In this follow up to “From Obscurity to Valuable Contributor: A Case for Critical Service-Learning,” the authors detail how they collaborate in order to produce a successful project through the interviewing of Holocaust survivors. In this description, readers learn about the planning, interviews, and the final product produced by the students – with examples of student writing and photographs. As reference for educators looking to develop their own projects, the article covers how to build an authentic relationship across diverse communities, generate content knowledge and design classroom curriculum, and provides a chart detailing the collaboration and activities that educators can use as a template for organizing their own projects.

Students writing for an authentic audience in service-learning composition courses often face a double-audience dilemma. The texts they compose must suit the demands of the real-world audience of the service-learning project while also meeting the expectations of the academic audience. This article examines the role multimodal composition may play in helping alleviate the tension of the double audience, particularly for basic writers.

As Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) utilized in workplaces, classrooms, and community organizations continue to proliferate, it follows that the kinds of knowledge necessary to assemble those technologies in order to engage in effective professional communication are becoming increasingly complex. This article details a study conducted of two student teams engaged in a service-learning class in which they were tasked with producing high-quality digital products---a mini-documentary and a simple, but interactive website---for client organizations---an art classroom in a local public school and a mentoring initiative within a local non-profit. The main findings of this study are that students mobilized a variety of resources and created a flexible network of technologies, knowledges, people, and modes of communication in order to address issues pertinent to their clients. In addition, I argue that the most important resource students mobilized was knowledge itself, indicating that one of the most important aspects of digital composing may be in-depth, practical knowledge of technologies, modes, and the genres they involve. Ultimately, the implications of this limited, classroom-based case study are that a situated understanding of how to assemble knowledges for the effective design of communication within a given communication infrastructure may be more important than access to the most cutting-edge modes and technologies, especially when working with resource-poor organizational clients.

This case study describes the Nuestra Casa (Our House) Initiative, an advocacy, communication, and social mobilization strategy to increase tuberculosis (TB) awareness through a public art exhibition hosted at the University of Texas at El Paso. This work describes this multi-disciplinary initiative that cut across academic boundaries to engage faculty, students, and community members in service-learning and community engagement efforts. Nuestra Casa reached diverse audiences, including school children, farm workers, promotoras (health promoters), university students, educators, persons affected by TB, and public health officials in Mexico and in the United States through education, critical reflection, and a call to action.

Abstract We justify and describe our development of the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database. The database broadens the range of organizations that instructors and students have for client-based communication projects. We argue in support of incorporating service learning into classes and facilitating partnerships among university instructors, their students, and nonprofits. We report strategies we learned for working with student interns and IT experts and strategies we developed as we worked with usability-test participants. Keywords: client-based communication projectsiterative designservice learning opportunitiestechnical communicationuser-centered design ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We sincerely thank the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for awarding us a research grant in 2009 to build this database. We greatly appreciate Sam Singer, whose expertise in databases and Web development made the concept become a reality. We would also like to thank Stewart Whittemore, who contributed ideas in the early planning stage. Notes Waterfall design involves creating a design to which you are firmly committed early in development and letting all design decisions flow from the initial plan. Iterative design is more flexible, allowing the plan to change as needed in response to feedback. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSusan A. Youngblood Susan A. Youngblood teaches technical and professional communication at Auburn University, and many of her classes feature service learning. Her research addresses vulnerability, accessibility, and competing needs in communication, particularly in online environments. Jo Mackiewicz Jo Mackiewicz teaches editing at Auburn University. Her research applies linguistics to technical communication and focuses on politeness and credibility in evaluative texts such as tutoring interactions, editing sessions, and online reviews.

This paper discusses three position papers presented at the vicentennial conference of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) concerning the disciplinary prospects of rhetoric of science and technology as a field. It identifies common themes among the three papers, including a theoretical focus on rhetorical invention, the prospects for viable responses to institutional changes and pressures in the academy, and the possibilities for interdisciplinary and public engagement by rhetoricians of science. It also identifies points of departure among the three papers, including their respective foci on globalization, the place of style in invention, and the interaction of the technical and public spheres.

A review of work being published in our journals establishes that we most often think of ourselves as passive intellectuals, engaged in critical reflection about rhetorics of science and technology. But another persona lurks in that scholarship as well—the rhetorician as agent of change making the world a better place. This paper argues that rhetoricians of science and technology need to think harder about how we take the academic understandings developed in our primary internal discursive genre and transform them into productive engagements with external publics. Whether we encounter those publics in the classroom or in civic forums or in scientific or technical organizations, we need to be able to translate our research findings to these empowered stakeholders in ways that are meaningful and constructive. By sharing best practices for pedagogy and public engagement, rhetoricians of science and technology can improve our chances of making an impact with our research.

