RHM research brings attention to a lack of nuance in much discourse about the corporeal body,a reflection of positivist values that too often bleed into the classroom. These values can be tiedto dominant ideological frameworks for comprehending the world, including consumeristperspectives and biomedical explanations for illness and prescribed interventions. Todiscourage the tendency to gravitate towards polarized thinking, the author suggestsimmersing students in “wicked problems” that defy simplistic understandings and clearsolutions. Through a case study assignment drawing on a continuum of problems associatedwith corporate-funded research on the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages, students grapplewith a host of stakeholders and issues in the process of articulating a negotiated position that,while productive, acknowledges uncertainty.

In this essay I bring together two spaces—street needle exchange and the university classroom—to explore harm reduction as an epistemological model that can be adapted pedagogically in our rhetoric, communications, and composition classes. I first identify capitalism in the classroom as an insistence on mastery and the relentless call to know, acquire, and achieve. I then offer harm reduction, a public health practice that rejects these iterations of capitalism, to instead ask how we might meet students where they are and how we might forego the rewards of telos for the discomfort of process and mess. I’ll argue in this piece that reducing the harms of capitalist-based writing and knowledge requires considered attention to the ways we are lured toward production (what we might even call “deliverables”). I explore the epistemological nodes of harm reduction—its emphasis on temporality and its privileging of process—as methods for teaching writing, rhetoric, and communications while also offering a pedagogical case study along the way.

In view of the limited research attention so far given to the developing cognition of novice L2 writing teachers, this qualitative study examines the extent to which L2 writing teacher cognition can be enhanced by the experience of tutoring. By adopting the theory of experiential learning, the study considered the role that the experience of tutoring could play in the development of novice L2 writing teachers’ conceptualizations of learners’ needs and their view of themselves as developing L2 writing teachers. The results of this study point to the participants as having all made realizations that served as catalysts for continued growth after the original tutoring experiences. These findings indicate that the practice of tutoring changed their perceptions of teaching L2 writing by seeing clearly the benefits of dialogic interaction with L2 writers and also learning the value of holistically viewing the writer.

Discursive infrastructures are forms of writing that remain mostly invisible but shape higher-level practices built upon their base. This article argues that citational practices are a form of discursive infrastructure that are bases that shape our work. Most importantly, we argue that the infrastructural base built through citation practices is in a moment of breakdown as increasing amounts of people call for more just citational practices that surface multiply marginalized and underrepresented (MMU) scholar voices. Consequently, this article both theorizes citations as infrastructure while also focusing on a case study of the MMU scholar database to help build a more equitable and socially just disciplinary infrastructure.

