) or to slavery’s brutality (as Stanley Elkins and Styron held), “or was the slave a seething embodiment of resentment, incensed by the brutality of the ruling class and prone to rebellion” as Herbert Aptheker argued? (99). Differences of opinion on these matters framed the contested reception of Confessions. Second is that differences of opinion between White defenders of Styron and his Black critics were based in competing ideologies about “the legibility of violence” (112). For many White reviewers of Confessions, violence was simply beyond understanding. They wondered, “what could have prompted someone to lead a rebellion so violent?” (106). Enter confession: “only confession—an insider’s account—could possibly redress so profound a mystery” (106). “For Styron’s black critics,” however, “Turner’s rebellion was perfectly legible” (112). The formerly colonized and enslaved required no special erudition, no fancy literary conceit, to understand the rebellion. Confessions, to these critics, read instead as Styron’s confession to imbibing “the fantasies of the southern tradition” (115) that sanitized the violence of slavery while exaggerating that of slaves like Turner. Confessional Crises thus associates confession, through a postcolonial hermeneutic, to violence.Readers of AHR will appreciate the theoretical history Tell brings to bear in his analyses of Jimmy Swaggart and Bill Clinton, the subjects of chapters five and six. Yes, argues Tell, Swaggart fashioned, with the aid of the leadership of the Assemblies of God, a confession he and his allies presented as a Christian confession. The imbroglio he found himself in demanded that. Yet despite appearances, Swaggart’s, Tell insists, was no Christian confession. Instead, Swaggart’s apology bore the blueprint of a distinctly modern secular confession. Specifically, “his emphasis on the inadequacy of speech, his devaluation of grammatical sensibilities and logical coherence, and his emphasis on his humanity” (136) constituted Swaggart’s rhetoric as a modern secular confession. To prove this point, Tell contrasts the genealogies of classical-Christian confession (123-4; 129-30) and modern secular confession (130-36). By retracing to Periclean Athens those tenets of classical confession that were eventually appropriated by Christianity, this discussion carefully historicizes confession in religion and politics. But this retracing also exposes the Athenian-Augustinian model of confession Tell endorses to criticisms first raised by feminist and critical race scholars. If Augustine’s Roman Empire and contemporary America attest that confession can function as “a means of reversing the political currents of pridefulness” (130), both societies also evince the limits of that power. What confession, whose confession, could have challenged the pride that drove slavery and genocide in the Roman Empire, or “shock-and-awe,” the “New Jim Crow,” and the FISA court in the American?In chapter six, which focuses on the crisis ignited by the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, Tell isolates confession’s function in democracy. Re-contextualizing Clinton’s rhetorical performances of 1998 in light of statements Clinton made during the Gennifer Flowers controversy in 1991-92, Tell credits the president with showcasing the ideal of democratic public confession, a “belief that public confession must hold in equipoise the competing needs of contrition and legal argument” (162). Prosecutor Kenneth Star and the many critics of Clinton’s vexatious semantics upheld an established tradition of confession, one in which, “only an unlimited admission of guilt counted as a confession” (162). Confession, the reader learns, influences how the public understands politics.By the end of Confessional Crises, the reader has gathered an expansive vocabulary for understanding the power of confessional practices. But how to assess a project so expansive, so revisionist, and transdisciplinary? Let me end by returning to the beginning. The introduction of Confessional Crises advertises the book as “the first reception history of confession,” (6) acknowledging the influence of Steven Mailloux. This hat-tip points us to Mailloux’s ambitious project for criteria by which to judge Confessional Crises. Since Mailloux explains that “Reception history is rhetorical hermeneutics” (ix), readers can thus pose Mailloux’s famous definition of rhetorical hermeneutics as a question of Confessional Crises: does it use “rhetoric to practice theory by doing history” (ix)? Anyone who reads Confessional Crises will find that in it, Tell fulfills this tripartite obligation elegantly. He relies on discourse, develops fresh ideas about confession, and generates a record of the past.