This essay explores the pedagogical lessons of student-inmate peer reviews conducted during a prison outreach project in a first-year composition class. Collaborative writing between inmates and students reveals the positive outcomes that can result from strong mutuality in community-based learning relationships. Through a qualitative analysis of student reflection papers and prisoner oral reflections, this essay shows how an emphasis on the personal during this project did not preclude systemic considerations, but rather produced productive, political outcomes. This essay concludes with a response from my community partner—a prisoner in a medium security facility and participant in the peer reviews. We hope to demonstrate how a reciprocal, relationship-based orientation can facilitate not only productive community-based learning outcomes for students and communities, but also a new type of scholarship—one more thoroughly enriched by community voices.

Drawing upon concepts from service-learning theorists Sarah Ash and Patti Clayton’s DEAL Model for Critical Reflection (2009), this article suggests an innovative approach to critical reflection. Rather than create separate reflection assignments, which can be problematic for a number of reasons described in this article, the author offers composition teachers strategies for embedding critical reflection concepts into composition assignments to create a “reflective course.” The author provides models of types of reflective assignments from a first-year service-learning writing course, including a research paper, a proposal letter to a member of the community, and an oral presentation. These models are adaptable to many levels of rhetoric and composition courses, to many genres, and to students working with a wide range of community partners.

Service-learning courses have typically encouraged students to write for or about communities. Such courses rarely involve students writing with the communities they serve, despite the growing number of opportunities for collaboration afforded by digital media. Scholarship on collaborative writing with communities in service-learning courses is scarce; research on collaboration using digital, multimodal texts is more so. Arguing that digital technologies have the potential to make service-learning more reciprocal and effective for all participants, this article 1) suggests that digital spaces are an underutilized technology in community-university partnerships; 2) discusses common barriers to using digital mediums collaboratively; and 3) recommends a set of best practices for introducing collaborative digital writing into service-learning courses.

Educators focused on community literacy and public engagement have access to a unique critical platform from which larger social issues that impact us both as a whole and on very personal levels are open to exploration. Being particularly situated to have significant impact on community, literacy work in this area may require uncommon pedagogical strategies. Based on its comprehensive focus on sustainability, ecological literacy, sociopolitical factors that affect communities, and a multitude of other factors that underpin social injustice, ecopedagogy may be uniquely positioned to offer a more holistic view than other composition pedagogies such as place-based education and ecocomposition.

This mixed-methods experimental study examined the effect of service learning in a distance education technical writing course. Quantitative analysis of data found evidence for a positive relationship between participation in service learning and technical writing learning outcomes. Additionally, qualitative analysis suggests that service learning in online technical writing courses helps students to make connections to the “real world,” encourages students to connect with their audience(s) and develop a sense of purpose for writing tasks, connects students to future employment, and develops deep learning with course materials. It is hypothesized that these factors support the development of learning outcomes in distance education students.

Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement spotlights her experiences with Pittsburgh's Community Literacy Center (CLC), an innovative project in community literacy initiated in 1990. The 2008 book details a rhetorical model of engaging the privileged and marginalized voices of community leaders, academics and urban teens into meaningful dialogue that values all perspectives and embraces differences as valuable resources. According to Flower, the discourse of academic cultural critique has taught "us how to speak up [and] speak against" (2 original emphasis). However, what we lack and what this text provides is a model that teaches us "to speak with others [and] to speak for our commitments [] for a revisable image of transformation" (2 original emphasis).

This article offers an extended treatment of two social justice efforts in a rural university town as historical examples of civic engagement with contemporary implications for Writing Democracy and similar projects. The article begins with an analysis of local activism initiated by John Carlos in 1967 while he was still a student at our university and the year before his heroic, silent protest against racism with Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. The author then turns to a linked effort five years later by local activist MacArthur Evans, a university student from Chicago. In 1973, Evans and other university students established the Norris Community Club (NCC) in partnership with residents of Norris, the historically segregated neighborhood, to provide what they called “a clear channel of communication” between Norris and city officials. Both were successful, albeit it in very different ways. The author uses “a clear channel” as both the object of study and interpretive lens to examine these local efforts and their many implications for today.