Part of the RSA series in transdisciplinary rhetoric, this volume brings together the insights of a diverse group of rhetorical scholars exploring the rhetorical dimensions of mathematics. There is no single perspective or approach on display as the reader is presented with studies of the rhetoric of mathematics as well as the use of rhetoric in mathematics and the rhetorical nature of mathematical language. These three prongs structure Edward Schiappa's foundational paper that explicitly informs the work of several contributors to the volume. In addition to these essentially theoretical explorations, the volume is rounded out by prescient applications that reinforce the topicality and importance of the subject matter. But any full review of the collection must begin with Schiappa's analyses.To the casual reader, no subjects could be more disconnected than rhetoric and mathematics. The language of demonstration and proofs measures an attitude of mind that values the apodictic and axiomatic while marginalizing, if not ignoring, the efforts of rhetoric. Chaim Perelman drew attention to this divide in his critique of the Cartesian ideal that detached the self-evident from the human sphere, wherein questions arise that mathematicians would consider foreign to their discipline.1 To consider numbers themselves as a source of evidence is part of what is at stake when mathematics is exposed as a human activity. Schiappa takes what Perelman abandoned and claims it as rhetorical territory. “In What Ways Shall We Describe Mathematics as Rhetorical?” answers the question in fertile ways (as subsequent papers show). The rhetorical turn of recent decades involves the rhetorical nature of mathematics on different fronts: “(1) the rhetoric of mathematics, understood as the persuasive argumentative use of mathematics; (2) rhetoric in mathematics, understood as the argumentative modes of persuasion found in written proofs and arguments throughout the history of mathematics; and (3) mathematical language as rhetorical, a sociolinguistic approach to the language of mathematics,” an approach supported by recent writings of Thomas Kuhn (33). In the first case, mathematics serves as evidence in an argument, increasing the persuasiveness of a claim. The second case refers to the argumentative and stylistic modes of persuasion found in proofs, a feature of the history of mathematics. The final case finds its motivation in the work of rhetoricians like Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke,2 for whom all symbol use is rhetorical including that of mathematics. Mathematics is a language like others and with its own reasoning patterns operating in the discourse community of mathematicians. Schiappa illustrates each of these rhetorical aspects of mathematics with examples and bolsters their importance with argument, including a detailed discussion of the work of Kuhn. This, before taking a particularly interesting turn into ethnomathematics and the differences in how mathematics is conceived and used across cultures.Four of the papers in the collection make explicit reference to Schiappa's account and draw part of their stimulus from his distinctions; and the other analyses can be read through the lens of one or more of his distinctions, whether the papers are historical in nature or deal with contemporary questions. In the opening paper, and beyond their Introduction, the book's editors, James Wynn and G. Mitchell Reyes, open some of the relevant discussions by exploring relationships between rhetoric and mathematics. They reinforce their belief that the volume offers a timely and coordinated effort to explore the intersections of these two fields. In Schiappa's distinctions they find the appropriate routes into the subject matter. They trace the historical division between the fields, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, whose system of argument offered little overlap between rhetoric and mathematics, through to the uneven attention directed by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (not so much, although the authors’ reading of quasi-logical arguments suggests something) and Burke (quite a bit, with the explicit inclusion of mathematics as a symbolic means of communication). This reinforces the importance of rhetoric in mathematics, and much of Wynn and Reyes’ closing analyses confirm this.Two papers pursue the themes of the volume into the field of economics. Catherine Chaput and Crystal Broch Colombini explore the persuasive role of mathematics at work in the metaphor of the invisible hand. And G. Mitchell Reyes provides a detailed investigation of the 2008 financial crisis through a case study of the mathematical formula known as the Li Gaussian copula. As Reyes writes: “Unraveling this copula reveals the constitutive rhetorical force of mathematical discourse—its capacity to invent, accelerate, and concentrate economic networks” (83). The story is long and far too complex to be detailed here. But the study rewards the reader with an understanding of just how traditional rhetorical modalities (like analogy and argument) connect to the rhetorical modalities of numeracy (like abstraction and commensurability) to generate something new (114).Likewise, Chaput and Colombini draw from the traditions of rhetoric in exploring the metaphor of the invisible hand. Their concept of particular focus is energeia, the power or force that activates potential. One of the theses of the analysis is that “the metaphor of the invisible hand regulates the energetic force of economic arguments” (62), and they track the metaphor accordingly, from the work of Adam Smith to that of John Maynard Keynes, where mathematics gains a more central place in economic discussion, and on to Milton Friedman's “positivist mathematical economics” (66). Through these and further analyses, the paper successfully supports the argument that capitalism's force (energeia) emerges in part from the historical developments of the mathematization of the invisible hand.The last paper of Part 2, by Andrew C. Jones and Nathan Crick, weaves together the mathematical reasoning of Charles Sanders Peirce and the detective fiction of Edgar Allen Poe, specifically the Dupin trilogy that includes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The discussion identifies similarities between Poe's forensic analyst and Peirce's mathematician, offering a further case of rhetoric in mathematics. Like Burke in the earlier paper, Peirce is a thinker who understands rhetoric as the effective communication of signs—although I would not want to be taken as suggesting similarities between Burke and Peirce beyond this—and this would apply to all signs, including the mathematical. Poe's detective Dupin further illustrates Peirce's method of abduction, and Jones and Crick take us through the steps involved, from hypothesis to confirmation (while also using the wrong turn of the real case behind “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” to show how abductive reasoning can fail).Part 3, on mathematical argument and rhetorical invention, begins with Joseph Little's adoption of Schiappa's taxonomy for his study of the Saturnian account of atomic spectra, the most technical paper in the collection. That said, the historical case study of Hantaro Nagaoka underlying the discussion is quite accessible. The investigation of atomic spectra begins with a puzzle involving different appearances under different conditions. Little addresses responses to this by looking at rhetoric in Nagaok's mathematics, specifically his use of an analogy between the behaviour of material in Saturn's rings and that of atoms in what is known as the Zeeman effect. Little then analyzes the rhetoric of Nagaoka's mathematics, showing that “a mathematical equation can function indexically, symbolically, and qualitatively in a given case without taking on a computational role (164). Finally, he completes the Schiappian analysis with an account of Nagaoka's mathematical language as rhetorical in the debate that ensued between Nagaoka and the mathematical physicist G.A. Schott.Jeanne Fahnestock's paper, “The New Mathematical Arts of Argument: Naturalists Images and Geometric Diagrams,” completes Part 3. The study takes its place among Fahnestock's meticulously wrought accounts of rhetorical thinking in the history of science.3 She plunges the reader immediately into a discussion of the depiction of scallops in Martin Lister's publications of 1695. Illustrated with original drawings from the account, the rhetorical importance of image reproduction combined with geometrical ways of seeing diagrammatically is shown to underlie arguing in sixteenth century natural philosophy to an extent “that is difficult to appreciate from a twenty-first century perspective that separates the mathematical and the verbal” (174). Fahnestock believes these features underlie arguing because, unlike today, grounding all disciplines (including mathematics) was dialectic in the form of a general art of argumentation. The dialectic in question is Philip Melanchthon's Erotemata dialectics, a work which Fahnestock has just translated into English (Fahnestock 2021). This is a dialectic in which mathematics plays a detailed role, and the paper proceeds to provide a history of this work that blends naturally into a deeper history of the argumentative use of diagrams. Her conclusions point to how, through geometrically controlled images. mathematical ways of viewing the natural world issued in today's “mathematically constructed world” (204).The final two essays comprise Part 4, and both deal with the role of mathematics in education. James Wynn's “Accommodating Young Women” explores some of the gender biases in the way mathematics is taught but more specifically provides a lengthy case study of the rhetorical devices used by TV star and math scholar Danica McKellar to turn middle school girls to the study of mathematics through her book Math Doesn't Suck. This involves an interesting application of epideictic rhetoric to a contemporary subject of concern, and the strategies used are both traditional and innovative. Essentially, McKellar strives to modify the image of mathematics, and Wynn's study of her attempts is both fascinating and instructive.The final paper in the collection, Michael Dreher's “Turning Principles of Action into Practice,” studies the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM) rhetoric in reforming mathematics education. Two of Schiappa's categories come into play here: rhetoric of mathematics and in mathematics. Built on a historical account of philosophies of mathematics education, and incorporating several pertinent anecdotes, Dreher reveals the successes and failures of the NCTM's persuasive attempts to counter the idea that mathematical ability is inherent in only few and instead promote wide success in students’ mathematical achievement. It is a challenge that continues, and Dreher makes clear the difficulties still to be faced.This is, in sum, an eclectic set of papers gathered around a few common agreements and unified by a deep conviction of the importance of challenging any vestiges of the traditional belief that rhetoric and mathematics occupy different, even competing, spheres. The stand-out paper, testified to by the importance accorded it by many of the other studies in the book, is Schiappa's. One could say that it is worth the price of the book, but that would be unfair to the many other fine pieces of scholarship collected here.The observant reader will also have noted that much of the forgoing discussion refers to rhetoric and mathematics, while the title of the volume speaks of arguing. In fact, the attention to argumentation is pervasive, and this book takes its place among a recent appreciation of the role of mathematics in argumentation,4 while answering the kinds of dismissive critiques we once witnessed from skeptics like Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont,5 who attempted to maintain the rhetoric/mathematics gap by suggesting that those who crossed it (at least from one direction) were unknowledgeable interlopers. It was one of Schiappa's opening insights that “If we replace the word “rhetoric” with “argument” . . . we find considerable recent interest in “mathematical argumentation” as a social and pedagogical practice” (43). And, as I have noted, this is repeatedly corroborated in this highly recommended book.

Based on a qualitative case study of students’ “theory of writing” essays, this study examines ways that first-year students’ community engagement experiences solidify and disrupt their writing knowledge, beliefs, and practices. Analysis of student writing demonstrates how different community-engaged writing projects inform first-year students’ writing theories and strategies.

Situated in disability studies, this article shares the results from a qualitative research project that examined how three community college students who wrote about addiction navigated the process-based activities assigned in their first-year writing courses. These findings illuminate how such exercises evoke a spectrum of emotion that shapes both process and product.

ABSTRACTThis article examines how 14 Black professional communicators publicly share their stories about their career change into software development and other positions in the tech industry. Findings suggest that Black readers looking to shift into the tech field benefit from emotional experiences with professional development resources as they make their strategic career pivots. Black technical joy describes this rhetorical practice to find comfort in and celebration of the strategic ways Black people approach technical communication.KEYWORDS: Computer science / programmingracial studies / ethnic studies / cultural studiesblack technical joyblack rhetoricqualitative methodsworkplace studies / professional practice AcknowledgmentsMany thanks to Christopher Castillo and Jason Tham for their comments on the first draft of my proposal to this special issue. Your disciplinary perspectives from literacy studies and technical and professional communication helped me understand how to ground my research within the expectations of Technical Communication Quarterly readers. Thank you anonymous peer reviewers for your sharp observations on how this article could strengthen its argument and highlight the most salient themes in my analysis. And thanks to the wonderful editors of this special issue for their mentorship and guiding revision.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Black professionals in this article represent the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and Kenya. I use Black to encompass these nationalities.2. Annamma, Jackson, and Morrison (Citation2016) argue that "color-blind racism" points out the problem of refusing to acknowledge race while associating disability with ignorance and passivity. They suggest that color-evasiveness "allows for both comprehensively situating the conceptualization and critique of color-blindness as well as thoughtfully considering how to move the underlying ideology forward expansively" (p. 158).3. For this study, I referred to McKee and Porter (Citation2008) and Quinton and Reynolds (Citation2018) for advice on the ethics of doing my Internet research study. Rather than determining if online content is private or public, "we need to think about the sensitivity of the subject we might be researching as well as the vulnerability of the research participants" (Quinton & Reynolds, Citation2018, p. 159) to decide if informed consent is required. University institutional review boards (IRB) may not have clear guidance on how to assess the ethics and harm of Internet research (My university determined my study was exempt from further review because I was not speaking directly to the authors.). In response to limited guidance or policy from IRB, scholars should make an empathetic, humanizing "probable judgment" (McKee & Porter, Citation2008, p. 725) and reflect if "it's reasonable to assume that [the authors] desire their content to be disseminated and also commented upon, which includes the analysis of their content as a data resource for research" (Quinton & Reynolds, Citation2018, p. 159).4. Agile is an incremental and iterative collaborative approach to project management that emphasizes teams' quickly delivering versions of a product or service to clients in a two-week sprint to receive feedback. Teams can then implement desired changes to the product or service in another two-week sprint. This process of iterative discovery helps teams reduce risks and ensure the product adapts to new requirements. Agile was first developed in software development in 2001 and has since been implemented in other industries.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAntonio ByrdAntonio Byrd is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he teaches courses in professional and technical communication, multimodal composition, and Black/African American literacy. He uses qualitative research and critical race studies to understand how Black adults learn and use computer programming to address racial inequality in their communities. Byrd's work has previously appeared in College Composition and Communication and Literacy in Composition Studies. He is the recipient of the 2021 Richard Braddock Award for Best Research Article in the College Composition and Communication journal.