This year 2016 marks an important six hundredth anniversary in the history of rhetoric and education.In September, 1416, the Italian humanist and book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini visited a Benedictine monastery in St. Gall, Switzerland. There he found—not in a library but in a dungeon which he declared was not fit for a condemned man—the first complete copy of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (Orator’s Education, 95 CE) that any scholar had seen for nearly six centuries. Suddenly aware that it was a valuable book, the German monks refused to let Poggio take it away, so he was forced to sit down and copy it by hand over the next 54 days.The reaction to the discovery among humanists, especially in Italy, was swift and fervent. Leonardo Aretino wrote, “I entreat you, my dear Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die” (Shepherd 105). Lorenzo Valla’s first book (1428) was a comparison of Quintilian and Cicero. Later Quintilian was to influence Guarino da Verona, Erasmus, Martin Luther, and Philip Melanchthon, the major Lutheran educator. Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria was one of the first rhetorical texts printed (1470, twice), and an even hundred editions appeared in print during the next 75 years. The work immediately ranked in popularity with the rhetorical works of Cicero and Aristotle, its precepts soon becoming a key segment of the “General Rhetoric” (rhetorica generalis) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ultimately the work permeated English rhetoric texts and eventually came to North America through Harvard and the parallel influence of writers like Hugh Blair.Why did Poggio’s discovery find such a ready response, and why did it lead to centuries of influence? One reason was that fragments of Quintilian’s work had been known throughout the Middle Ages, a tantalizing sample (textus mutilatus) which was obviously incomplete but which at the same time gave great promise. So the author’s name was known to scholars. Humanists like Gasparino Barzizza and Petrarch so admired Quintilian that earlier they had tried to fill in the missing sections themselves. Moreover, the discovery came at a time of humanistic debates about public life, literature, philosophy, the place of rhetoric, and the role of education. Thus the complete text of Quintilian’s Institutio suddenly provided a thorough and balanced account of rhetoric embedded in an educational system offering to prepare young men for public life; it defined the perfect orator as “a good man speaking well,” combining morality with efficiency.What was nature of this text that so inspired readers over so many centuries? It was the longest and most ambitious treatment of rhetorical education in the ancient world. Its audacious aim is stated simply: “I am proposing to educate the perfect orator.” The Institutio was composed in Rome about 95 CE by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, a retired legal pleader and teacher. Quintilian was one of the most famous teachers in Rome, flourishing under three emperors, and under Emperor Vespasian was one of the first teachers to receive public moneys for his teaching.Quintilian declares in his General Preface that he had taught for twenty years and then spent two years in his retirement researching and writing the Institutio. It has been described as four major works blended into one: a treatise on education, a manual of rhetoric, a reader’s guide to the best authors, and a handbook on the moral duties of the perfect orator (Little 2:9). But the fact is that every segment of the work is a teaching tool. The lengthy section on rhetoric, for example, is provided for the use of students, not for its own sake; Quintilian is not a rhetorical theorist like Cicero, but a teacher using anything (including rhetoric) that can help make his students better and more efficient citizens.The Institutio Oratoria is a large work of about 700,000 words, divided into twelve Books (libri)—a size which could make some readers reluctant to take it up. But Quintilian himself offers a helpful summary of the work to guide the reader: Book One will deal with what comes before the rhetor begins his duties. In Book Two, I shall handle the first elements taught by the rhetor, and problems connected with the nature of rhetoric itself. The next five books will be given over to Invention (Disposition forms an appendix to this), and the following four to Elocution, with which are related Memory and Delivery. There will be one further book, in which the orator himself is to be portrayed: I shall there discuss (as well as my poor powers allow) his character, the principles of undertaking, preparing, and pleading cases, his style, the end of his active career, and the studies he may undertake thereafter. (Institutio, Prooemium 22–23)A little later he adds that this is not an ordinary dry textbook, but that instead he has “gathered together in these twelve books everything that I think useful for the orator’s education” (Institutio, Prooemium 25). He begins in the cradle—the very first sentence in Book 1 says that “As soon as his son is born, the father should form the highest expectations of him” (1.1.1). He ends in Book 12 with a discussion of when to retire and what to do after retirement.Quintilian’s educational objective is to prepare the perfect orator—a good man speaking well—through a systematic program described in Books 1 and 2 (early education) and Book 10 (continuing adult self-education). His specific goal is the inculcation of what he calls habit (Greek hexis), an ingrained disposition in the writer/speaker to be able to use the right language in any situation. This is not the modern sense of “habit” as a blind repetitive tendency beyond the individual’s control. It is closer to Aristotle’s concept of “facility” (dynamis) in his Rhetoric (1.2; see Murphy; Murphy and Wiese). His aim, in other words, is to change the psyche of the student, to make him “rhetorical,” not merely by having him learn a set of rules, but also by having him exercise a wide variety of language uses so that ultimately he has familiarity with a large number of options. So Quintilian does include an extensive survey of the five “parts” of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery—but illustrates them with profuse examples to demonstrate that a great variety of possible language uses can occur in every situation. “Rhetoric,” he says, “would be a very easy and trivial affair if it could be comprised in a single short set of precepts” (2.13.2).In the classroom he employs systematic exercises in four categories: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. In the process called imitation (imitatio), model texts of various genres are read, analyzed, and imitated to familiarize the student with a variety of styles. A set of twelve specific graded exercises called progymnasmata, each more difficult than its predecessor, draws the student through increasingly complex thought and wording tests. As the student becomes more proficient, he is introduced to an exercise called declamation, in which a problem is set out and the student is charged to prepare and deliver an oration to solve the problem. Declamation becomes the main teaching method for older students, since it includes every feature of the whole preceding instructional program. (It also became so popular later as an ornamental display outside the classroom that for centuries onward it became a form of public entertainment by adult performers).Can the educational principles and methods of this famous author be applied in today’s world as they have been for almost two thousand years? We, the authors of the essays in this special issue on Quintilian, believe they can. So do others (Knoblauch; Kasper). We appreciate that this brief survey cannot do justice to the humane wisdom Quintilian applies to student psychology in his search for ways to enable the development of the autonomous language-user, nor to his appreciation of the almost infinite variations possible in the human interactions faced by speakers and writers. But readers are encouraged to pick up any part of his book and read two or three pages to get a sense of the intensely personal attention he devotes to every subject he looks into. Readers, on the other hand, are also encouraged to look to his general principles, not merely to details that might seem remote to a modern observer.The essays offered in this current issue of Advances in the History of Rhetoric, then, are offered as possible answers to the question posed in the preceding paragraph.