This article presents the curricular and service-learning realities of a program that launches middle school debate teams in New Orleans public schools. By leaning on classical rhetoric in the writing classroom, McBride’s classes learn fundamentals of debate and rhetoric that prepare undergraduates to coach debate teams in middle schools where more than 95 percent of the students qualify for free or assisted lunches. Class conversations about Quintilian, Plato, and Aristotle prepare undergraduates to meet the middle school debaters “where they are” in the sense that they can evaluate where they are as orators and push them to greater heights. This service-learning course gives his Tulane students a new reason to care about what they read and write about, while simultaneously advancing Tulane’s dedication to service-learning and community outreach.

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

Research questions: How can our current knowledge of experiential learning be applied to cross-cultural web-based training? How do postproject interviews with the participants advance our knowledge about experiential learning? What practical recommendations for teachers and trainers can be offered based on this and similar case studies? Situating the case: Literature on virtual teams stipulates the importance of teaching leadership development within teams, including methods of conflict resolution, and flexibility in methods and tools of communication. Literature on experiential learning places a high value on learner experience, and on indirect and combined methods of assessing experiential learning projects. Methodology: The case was studied through the analysis of data obtained from unstructured class interviews with three of the US-based participants of the teaching project. Interview participants were chosen to ensure a variety of responses about their experiences while taking part in the project. About the case: The project was a part of an introductory graduate-level seminar in technical and scientific communication. Graduate students in technical communication from the US and graduate students in marketing from Ukraine participated in the project. The participants worked in virtual teams to create collaborative analyses of localized versions of websites of transnational corporations. The findings of this research are as follows. (1) Virtual teams work more effectively when given time to build trust and connections among participants. (2) Virtual teams work more effectively when time is devoted to the development of leaders and the articulation of leadership responsibilities within teams. (3) Experiential learning team participants use a variety of communication tools depending on the nature of the communicative task at hand. (4) As part of the learning process, virtual team members recognized and attempted to adjust to cultural and professional discourse differences between countries and professional fields.

The self-service nature of today's society means that technical communicators are needed more than ever before since users may find themselves struggling to make sense of online documentation with minimal support from the institutions that provide it. Certain demographics within the user population (older adults, disabled persons, non-native speakers) may face serious challenges when trying to use self-service documentation. Technical communication educators should prepare students to function as user advocates for members of these groups. Technical communication students need a thorough understanding of the challenges that may interfere with an audience's ability to use websites and other online documentation. This article suggests ways to help students gain this understanding through course content and by structuring service-learning and virtual team projects in which students can put their newly-developed understanding into practice.

This article offers productive usability as a usability approach that focuses on the usefulness of civic Web sites. Although some sites meet traditional usability standards, civic sites might fail to support technical literacy, productive inquiry, collaboration, and a multidimensional perspective—all essential ingredients for citizen-initiated change online. In this article, we map productive usability onto broader philosophies of usability and offer a framework for rethinking usability in civic settings and for teaching productive usability.