When most people think about the water coming from their kitchen faucets, they seldom consider where the water originates and how transporting it to their homes has environmental impacts. Utilities that supply water know the complexity of their systems, but from their position as a “utility,” they view their job as supplying safe water to their customers, not necessarily stewarding the environment. Consequently, when building large projects like dams, canals, and tunnels, utilities regard environmental disruption as a necessary byproduct of serving growing cities with water. Representations of these projects often replicate the “man conquering nature” frame, praising these engineering marvels for their defiance of nature. Denver Water, the utility that serves almost 1.5 million people on the arid eastern slope of the Colorado Rockies, has produced films describing its complex system since the early 20th century, and these films reveal an evolution of values from dominating nature to actively stewarding the environment. This paper reports on a grounded theory analysis of films produced by Denver Water between 1933 and 2018 examining how the films frame human relationships to the natural environment. The results reveal that the films increasingly express stewardship ideals over those of domination, with recent public communication actively advocating for environmental causes. The paper concludes by suggesting that we can learn important lessons from Denver Water about ethical organizational action for environmental stewardship.

This article presents an ethnographic study on the user experience (UX) design of the photo- and video-editing apps of millennial and Generation Z participants from different cultural groups. The case study calls attention to the implications of rhetorical misrepresentations of reality that photo- and video-editing apps afford and encourages future large-scale studies on the negative psychological and behavioral impacts such apps can have on users’ psychology, behaviors, and well-being. The authors use frameworks in virtue ethics to argue that despite slight variations, photo and video app UX has ethical implications that can negatively impact young adult users. For example, the study suggests that the photo and video app features tend to subvert the traditional Chinese virtues of modesty, honesty, and the middle way and that hyperbolic and playful designs can cause addictive behaviors.

While writing is a critical part of the medical profession, longitudinal studies exploring the social apprenticeship and genre knowledge development of medical practitioners are almost nonexistent. Through interviews and writing samples, this article traces a 10-year journey of one writer’s engagement with the Patient SOAP note, following his experiences from the first year of his undergraduate education to the end of medical school. Drawing upon theories of social apprenticeship and the RIME framework (reporter, interpreter, mediator, educator) from the field of medicine, we offer an in-depth case study of our focal participant’s growing medical expertise as he masters the Patient SOAP note. Through this in-depth analysis, we argue that the SOAP note functions as a “threshold genre” to assist entry into the medical profession. We conclude by offering additional evidence about the role that key threshold genres play in the development of professional expertise and offer implications for genre theory.

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The coronavirus pandemic has been widely experienced online, and the experience of COVID-19 vaccines is no exception. This article reports on a case study of social media writing authored by COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial participants as a new and innovative form of vaccine communication. Findings offer three insights about vaccine decision-making and communication: 1) vaccine refusal, confidence, and hesitancy are increasingly informed by individuals’ personal assessments of vulnerability and risk; 2) expressed vaccine hesitancy is characterized by openness to persuasion; and 3) this impressionable vaccine hesitancy can be productively addressed in spaces that bridge lived experience and medical expertise. Building on these insights, this article delineates strategies for meaningful and participatory online communication about vaccination.

Action-oriented research strives to include vulnerable populations’ voices and to ensure reciprocity between academic and non-academic stakeholders to address complex problems. Challenges persist, however, in engaging community members beyond experts and reconciling differences in the timetables of such work. This article proposes an embodied approach to action-oriented research with vulnerable populations that calls attention to the situated, embodied aspects of the smaller moments through which complex problems are lived. By analyzing a case study of a project at a senior center for disadvantaged older adults—with a particular focus on time, place, and bodies—the piece articulates the implications of such an approach for theory, methodology, and practice in both localized contexts and RHM more broadly.

Abstract  Guided by normative rhetorical theory, this study utilizes thematic analysis to explore narratives about sterilization consultations posted by childfree patients and medical providers to Reddit. This study explores the multiple meanings of sterilization, the paradoxical dilemmas competing conversational purposes create, and the communicative practices, interpretive lenses, and environmental resources patients and providers employ to manage dilemmas. The analysis reveals that voluntary sterilization inheres task, relational, and identity meanings for both patients and providers, creating paradoxical dilemmas and rendering sterilization consultations additionally challenging to navigate. Patients and providers both accept and confront paradox, adopt cultural and contextual interpretive lenses to evaluate others’ talk, and rely on childfree patient and physician social networks as environmental resources to shift the context in which talk occurs. The conclusion offers theoretical implications for normative rhetorical theory and practical implications, including: illuminating features influencing interactions in which sterilization requests are made and evaluated, and underscoring the multiple meanings that constrain patients and providers during these consultations.

In popularization discourse, insights from academic discourse are recontextualized and reformulated into newsworthy, understandable knowledge for a lay audience. Training in popularization discourse is a relatively new and unexplored research topic. Existing studies in the science communication field suffer from under-utilized baseline assessments and pretests in teaching interventions. This methodological problem leads both to a lack of evidence for claims about student progress and to a gap in knowledge about baseline popularization skills. We draw the topic into the realm of writing research by conducting a baseline assessment of pre-training popularization skills in first-year undergraduate students. Undergraduate science communication texts are analyzed to identify instances of popularization strategies using a coding scheme for text analysis of popularization discourse. The results indicate a lack of genre knowledge in both academic and popularized discourse: textual styles are either too academic or overly popularized; the academic text is misrepresented; and the essential journalistic structure lacking. An educational program in popularization discourse should therefore focus on the genre demands of popularization discourse, awareness of academic writing conventions, the genre change between academic and popularized writing, the role of the student as a writer, and stylistic attributes.

Humira® has been the top selling pharmaceutical since 2014. As a former Humira® user, for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, I explore how we understand the concept and experience of chronicity as it is represented in advertisements for Humira® and manifested in embodied reactions to these advertisements. Through a layered narrative method that combines rhetorical analysis with autoethnography, I analyze 13 Humira® commercials. I argue that Humira® commercials operate through a curative imaginary (Kafer, 2013), which not only assumes viewers desire to be immune-typical but also defines normative orientations to time. This case study reveals how direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising obscures cultural and systemic sources of (dis)ablism, including the ways striving for normalcy is in and of itself an experience of chronicity, and disregards experiences of chronicity that disrupt normalizing boundaries of time.