Reviews 323 C. W. Tindale, Reason's Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of So­ phistic Argument (Studies in Rhetoric/Communication), The Univer­ sity of South Carolina Press: Columbia, 2010. 184pp. Renewed interest in the Sophists may have achieved an unbiased, if not fully acknowledged, rehabilitation of their philosophical ideas, yet what is likely their most extensive contribution to Classical civilisation, mastery in rhetorical argumentation, has so far lacked any comprehensive summary, let alone a comparison with modern theories of reasoning. Tindale analyses the standard textual evidence on the sophists' practice of reasoning to describe those strategies which may specifically be cate­ gorised as part of their rhetorical techne. However, the inherent difficulty of separating sophists and their occupation from their contemporaries and supposed opponents (as, for example, the relevant works of Isocrates and Alcidamas indicate) makes any such endeavour, however valuable it may be, necessarily tentative. The title, Reason's Dark Champions, may seem surprising, perhaps even paradoxical, considering that the essence of sophistic argumentation required public engagement and an open display of rational discourse. In the book T. follows a dual division with the first part being devoted (one would say - almost compulsorily) to the justification of sophistic practice in the face of its often distortive Platonic and Aristotelian representation, whilst the second part brings forward an appreciative account of several individual strategies. Although this may be a practical approach, it still reflects a somewhat defensive scholarly position in studying the Sophists, which may not be justified and so necessary anymore. The introductorv chapter contrasts the opinions of key classical authors and modern scholars with a view to clear the term "sophistic" of the semantic thicket that overgrew it in the past couple of centuries, as exemplified by Xenophon's De Venatione 13. He presses ahead with his point early on that all too often eristic argumentation a la Plato's Euthydemus has become the standard label for sophistic reasoning. However, refusing to understand the positive philosophical assumptions behind strategies such as the contrasting arguments will result in overlooking the relatively solid and extensive counterevidence from Gorgias to Euripides on the legitimate use of logos to reflect the contingent nature of the world and human actions. In the second chapter T. counters the regular (albeit rather vague) charge against the Sophists that they made a weaker argument the stronger. In a lu­ cid analysis of how mistranslating "make" with "make appear could mask Aristotelian or Platonic epistemological preconceptions, T. demonstrates on a particularly vivid example the general tendency of denying the Sophists of a legitimate sceptical standpoint in judging the truth of opposing claims. In fact, the arguments in Antiphon's model speeches and Protagoras's On Truth make it clear that the sophists applied pragmatic strategies, such as probabilistic arguments, to deal with matters without an appeal to abstract principles. 324 RHETORICA The next two chapters focus on the representation of sophistic tech­ niques in selected works of Plato and Aristotle. First, T. shows how the Protagorean measure-maxim and the resulting oratorical or dialectical practice focused on persuasion was incompatible with the absolutistic epistemology of Plato, which relied on dialogue and strategies such as the elenchus to clear the way for eternal Truth. The much-reviled fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the Euthydemus not only demonstrate the difference be­ tween the practices of real and apparent refutations, but (more importantly) bring out the conflicting approaches to reality by the sophists and Plato. In the end T. offers a highly interesting comparison of the two kinds of refuta­ tions, showing that despite fundamental differences arising from contrasting epistemological positions both strategies show striking formal similarities. In the second major part of the book T. aims at offering a list of in­ dividual techniques that could set apart the Sophists as unique innovators of argument. Confronting the problem of distinguishing sophistic practice from later rhetorical studies T. accepts rather uncritically Schiappa's distinc­ tion between the two theories of rhetoric and logos to draw a line between the Aristotelian and Protagorean idea of persuasion. That concept, although seemingly attractive, nevertheless raises more questions about the system­ atic description of evidence on Greek sophists/rhetoricians/philosophers than it solves. The...

Books discussed in this essay: Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning, Linda Adler-Kassner and Peggy O’Neill Going Public: What Writing Programs Learn from Engagement, Shirley K. Rose and Irwin Weiser, editors The Public Work of Rhetoric: Citizen-Scholars and Civic Engagement, John M. Ackerman and David J. Coogan, editors Activism and Rhetoric: Theories and Contexts for Political Engagement, Seth Kahn and JongHwa Lee, editors

Regular Reflections readers will notice, among other things, a change in the journal’s subtitle. We are now “A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning,” having shifted from “A Journal of Writing, Service Learning and Community Literacy.” Title changes—even subtitle changes—are no small things, so we begin with a note on what led us to make that decision.

This essay presents perspectives on the range of potential reciprocity in literacy research and service learning, focusing attention on opportunities for individualized and institutional reciprocation, as observed by Takayoshi and Powell. Researchers and students involved in community-based research or service programs have several opportunities to give back to their research participants and service organizations. The more they are aware of these opportunities or can make these entities aware of these benefits and act upon them, the more productive such research and service can be to the field of literacy studies as well as to those who participate.

Service-learning projects and traditional internships both prepare the student of technical communication for the workforce in many ways. What is lacking in the scholarship is a discussion of how to successfully link these two ideas. To help teachers implement courses that bridge the gap between service-learning projects and internships, I discuss how to design a course in technical communication that actively prepares students for subsequent internships with nonprofit agencies. In specific, I outline social development and social learning theories, service-learning pedagogies, and lesson plans and assignments that integrate these theories into practice. This project serves as a model that insists that the teacher first instructs students regarding not only rhetorical aspects of document design, including audience awareness and style, but also in placing the students in internships and designing assignments to be fulfilled in internship roles. The combination of classroom practices with an internship supports the idea that students learn the value of the process of writing, including the social embeddedness that can often influence their writing.

Abstract A close textual analysis of Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural encyclical Deus Caritas Est—God is Love is offered from the perspective of Platonic and contemporary rhetorical theory An acclaimed inspirational success, this letter proposes loving "encounter" and "response" as the fundamental dynamic of Christian communication; God is "felt" and made manifest in concrete love-of-neighbor. Benedicts "contact" orientation has significant implications for contemporary theory—humanity becomes ontologically contiguous, subjects are holistically embodied, Truth is grounded in co-felt exchange, and discourse is decentered by direct public engagement. Deus Caritas Est draws attention to ethical limits in Dramatism and Logology and advances embodied, invitational, and theological perspectives on rhetorical theory by showing how genuine love initiates and feeds a divine dynamic that can transcend divisions and unite humanity.

Reviewed are: Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement, by Linda Flower, Reviewed by Tim Taylor Writings from Life, by Tom Tyner, Reviewed by Robert A. Berens

Roosevelt Wilson is the former owner and editor of Capital Outlook newspaper and a former Professor of Journalism at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU). This interview with Van Wilson investigates Roosevelt Wilson’s commitment to FAMU and the African American Community. The Capital Outlook newspaper bridges FAMU and the black community as a service-learning site, and links the black community to the university as an African American Community literacy partner. As such, Mr. Wilson is an “agent of social change” in the African American community.

“Upholding the Tradition” explores the national program The Big Read and Claflin University’s attempt to form community partnerships in order to increase literacy in the primarily black, rural, and poor city of Orangeburg, SC, where the university is located. The essay includes interviews with the program director and with a key community member, Reverend Larry McCutheon, who was instrumental in recruiting more than 40 people to take part in the reading project. The interviews demonstrate how multiple levels of planning and engagement were implemented and also how many HBCUs, like Claflin, approach service-learning. More importantly, this essay attempts to theorize ways in which HBCUs can do a better job of servicing the neighborhoods that house them. Ultimately, The Big Read project, featuring Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, was successful in reaching lapsed readers because it highlighted programs that brought the reader to the book and allowed him or her to become engaged with issues raised therein.

This article investigates service-learning practices and pedagogy at Jackson State University (JSU), a Historically Black University, founded in 1877 to educate underserved and underrepresented African Americans in Mississippi. As a reflection of the university’s motto, “Challenging Minds and Changing Lives,” this research highlights JSU’s concerted efforts to foster students’ participation in school-community literacy partnerships. Since 2009, the university has facilitated academic instruction in first-year English Composition and Literature courses and in second-year Humanities courses. Not only have these efforts enabled JSU students to partner with Elementary schools and African American women’s help initiatives in the Metro-Jackson area, but JSU students have also completed service-learning projects in Limon, Costa Rica. To further illustrate JSU’s commitment to African American literacy partnerships, the authors present a selection of course materials to demonstrate course designs dedicated to service-learning and African American community literacy partnerships.

For one hundred years, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a Historically Black College and University, has promoted the concept of service as a means of building a stronger academic and social community. At NCCU, service manifests in many forms; however, during the fall 2009 semester, a group of college students collaborated with high school students on a handwritten letter-writing project. The cross-aged teaching initiative employed different theoretical practices that helped NCCU students become rhetors who immersed themselves in rhetorical situations that promoted change. This article focuses on the impact of this literacy-based service-learning experience on NCCU students’ perception of themselves as change agents and problem solvers and on their rhetorical and analytical thinking skills. It also focuses on high school students’ readiness to form a partnership with NCCU students and reveal the problems that negatively affect their lives. Since university students engaged in a rhetoric of change, this partnership is an example of how NCCU continues its founder’s legacy.

Prompted by Cushman’s and Grabill’s call to “ask and answer the difficult questions” about service learning (Reflections 2009), this article addresses the difficult question of “what happens when service learning goes wrong.” Authors engaged in family history writing and service learning with a local historical group. When the project was unable to be sustained, authors theorized a three-part methodological continuum of expectation, reality, and rectification to articulate the merits of failed attempts at service learning.

In Because We Live Here: Sponsoring Literacy Beyond the College Curriculum, Eli Goldblatt shares his experiences with community-based learning and encourages readers to "pay attention to the problems of the people among who we live" (6). The unique, self-

Public engagement in science and technology, defined as citizens' active involvement in the development of socio-technical trajectories, especially in policy setting and decision making, is considered to be critical by researchers across the disciplinary divide. This is particularly true when the scientific-technological endeavor is innovative, pertains to risk or uncertainty, and has caught the attention of politicians and the public because of its importance and relevance. Two prime examples of these scientific technological endeavors are nanotechnology and the science behind climate change. There are some good reasons for actively engaging the public in such endeavors, including gaining legitimacy or public trust, achieving better results when it comes to implementing new policies related to endeavor, and adhering to the normative commitment of democratic societies to abide by free flow of information and open processes of decision-making.