As we write this, California is being ravaged by the second worst wildfire in its history (Dixie) and our fellow Utahns have experienced some of the world's worst air quality due, in part, to the smoke traveling east from the Dixie and other fires in the west. These consequences are just a few of the many ways in which the ongoing climate crisis is a threat multiplier: worsening extreme weather, droughts, wildfires, and, most significantly, the disproportionate inequities historically marginalized peoples experience as a result of the chaos resulting from human-caused climate change. The climate crisis is here; actions to justly and equitably transition away from fossil fuels are crucial. Although the climate crisis acts as only one backdrop to Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico, Catalina de Onís's book turns our attention to the significant but often less visible role of energy systems not only in the climate crisis but also in what she terms energy coloniality, or systems of power that maintain energy privilege for some and perpetuate energy injustices for many.Energy Islands enacts a decolonial approach to offer a deep and rich analysis of dominant and resistive discourse about energy politics in Puerto Rico. De Onís highlights the importance of a just transition away from fossil-fuel based energy toward centering decarbonization, decentralization, democratization, and decolonization. She argues that energy actors can create decolonial energy futures that support the intertwined wellbeing of people and the planet. De Onís's book “documents, assembles, and evaluates various discourses, narratives, naming practices, and metaphors” to research “the rhetorical efforts of energy actors [in Puerto Rico], particularly by drawing critical inspiration from individuals and groups communicating more sustainable existences.”1 In a rhetorical version of an energy ethnography, the book documents the metaphors that circulate in the discourse of both privileged and marginalized energy stakeholders.Energy Islands is a brilliant example of community-engaged rhetorical fieldwork that makes a difference in scholarly conversations and in ongoing energy transition. In addition to being theoretically keen and methodologically innovative, the book highlights the stories of successful energy justice practitioners in Puerto Rico and documents de Onís's extensive contributions as a scholar-activist to energy politics in Puerto Rico. The book makes significant contributions to conversations in rhetorical methods, decolonial rhetorics, environmental and energy communication, and Latinx rhetorics. It also makes important contributions to interdisciplinary energy studies, energy humanities, environmental justice, and Puerto Rican studies, demonstrating the importance of rhetorical energies in any analysis of Puerto Rico's energy past, present, and future.The introduction outlines the book's theoretical, methodological, and political commitments. Specifically, de Onís theorizes archipelagoes of power “as a network of entities/islands at various levels and hierarchical and horizontal nodes across and within structures and institutions that enable and constrain agency for diverse actors.”2 The archipelagos of power heuristic developed in the book robustly theorizes power vis-á-vis the various rhetorical energies and metaphors that animate resistance to colonial formations. In doing so, de Onís challenges normative definitions of energy as technology and contributes to ongoing theorization of rhetoric as energy. She writes: “this book seeks to convey capacious understandings of energy beyond a narrow focus on powering individual dwellings and workplaces, by addressing and amplifying the human energies required to create and challenge energy infrastructures and technologies.”3 Subsequent chapters focus on particular metaphors in this archipelago of power that enable and constrain energy justice.The main chapters of the book are interspersed with “Routes/Roots/Raíces,” interludes that focus on positionality, methodology, and narratives. The first interlude tells the story of de Onís's familial connections to islands and Puerto Rico and seeks to break down binaries between conquest and resistance and colonizer and colonized.In chapter one, de Onís lays out four key concepts in Puerto Rico's archipelago of power: energy coloniality, energy privilege, energy justice, and energy actors. These constitute a rhetorical matrix “that provides a vocabulary for studying and communicating different energy controversies in Puerto Rico and Beyond.”4 Energy coloniality is a major theoretical contribution; though related to forms of resource colonialism, it hones in on the importance of energy technologies to relations of power within colonial systems. Another valuable contribution is the introduction of energy actors—a term used by one of her colaboradores—as a frame for understanding Puerto Ricans’ agency in energy politics.In the second interlude, de Onís narrates her encounter with the Commonwealth Oil Refining Company (CORCO) on Puerto Rico's southern coastline (between Ponce and Mayagüez) as an early example of energy coloniality. She links the closure of the refinery and its lingering economic and environmental impacts with an art installation created out of the abandoned remnants.Chapter two traces colonial relations between the U.S. and Puerto Rico by focusing on metaphors of experimentation—“discourses of defense, disease, development, and disaster”—grounded in, and reinforcing, a view of expendability.5 The legacy of, and ongoing struggles under, experimentation are linked to embodied experiences, emplaced politics, and exigencies for resistance. De Onís concludes the chapter by documenting historical resistance to experimentation discourses while also highlighting how contemporary organizations like Casa Pueblo and Coqui Solar appropriate experimentation metaphors to refuse domination and enact transformations towards more just and equitable futures.Chapter three focuses on spatial metaphors related to methane gas (counter-)advocacy. De Onís focuses on the Via Verde Gasoducto Project and Aguirre Offshore Gas Port, both of which have since been defeated by energy actors. These resistances occurred prior to and during de Onís's fieldwork and are introduced into her fieldwork via colaboradores’ reflections and de Onís's emplacement. While proponents framed the projects as ostensibly cleaner fossil fuels serving as supposed bridges towards technological change, resistive energy actors used “tropes of way, path, expansion, and hub [to offer] an alternative focus.”6 The chapter highlights how energy actors can successfully resist energy coloniality and energy privilege, including by appropriating metaphors to open new ways of thinking.In the third interlude, de Onís shares how she grappled with writing about Puerto Rico as a member of the diaspora living at a distance. She argues that critical reflexivity about power relations, engaging collaboratively, admitting mistakes, and making amends are necessary to avoid replicating oppressive dynamics while performing much needed critical research.Chapter four offers a significant methodological intervention. De Onís conceptualizes the need to (re)wire one's alliances, preconceptions, and dispositions in the context of a place experiencing “extreme shocks [e.g., Hurricanes Maria and Irma] with already ongoing everyday stressors.”7 This (re)wiring is vital for successful coalitions among diverse actors to constitute a decolonial archipelago of power that can span across geographic locations and cultures. De Onís extends co-presence8 to “offer e-advocacy as both a concept and a practice for working coalitionally in electronic spaces.”9 The family of islands trope, she argues, holds promise in conceptualizing coalitions that span across geopolitical bodies.The final interlude articulates the interlinkages between mangrove habitats, historic Afro-Caribbean resistance, and ongoing community organizing based on convivencia. This interlude illustrates the value of archipelagos of power as an analytic to cut across time, species, art, and activism to compose a nuanced understanding of resistance in Puerto Rico.Building from energy coloniality, energy privilege, energy justice, energy actors, archipelagos of power, rhetorical energies, and the metaphors developed across the chapters, de Onís uses the conclusion to discuss the “four d's of energy justice.”10 Decarbonizing, decentralizing, democratizing, and decolonizing, she argues, are key components of delinking from energy coloniality and enabling energy justice.Energy Islands’ foremost contribution is archipelagos of power, a theoretically rich heuristic that can energize and empower future analyses of energy politics, energy coloniality, and energy justice. The heuristic accounts for the uniqueness of Puerto Rico as an island and archipelagic formation in the Antilles but also exceeds a potentially limiting focus on Puerto Rico. Building from Tiara Na'puti's foundational work on archipelagic rhetoric,11 de Onís's archipelagoes of power can be used to analyze relational/technological energies across a variety of sites of energy struggle. This heuristic enhances the field of rhetoric's ability to engage with and sustain research that begins with the affordances of thinking archipelagically.Energy Islands is an exemplar of rhetorical fieldwork. De Onís seamlessly integrates textual analysis, interviews, ethnographic participation, e-advocacy, and critical self-reflexivity into a masterful documentation and amplification of energy actors, including herself, making meaningful change in Puerto Rico. The most explicit contribution to rhetorical fieldwork is the development of e-advocacy as a mode of sustaining ethical and political commitments and contributions when one cannot remain perpetually emplaced in the field. In a pivotal moment, de Onís narrates her hesitancy about writing this book due to concerns about speaking for colaboradores from the perspective of a diasporic Puerto Rican living in the U.S. and her ethical commitment to supporting Puerto Rican people in telling their own stories. This and other moments exemplify how de Onís models an ethical, participatory, and community-based methodology that puts care for the community first and challenges extractive models of research. Rhetorical scholars, even those who do not use fieldwork, would benefit from the methodological approach modelled in this book, as it can urge the field rethink dominant norms about the goals of publication, research, and advocacy.Energy Islands is provocative, suggesting future possibilities for research at the intersections of energy, race, and technology. It offers a substantial contribution by presenting a heterogeneous, complex, and nuanced picture of power relations in Puerto Rico. The book challenges homogenous generalizations about Puerto Rico by tracing how colonizer/colonized, north/south, privileged/underprivileged, and mainland/island relations work within Puerto Rico, not just between Puerto Rico and the U.S.; de Onís's analysis engages inequities within Puerto Rico based on, for example, class, location, race, and access to governmental power. Scholars seeking to expand on de Onís's research might consider, for example, how Blackness, stemming from Afro-Caribbean roots, relates to resistive energies in the archipelago; how inter-Island and inter-archipelago race relations relate to energy coloniality and energy justice; and how racial formations intersect with colonial formations. Furthermore, tracing the material forces that energy technologies themselves have in Puerto Rican energy politics would expand de Onís's focus on the rhetorical energies of decolonial energy actors.Energy Islands is a significant offering to rhetoric and public address scholars. It demonstrates how energy (in)justice is rhetorically constituted through the rhetorical energies of many actors and positions analysis of discourses of just transition, climate justice, and energy colonialism as central to rhetorical studies. In a world that is already suffering from the inequitable impacts of climate change, this book highlights the ongoing relevance of rhetorical scholarship to meaningfully addressing the climate crisis amid intersecting political instabilities, economic pressures, and coloniality. Energy Islands is essential reading for scholars across the broad field of rhetorical studies not only because of what it contributes to our understanding of rhetorical energy but also for how it demonstrates that rhetorical scholarship matters in creating a more just and equitable world.