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

This article describes a service-learning program for undergraduate Shakespeare courses and the project's learning outcomes. The project enables significant ownership of Shakespeare, demonstration and engagement of students' multiple intelligences, and a re-valuation of the useful role of literature in everyday life.

This special issue features articles that address legal issues as they relate to technical communication research, pedagogy, and practice. The articles will assist instructors who wish to engage classes in activities that allow students to understand, analyze, and respond to legal dilemmas related to workplace activities. The articles will also highlight contemporary subjects for research inquiry in technical communication, including the relationship between technical communication and civic engagement, which often depends on the study of legal processes. It is our hope that this special issue will generate interest in the intersection of technical communication and the law and that it will provide readers of TCQ with a valuable and unique foundation for teaching and research in this area.

Why, if service learning has “come a long way,” has it not had the impact on the university or on the community that proponents expected? This article details interviews with eight teachers at Virginia Tech who use service learning in their classrooms, with particular attention to the convergence of literacies that occurs when teachers, communities, and students all attempt to work together. While these eight teachers seemed to have a good grasp of the expectations faculty and communities bring to this three-way relationship, they seemed unable to define the expectations students bring to the experience. This mirrors the current scholarship on service learning, which highlights faculty and communities but downplays the role of students. As we continue to work toward sustainable, reflective community partnerships, literacy studies like Barton and Hamilton’s Local Literacies can help us further examine the expectations students bring to service learning projects.

This qualitative research article explores how youth create multimodal rhetoric during a service-learning course at a local youth media organization. The study takes a detailed look at how a group of teens wanted to gain access to the Discourse of the documentary making process but struggled with the confines of conventions of film as were represented by the professional documentary maker who was their instructor. The research combines sociocultural and cognitive research traditions while investigating the teens’ and instructor’s relationship and interactions concerning the production of rhetoric.

This article analyzes the benefits of experiential learning in cross-disciplinary global learning environments by recounting work in the Global Classroom Project, which electronically links students and professors from Russia and America. The author asserts that students learn by experience what cannot be taught and claims that they benefit from synthesizing the viewpoints, ideologies, and frames of reference of diverse co-participants. In doing so, students prepare for a future in which synthetic thinking that leads to innovative, imaginative problem solving and invention will be desirable and necessary.

Despite the significant role digital technology has played in social movements, including the political protests in Iran last year, many still doubt the ability of these technologies to foster civic engagement and social change. In “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell claims the enthusiasm for social media is “outsized,” and that 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement we’ve (“we” meaning Americans writ large) “seem to have forgotten what activism is.” Gladwell’s analysis highlights many short comings of social networking technologies, and moreover, makes (very) clear his distinction between social networks performing one-off acts of kindness and hierarchical organizations making “real” social change.

What does it mean to teach civic engagement in the 21st Century writing classroom? In our digital and networked and globalized world, college composition instructors need to redefine literacy in ways that reflect the actual communication practices we and our students engage in. To this end, many compositionists are now integrating multimodal projects (that is, “texts” composed with digital/new media technologies so as to include images, video, audio, and alphabetical writing) into their classroom designs. These multimodal projects provide new opportunities for students to communicate with and for a public audience outside the classroom, and to foster community connections and engagement. In Spring 2010, I taught my first multimodal civic engagement class, an upper division writing and rhetoric course that included a community-based experiential learning project in partnership with a campus organization. I hoped that a project using a variety of media, technologies and modalities with a purpose and audience beyond the classroom would foster in students a sense of connection to their campus and teach them that they can use composition, rhetoric, and design skills to participate in public conversations around issues that matter to them and their community.

This article investigates the parameters of civic engagement through digital writing. Specifically, it examines the differences between slacktivism and activism against changing citizenship styles and definitions of civic action. With the goal of rethinking the relationship between civics, digital technology, and slacktivism, it outlines a digital writing project that uses social networking technologies to enact social change by increasing students’ awareness in terms of what counts as civic action in digital spaces. In particular, it draws upon student reflections from a digital writing class to illustrate how engaging Stuart Selber’s three components of computer literacy—the functional, critical, and rhetorical—can afford young citizens an aware and ultimately agentive role in terms of their online civic participation, as well as an opportunity to increase their social capital as digital citizens.

As promoters of social justice movements adopt digital technologies in order to communicate with their members, it is necessary to interrogate the rhetorical and ethical effects of these new technologies. If connection to a justice movement is as easy as typing and reading a few key phrases, can that connection be expected to prompt the kind of action required for social change to occur? Using student produced writing and responses to websites promoting social justice causes, this essay discusses emerging digital and cultural literacies that demand a re-imagining of rhetorical appeals for both membership in and action by social justice organizations. Although at first glance the electronic environment seems antagonistic to the goals of uniting people toward a cause, once one begins to closely examine what the new platforms for electronic communications are and how they are being used to form interpersonal connections, one finds that they are ideal for the kind of community building past voices of social justice deemed necessary for successful social transformation. Despite any perceived fragility of virtual awareness, digital technology is an extremely beneficial tool for civic engagement, capable of fostering conversation and writing about justice issues in a meaningful and rhetorically sophisticated manner, and individuals can learn to use their voices to shape the kind of inclusive communities they desire socially into those that also seek justice.

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

Service learning presents students and teachers alike with emotionally fraught moments. Before these moments shape ideologies and worldviews, they give us sensations. Understanding these sensations is part of what theorists label the affective domain. Affect is a notion garnering much critical attention from compositionists writ large but little attention in the service learning literature. The field has much to gain from acknowledging that students and teachers both experience civic engagement rationally as well as affectively. One of the potential benefits is a more sensitive understanding of how various modes of civic engagement (e.g., volunteerism and activism) are socially, ideologically, and emotionally constructed.

Review of The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning by Editors Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth Tryon, with Amy Hilgendorf. Temple University Press, 2009.

The blogs of various Orthodox Jewish women show that the digital realm enables them to blend the public and the private. That is, it allows them to participate in Jewish life without breaking the laws of modesty that otherwise prevent them from such public engagement.