ABSTRACTAssuming that withdrawal is ontological, no method of inquiry will breach the “essence” of an object. As such, this article raises a question of onto-epistemological access to complicate the development of recent rhetorical theories and rhetorical method/ologies informed by object-oriented ontologies and new materialisms. This article wonders about the drive to know and to feel forwarded in these rhetorical method/ologies without discussing how things hide from other things and from themselves, how things elude critics, and how scholars access others through ethnographic and embodied methodologies. Explicating epistemist and anti-epistemist approaches to the question of onto-epistemological access, this article makes a modest proposal for rhetoric scholars to conjure rhetorics of unavailable diversities to remake the gap between knowledge and reality again and again.

This paper considers some of the ways ethnography has been adopted in transdisciplinary rhetoric and also considers theoretical questions internal to rhetorical ethnography that can help transdisciplinary scholars navigate limitations and potential liabilities inherent in transdisciplinary work. I seek to more carefully consider transdisciplinary features of rhetoric though ethnographic study which, in its position as studying cultures both familiar and foreign to the researcher, mirror many of the disciplinary relations expressed in Marilyn Stember’s topology of disciplinarity. Noting that transdisciplinary rhetoricians engage with scholarship by experts in other fields, an ethnographic approach to transdisciplinary rhetoric recognizes that disciplinary experts might have expert knowledge that they struggle to communicate to non-experts, and rhetoricians should tread carefully in offering solutions to these communicative difficulties. I suggest rhetorical vulnerability and self-awareness expressed through standpoint as two strategies scholars of transdisciplinary rhetoric can use to adopt stances of transparent subjectivity rather than feigning scientific objectivity.

Using a case study of four professionals who suddenly worked from home during COVID-19, this article discusses participants' experiences of proving work when their bodies were not physically near coworkers ("proof"). I explain proof's features; participants' concerns and responses to it; its consequences for workers; and its potential devaluation of nonproductive, unwitnessed processes. I suggest technical and professional communicators are in a kairotic moment for negotiating the value of nonproductive time and unwitnessed work.

Technical and professional communication (TPC) curricula tend to prioritize hyperpragmatist learning outcomes, objectives, and activities. Drawing on a grounded theory analysis of curricular self-assessment data, including interviews with community partners, we argue that TPC in the U.S. is at constant risk of co-option by market logics. Through a speculative curricular framework that works toward building more just, liveable worlds, this essay reimagines TPC curricula as an opportunity to redress inequities caused by exploitative market logics.

Research in L2 writing contexts has shown developing writers’ beliefs exert a powerful mediating effect on how they respond to written feedback. The mediating role of beliefs is magnified in preparation for high-stakes English writing assessment contexts, where tangible outcomes pivot on successful test performance. The present qualitative case study utilises data from semi-structured interviews to investigate how the beliefs of three self-directed IELTS preparation candidates mediated their affective, behavioural, and cognitive engagement with electronic teacher written feedback across three multi-draft Task 2 rehearsal essays. Utilising a metacognitive conceptual approach (Wenden, 1998), the study identified seven themes: 1) self-concept beliefs regulated engagement, 2) reliance on the expertise of a quality teacher, 3) engagement was mediated by individuals’ learning-to-write beliefs, 4) belief in comprehensive, critical written feedback, 5) feedback deemed transferable was more comprehensively engaged with, 6) entrenched test-taking strategy beliefs hindered engagement, and 7) supplementary self-directed learning activities were considered of limited value. The implications for practitioners of IELTS Writing preparation and the IELTS co-owners are discussed.

This article is an ethnographic case study of a community literacy project that teaches immigrants to the U.S. how to get their driver's licenses.The article shows how perceptions of literacy change when project participants encounter the "rules of the road"-unspoken rules that are highly social, deeply embodied, and usually pitched by the powerful as clear, neutral, and necessary for survival.Based on qualitative analysis of written materials and interviews gathered during the project, we demonstrate how the community project activated analogic thinking about literacy.That is, realizing that driving rules are negotiable leads learners to realize that literacy rules are negotiable, too.

ABSTRACT This essay reflects on how the pandemic has intensified long-standing discussions regarding race, Blackness, white privilege and supremacy, settler colonialism, social justice, and more. I draw from forty years of ethnographic fieldwork or being part of the departmental leadership of Latin American and Latino Studies at my university. (Backdrop: growing up Puerto Rican in South Texas with Mexican and Mexican American families, I have dealt with these themes and tropes my entire life. I prefer class analysis over identity and culture, and, like a sophist or anarchist, I do not easily accept the thoughts of anyone.) This essay uses propositional logic to establish a poetics of radical compassion as prior to radical politics, followed by the “scenic” as evidence to “prove” that paradox is our living condition. In contrast, today’s totalization and capitalization of fear and the hypostatization of truth claims—insofar as they obscure the emptiness of truth—are the methods of war.

In 1907, the National Tuberculosis Association (NTA) began selling Christmas Seals to raise money for the fight against tuberculosis (TB). The decorative holiday stamps quickly became a hallmark of American popular culture throughout much of the 1900s. This project asks how the Christmas Seals, sold between 1920 and 1968, shaped the depiction, imaginary, and understanding of tuberculosis in popular culture. Through visual, rhetorical analysis of the Seals’ presented and suggested elements, I show that the Seals make present normalized images of Whiteness, health, and holiday settings. I argue that the Seals presented elements made absent images of tuberculosis, distancing an invoked, White audience from the realities of the disease and playing on their hope and desire for a world free of TB. This case study considers the rhetorical function and value of popular, non-­medical expert images, adds to the historical literature on tuberculosis, and offers a framework for the continued study of medical fundraising images.

Background: Computer programming faces persistent problems of inequity. In response, bootcamps and workshops have rapidly responded by offering an introduction to coding literacy intended to increase access and representation in the tech industry. Literature review: Prior research on software development focuses primarily on workplace contexts. This study considers bootcamps and workshops outside the workplace for minoritized and marginalized software developers to better understand the institutional contexts in which programming is taught and made. In so doing, it contributes to ongoing conversations on strategies for social justice in technical communication. Research questions: 1. How do bootcamps and workshops function as sites of coding education? 2. What strategies do activist programmers use in bootcamps and workshops to work towards social justice goals? Methodology: For this research, I interviewed organizers, instructors, and participants at three coding workshops and bootcamps for marginalized communities. I also conducted participant observation of the workshops, collected educational materials, and analyzed the interview transcripts using a grounded theory approach. Results and discussion: This analysis revealed how coding workshops and bootcamps operate as literacy sponsors, contributing to a transformative access for participants. More specifically, my research describes how activist programmers craft open, inclusive, and culturally aware pedagogies by attending to access, representation, community, and active learning, ultimately facilitating an affective coding literacy.

Introduction: Community engagement offers one pathway for technical and professional communication (TPC) to enact social justice; however, the community impact of partnerships has often been neglected in favor of more prevalent research on student benefits. This case study examines a community partnership that has emphasized community impact toward distributive justice, sharing its approach to equitable collaboration. About the case: The partnership under study was formed between a university grant writing program and a small nonprofit serving the surviving loved ones of homicide victims. Collaboration within the partnership takes many forms, including service-learning courses in grant writing and content strategy, student internships, and counsel through the organization's board of directors. Situating the case: Research on community engagement has demonstrated its impact on student growth, but community outcomes have not been as robustly investigated or prioritized in partnerships. This case adds to the literature by discussing the collaboration tactics used in a community partnership to achieve community results. Methods: The study uses quantitative outcomes and qualitative feedback from community partners to assess community impact. Partners’ insights about collaboration are put into context with student and faculty processes used in the partnership. Results: Analysis suggests that the partnership has had a meaningful impact on the nonprofit's work in the community, in the form of material resources and sustainable infrastructure. Organization staff identify collaboration tactics that prioritize equity: balancing perspectives, aligning goals, and “showing up.” Conclusion: Further research is needed to broaden the understanding of the connections between collaborative tactics and community impact.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research questions:</b> 1. How can we address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in our business and technical communication service courses? 2. How can we help prepare future engineers, technical professionals, and managers to create more inclusive and equitable workplaces?. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> The social justice literature in technical and professional communication (TPC) has focused on a variety of areas, including research methods, user experience, and expanding what can and should be identified as TPC. Emerging research has turned toward pedagogy as an interventional strategy for educating on issues of racial justice and inclusion. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> This teaching case presents the transformation of a TPC service course to specifically address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In response to the racial injustice documented during the summer of 2020, I developed a sequence of assignments that asked students to research and apply DEI initiatives. The assignment was to research and write a short report on DEI approaches in the workplace, followed by a larger team-based project in which students worked with the local city council to enact possible DEI initiatives in the broader community. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods:</b> The case was studied through the author's experience and the analysis of data obtained from surveys with class participants and other instructors who incorporated the assignments in their courses. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results/discussion:</b> Students were able to learn more about how to address bias, inclusion, and social justice in a business environment, but also demonstrated some implicit resistance to direct attention to racial injustice. The case study humanizes and brings home issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion for students who might otherwise consider them only in the abstract.

Background : Under the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, law enforcement agencies are required to draft and uphold a Use of Force document to safeguard the rights of the public. This document, in its most successful form, defines use of force and offers specific core principles that outline de-escalation tactics and techniques to reinforce use of force and deadly force as a last resort. What is missing from the conversation of this policy is an analysis of the rhetorical choices within each document, and the understanding that these documents are rarely written with social justice in mind; rather, they are focused on legalese and protecting the individual departments and the police officer responsible for using force. Literature review : The Use of Force document is a genre of policy that academics have been drawn to, especially in consideration of social justice. With a rise in law enforcement violent interactions with historically marginalized groups of the public, policy analysis is necessary. Research questions : 1. What key terms, concepts, and narratives are used within each document to reinforce oppressive ideology? 2. What rhetorical moves give agency of force to officers through various terminology? 3. What does an analysis of these policy documents reveal for technical and professional communicators regarding our role in social-justice-driven work? Research methods : I performed a rhetorical analysis of each document, pinpointing words, phrases, and sections that were unique to the specific text. NVivo qualitative research software was used to create word trees, where word frequencies were analyzed to uncover each department's situational position and the implication of such. Results and discussion : The analysis revealed that of the two documents under review, one tended to humanize not only the situational officer, who is incapable of being neutral, and the person whom force is being used against. The other tended to reflect policy-driven terminology that works to dehumanize the person involved with the officer and continues to uphold oppressive rhetoric. Conclusion : Technical communicators have a responsibility to insert themselves in issues of injustice. An analysis of these policy documents reveals areas of revision, areas where the public should be involved, and is a move toward further accountability regarding police brutality against historically marginalized communities.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</b> This case study presents graduate recruiting strategies developed and piloted in Fall 2018 and 2019. We initiated relationships with majority-minority universities, aiming to recruit underrepresented students to Utah State University's technical communication graduate programs. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Research question:</b> How may technical communication graduate programs at predominantly White institutions craft customized recruiting strategies to center multiply marginalized or underrepresented (MMU) applicants? <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> Scholars have long advocated recruiting strategies that develop new ways of working with institutions that enroll large numbers of minoritized students to attract those students. Recruiting strategies that build and strengthen these relationships can decenter the academy and focus on the lived experiences of potential applicants. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">How this case was studied:</b> Serving as the framework of our research methodology, the four tenets of alternative epistemology based on Black Feminist Theory directly informed specific recruiting strategies that we piloted in Fall 2018, then revised and piloted again in Fall 2019. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> Given the homogeneity of our field, it was important to develop recruiting strategies focused on marginalized groups. With this in mind, we established an annual graduate program recruiting trip to visit Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and majority-minority universities. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions:</b> In piloting recruiting strategies that center the perspectives and experiences of marginalized people, we identified two major priorities that should inform recruiting efforts: building relationships and enhancing inclusivity.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Introduction:</b> This experiential teaching case study calls for technical and professional communicators to apply a combination of ableism studies and disability justice in examining their participation in potentially ableist, normative systems. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> Previous technical and professional communication (TPC) scholarship has demonstrated how the field of disability studies (DS) furthers TPC's goals of social justice, but it has not offered methods to trace the systemic ableist assumptions that contribute to disability's marginalization. I thus extend these considerations through attention to disability justice and ableism studies. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> This teaching case evaluates my attempt to incorporate DS into my Writing for the Professions class by examining the warrants or assumptions reflected in class materials and student discussions to determine how DS's inclusion in the course impacted such warrants. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods/approach:</b> I used thematic coding to analyze class documents, student work, and semistructured student interviews and traced how reflected warrants contributed to understandings of ability and disability. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results/discussion:</b> I found that analyzed documents predominantly relied on ableist warrants that obscured disability's relationality, positioned disability as deviance, limited efforts towards social change, and disregarded disability's intersectional complexity. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusion:</b> To counter the use of ableist warrants that impede social justice goals, I recommend that TPC instructors foster critical understandings of systemic ableism by applying disability justice principles to their course materials. Through a combination of ableism studies and disability justice, TPC can pursue more socially just documentation practices.