Abstract While traditional rhetoric missed opportunities for potent change in the New World, alternative rhetorical theory nonetheless existed. This essay argues that a play by renowned nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a source of protofeminist, New World rhetoric, prompted by multicultural seventeenth-century New Spain. Immensely respected by the dominant powers of Church and state, Sor Juana was also attuned to issues of nondominance because she was criolla and female. Her religiously orthodox Divine Narcissus is simultaneously a rhetoric of listening that rewrites classical rhetoric's focus on speaking within a community to attend to people at odds with one another. It highlights the need for Spaniards, criollas, and Mesoamericans to go beyond talking at one another, and instead listen with care. The Divine Narcissus is an important text in rhetorical theory, concerned with dominant and nondominant rhetors and audiences in early Mexican society. Notes 1See Merrim and Kirkpatrick on the echo; Stroud's Lacanian reading; Gonzalez, Granger-Carrasco, and Kirk on theology; and Merrim on narcissism. Like me, Ackerman emphasizes the theme of utterance and hearing voices, but stresses this as a means of encouraging an "interpretive devotion to Christ" (73). 2Work on rhetoric and listening is now being explored by rhetoricians such as Royster, Krista Ratcliffe (see "Cassandra," Rhetorical Listening), Michelle Ballif, and Gemma Fiumara. Wayne Booth is one of the few scholars to posit listening as an overlooked but traditional part of rhetoric. See also Cynthia Selfe's recent argument for composition studies to reclaim "aurality," "the reception and production of aural communications" (646, note 1). 3Naming indigenous groups is a fraught endeavor. Current scholarly practice favors using an ethnic group's name for itself when feasible; the specific group Sor Juana refers to here are the Mexica. I use Nahua (of which Mexica are a prominent subgroup) to refer to a wider group of Nahuatl speakers and their religious practices, and I use Mesoamerican as a general term for indigenous peoples of central Mexico and environs. While sensitive to the history of associating native with pejoratives like primitive, I use native as a neutral term for connoting indigenous inhabitants. 4For example, Flower suggests that in composition studies we teach students how to "speak up" and "speak against" but not "how to speak with others" (2). Her rhetoric of public engagement aims for intercultural dialogue in urban settings, often through "hybrid discourse" or nontraditional delivery (32). Ratcliffe investigates rhetorical listening as "a stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in cross-cultural exchanges" (Rhetorical Listening 1). Glenn examines how nondominant groups use silence, "as a rhetoric, a constellation of symbolic strategies" (xi). 5As an auto sacramental, The Divine Narcissus is a one-act play with a prefatory loa. While both are divided into scenes, the numbering of lines is consecutive throughout each respective unit, so my citations specify loa or auto and the line number only. This and subsequent citations from The Divine Narcissus (hereafter abbreviated DN in parenthetical citations) are from the first and only full English translation of the play, by Patricia Peters and Renée Domeier, now out of print. 6For poems in which Mesoamericans speak Nahuatl and Blacks speak their own dialect of Spanish and an African language, see Obras completas 2.14 (translated into English in Trueblood 125), 26, 39, 71, 94, and 138. Sor Juana's use of Nahuatl in these poems reflects a concern for native speakers that is also a rhetorical device, making parishioners feel the Church was also theirs. 7See Pratt's discussion of Guaman Poma's letter ("Arts"). 8Méndez Plancarte, one of the two twentieth-century editors of Sor Juana's collected works, argues against the possibility that this auto was used to explain doctrine or that it had a missionary goal of educating indigenous groups (Juana, OC 3.511). 9 Auto sacramental is a generic designation for a religious play that is often allegorical, and which typically during this period honored the Eucharist (Granger-Carrasco Ch. 1). 10Between 1691 and 1725, The Divine Narcissus was published in Spain several times in collections of Sor Juana's works. It was not reprinted again until 1924, in Mexico. 11Echo plays the part of "Angelic nature, fallen from grace." 12New Spain's literary scene was determined by Spain, where Narcissus was a "ubiquitous" literary presence from the fifteenth century on (Méndez Plancarte in Juana, OC 3.514). Both Méndez Plancarte and Paz aver that Sor Juana's play is not only different from but also far superior to Pedro Calderón de la Barca's play (Juana, OC 3.lxxiv; Paz 351). 14 Yo iré también, que me inclina la piedad a llegar (antes que tu furor lo embista) a convidarlos, de paz, a que mi culto reciban. I offer my own translation because Peters's and Domeier's is quite off the mark: "And I, in peace, will also go/(before your fury lays them low)/for justice must with mercy kiss;/I shall invite them to arise/from superstitious depths to faith." Sor Juana's Spanish is more generous. There is no mention of "superstitious depths"; both Nahua and Spanish religious practices are referred to as cultos (forms of worship; cf. Loa 95, 178). 13My reading contrasts with Gerard Flynn's: "All in all, her attitude towards the Conquest seems neutral. She shows no recrimination for Zeal, and yet the pagan Occident and America are not ugly…. Sor Juana assents to both that which is Spanish and that which is Indian. The Conquest happened, and she accepts it" (74). 15Octavio Paz views Sor Juana's works as crucial to the early formation of criollo identity. It is only recently, though, that Sor Juana's works have been classified as literature of Mexico, not Spain (Granger-Carrasco 15). 16A similar multiplicity of identity is what Gloria Anzaldúa capitalizes on in her twentieth-century rhetorical theory for Mexican Americans. 17The Requerimiento demands allegiance to the Church as supreme ruler, but also tells Mesoamericans that Spaniards "shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our holy Catholic faith" (Washburn 308). 18It is this aspect of language that Moraña attributes to Sor Juana, claiming that her "rhetoric of silence" (the capacity for words to persuade beyond their overt reference) is affiliated with the sublime (176). 19Sor Juana seems to be conflating rituals that apply to two different Nahua gods, Huitzilopochtli (god of the seeds) and Quetzalcoatl (to whom human sacrifices were made) (Sabat de Rivers 290–291). 20The incident is quite possibly apocryphal, and at the very least, sculpted to resonate with the stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria and the young Jesus in Luke 2:46–47. 21"An attitude of complete receptivity, of openness to 'any view or hypothesis that a participant seriously wants to advance,' still puts a woman, I believe, in a dangerous stance," Susan Jarratt cautions, quoting Peter Elbow (117). 22"Why is the Devil a woman?," Merrim asks of the play, and reconciles the dilemma by finding parallels between Satan and Sor Juana, who must also dissimilate because divine authorities restrict her voice (114). 23In Spanish, the last line cited here (line 1300) reads, "Suene tu voz a mi oído": "Make your voice sound within my hearing." Sor Juana is playing upon verse 2.14 of the Song of Songs: "Let thy voice sound in my ears" (Douay-Rheims version). The English translation given by Peters and Domeier does not change the meaning, and the use of pour manages to allude to the fountain into which Narcissus gazes. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJulie A. Bokser Julie A. Bokser is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse at DePaul University, 802 W. Belden, Chicago, IL 60614, USA.

Here are the major writing assignments, sequenced from English 101103, that Jonathan developed for his service-learning course on HIV and AIDS.