This essay is concerned with what we have described . . . as the politics of summoning. We offer our own experiences as a case study in order to demonstrate how white scholars evoke these summonings, the means by which they reprimand and attempt to retain control of those who refuse to answer their call, and their calls for collective violence against scholars of color when we refuse to comply.

Abstract Russian disinformation activities imitate divisive U.S. political discourse within a polarized social media ecosystem. As part of a multipronged response, U.S. citizens have been urged to increase their personal vigilance and to identify inauthentic messages, hence flagging foreign-made disinformation by studying its content. However, by applying Taylor's concept of “imitation (in)security” to a set of Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) Facebook and Instagram advertisements, this article explains why content-centered approaches to combatting disinformation need to be reimagined. Building upon imitation (in)security, we propose that the strength of the IRA disinformation campaign was not its ability to foist falsehoods upon unsuspecting Americans, but, rather, its uncanny imitation of prevalent themes, images, and arguments within American civic life. Our analysis of IRA-generated advertisements targeting U.S. military veterans demonstrates how IRA “trolls” were imitating American communication patterns to amplify existing positions within a deluge of messages marked by polysemy. Our analysis suggests readers should be less concerned by such Russian-made imitations than was suggested in much of the breathless 2016 post-election coverage, for the traction of such disinformation hinges on domestic crises and injustices that long predate Russian interference. Pointing to foreign-made social media content stokes a sense of threat and crisis—the essence of national insecurity and a main objective of the IRA's efforts—yet our actual security weaknesses are homemade.

John Oddo's book argues that propaganda should be defined as an intertextual process. According to this perspective, a message succeeds as propaganda when people recontextualize it over and over, keeping that message alive across many texts. Of course, some messages achieve greater success as propaganda than others, and Oddo is interested in the linguistic and contextual factors that make certain messages “comparatively more worthy of recontextualization” (25). His focus is American propaganda justifying the Persian Gulf War and the War on Terror. In fact, Oddo's case studies explore a wide range of wartime materials, including print and television news, presidential speeches and political advertisements, and tweets by ordinary people. As such, his book will interest scholars studying war rhetoric as well as those interested in mediated discourse, multimodal analysis, political discourse, and circulation. In addition, this book illustrates how the inclusion of discourse analytic methods can work productively for rhetoricians interested in public address.In the introduction, Oddo states four goals. He seeks, first, to build upon insights of critical discourse analysis to develop an explicit definition of propaganda; second, to suggest a set of intertextual methods for studying propaganda; third, to draw attention to both contextual and sociolinguistic factors that give rise to propaganda; and finally, to challenge readers to consider the consequences of propaganda in a democratic society. Oddo argues that “one essential characteristic of successful propaganda is that it propagates” (3). In fact, his book's premise is that those who study propaganda should examine not only the content of messages but also the “rhetorical and sociolinguistic details” that reveal “how those messages spread, how they become mobile, durable, and repeatable” with the help of an institutional and ideological infrastructure (6, 3).Part 1 defines propaganda as an “intertextual process” in which manipulative and antidemocratic discourse is “recontextualized on a mass scale” (37). First, Oddo argues that an intertextual perspective can better account for both deliberate top–down propaganda and unwitting propaganda among ordinary people, preserving the notion that propaganda is harmful without presupposing that every propagandist seeks a selfish advantage. Building on theories of intertextuality, this section calls attention to the following question: “how do propagandists create discourse, whether strategically or unintentionally, that is likely to be recontextualized?” (22). Next, Oddo suggests that another key feature of propaganda is manipulation, which often involves positive self-representation and negative other-representation, emotional coercion, misleading representations and arguments, and manipulation of dialogic space (27–31). Finally, Oddo argues that propaganda should be defined by its antidemocratic societal consequences rather than intentions of the communicator. In other words, “it is propaganda if it consolidates the power of one group while harming the interests of subordinate groups” (34).Part 2 presents the first case study as it discusses how political propagandists create messages that are likely to be recontextualized by reporters. Oddo studies the iterations of the “incubator story,” a fabricated story in 1990 that accused Iraqi forces of removing Kuwaiti infants from their incubators and leaving them to die. He shows how the incubator story was staged as a credible narrative of personal experience. Moreover, Oddo shows that the narrative “could only succeed with the aid of journalists,” whose subsequent recontextualizations of the incubator story rendered it dominant and influential (71). Through a close analysis of linguistic discourse, multimodal semiotics, and intertextual relations between a public event and subsequent news reports, part 2 elucidates how powerful elites can induce a favorable uptake of their messages, inducing others to circulate them.Part 3 presents Oddo's second case study, which examines how TV news analysts before the 2003 Iraq War were presented as neutral experts, even though they held vested interests. Oddo argues that because news analysts are simultaneously journalists and political insiders, they, on the one hand, provide viewers with rare perspectives and penetrating insights, but, on the other, may circulate propaganda they hear from political sources (106). Oddo suggests that political propagandists exploit the dual identity of news analysts, offering them symbolic or material rewards and effectively compensating those who repeat their desired meanings (103). Meanwhile, news networks render the analysts credible and disinterested, highlighting their authority through advertising, on-screen titles, spoken introductions, background scenery, and communicative roles. Part 3 shows how this constructed authority together with incentivization from deliberate propagandists constitutes a form of manipulation, one that ultimately suppresses alternative views and enables mass recontextualization of propaganda.Part 4 presents Oddo's third case study and examines widespread publicity of the slogan “Support Our Troops.” Oddo argues that “Support Our Troops” has gained momentum for two reasons. First, it has “formal properties that make it more amenable to repetition—and, thus, more capable of traveling” (156). Second, it is surrounded by historical and cultural significance, reflecting larger wartime narratives in which the reasons for war are averted and dissent against war is demonized (156). Regarding the slogan's formal properties, Oddo shows how phonological, lexico-grammatical, and semantic factors contribute to the slogan's memorability, repeatability, and positive identification with a candidate, policy, or brand (156). Regarding cultural factors, Oddo examines the slogan as having ideographical functions by tracing its history in the Vietnam era and its continued use in both vertical campaigns (i.e., from the leaders at the top to the masses) and horizontal ones (i.e., spread among ordinary people on the same level). Oddo's discussion of the slogan sheds light on our understanding of similar slogans by encouraging attention to “the artful design of the slogan itself” and “the web of cultural meaning that shapes how people use and understand it” (175). Part 4 might interest scholars studying ideographs because it illustrates how a micro-analysis can facilitate analyses of phrases with ideological functions.Overall, the book has valuable pedagogical and theoretical implications. It provides an up-to-date discussion of propaganda studies. Its case studies are relatively independent and can be assigned separately. The author does not assume prior knowledge in his subject matter or methodology, which contributes to its accessibility. For these reasons, it can be used in graduate seminars and advanced undergraduate classrooms concerning rhetorical analysis of political discourse or the combination of rhetorical and critical discourse analysis methods. For rhetoric scholars, this book contributes an intertextual perspective to their tool kit. This perspective can be applied beyond the specific cases of this book, calling attention to the transfer and transformation of messages across texts both in domestic contexts and international ones where power dynamics may have different manifestations. Overall, this book exemplifies and furthers Oddo's endeavors to show how rhetorical scholars can draw on sociolinguistics, multimodality, and micro-intertextual comparison to conduct granular analyses of political discourse that are critical of the political status quo and grounded in textual evidence.

Drawing on data from a yearlong qualitative study examining how children in a multi-age (6-9 years) classroom utilized technology to write across genres, this article examines the gendered negotiation and discursive uptake of expert in early childhood writing. Zeroing in on genius hour as a “site of engagement,” the author thinks with rhetorical genre studies and mediated discourse analysis to examine how four second-grade writers positioned themselves as “experts” across the nexus of school writing. Findings highlight how expert—both conceptually and in practice—became gendered and was interdiscursively traced through three threads: the relational, the historical, and the distributive. Through analyses of young students writing in situ, this article contributes new understandings to thinking about children’s navigation of genres, not only as rhetorical typifications of academic and disciplinary discourse but as unique social actions of curricular play and gendered uptake.

Teachers navigate ongoing accountability pressures that target writing in each content area, yet little is understood about their experiences with or their rationales for integrating writing into content area lessons. While previous research describes writing in U.S. secondary classrooms and explains barriers to writing integration, this study investigates teacher decision making to determine why teachers in various content areas are integrating writing. Using a multicase study design, we explored teacher reflections to discern the reasons why teachers chose to integrate writing frequently. Four teachers, one from each primary content area (mathematics, English language arts, science, social studies), reflected on their writing integration over one quarter. Findings revealed that teachers who integrate writing frequently value the substantial benefits of regular writing for their students. Teachers saw that frequent writing led to students both producing written products more independently and deepening their disciplinary understandings. Teachers also saw benefits to their own pedagogy; specifically, they better understood students’ learning processes and planned more attentively. This research suggests that committing to frequent writing integration can (1) enhance students’ writing and disciplinary knowledge, and (2) enrich teacher knowledge related to supporting students’ writing practices and using writing as a tool for learning in the content areas. Our findings also highlight the complex relationship between teacher beliefs and teacher practice. By looking at the instructional decision making of teachers who integrate writing frequently, we offer guidance on how pre- and in-service teachers might use reflection in and on action to develop a commitment to writing instruction.

Utilizing Sara Ahmed’s work on “brick walls,” this article discusses a qualitative study of stories shared by twenty-five women writing center directors and the possible insights gleaned if we choose to “notice through feminism,” (Ahmed) and advocate for change across writing studies.

This article explores how food-related practices are discursively constructed in an employee wellness program (EWP). Drawing on qualitative grounded theory analyses of internal-and external-facing EWP materials, the author theorizes how food-related practices, technology, institutional power, and wellness intersect. By entwining health, medicine, and food under the umbrella of wellness, the EWP promotes food-as-wellness (eating the right foods will lead to individual holistic well-being by improving the already-healthy person) while incenting and effectuating food-as-medicine (eating the right foods can help cure individual illness/disease or intervene as a treatment for a disease risk factor such as overweight or obesity) because of food-as-economics (collectively eating the right foods can help solve rising health insurance costs). The theory advanced in this article expands our understanding of wellness discourses and points to the need for research examining how such discourse impacts lived experience.

In this article, we explore how the concept of wayfinding allows us an opportunity to map post-collegiate writers’ complex and recursive movement in and out of different territories, realms, spaces, and spheres of writing ecologies.  Focusing specifically on accounts from seven alumni who participated in focus group interviews during 2018-19, we offer stories of writers’ navigating the transition from college to workforce. Using wayfinding as our theoretical lens, we pay attention to the ways in which these writers articulate their increasing understanding of these domains -- college and post-college -- as far from separate. Such examples show us how alumni “find their way,” and introduce three emergent themes in our ongoing analysis of wayfinding. Our participants describe their ongoing and developing journeys as writers: (1) encountering the unexpected, (2) navigating career plans and paths, and (3) seeing beyond the boundaries of writing contexts. In each case, we narrate how wayfinding helps us illuminate the complex dynamics at play as these writers’ continue to explore how writing is meaningful in their lives and across multiple contexts.

Through an ethnographic study conducted with an Indigenous language rights organization, this article illustrates how translation and interpretation can be further considered in global technical communication research. By providing examples of how Indigenous language translators and interpreters approach their work, this article advocates for a reframing of multilingualism in technical communication through a deliberate attunement to the relationships between language, land, and positionality. The author argues that as technical communicators continue conducting research in multilingual contexts, researchers should acknowledge how translation and interpretation impact the results and methodologies of contemporary global research.

This article argues that science fiction is a powerful tool for teaching ethics in the technical communication classroom. As a literary genre, science fiction is uniquely situated to critique the social and political consequences of technological progress and to guide future behaviors. Using a speculative fiction-themed technical communication seminar as a case study, this essay demonstrates how science fiction theory, narratives, and projects can encourage students to think more holistically about their future roles as scientists and communicators. Such an approach can reinvigorate traditional workplace genres, support responsible decision-making, and promote multiculturalism, environmentalism, and social justice.

Centering the author’s experience of representing migrant deaths through non-discursive composing practices, this article forwards quilting as a feminist, qualitative research method. The author promotes quilting as method, grounded in arts based research and feminist rhetorical practices, a method that functions as a three-part scaffold in practice: employing critical imagination through tacking in and tacking out, crafting a narrative, and gaining a better understanding of the phenomenon at hand. This tactile method has the potential to expand conceptions of research, embrace the messiness of research, and deepen understandings of phenomena shallowly understood by other methods.

This essay features a grounded theory analysis of the 156 Victim Impact Statements delivered by sexual assault survivors of Olympics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar. I show how the Victim Impact Statements function as public, collective testimony that highlight the ramifications of unacknowledged betrayal. They narrate how adults and institutions looked away from abuse in order to maintain the status quo, and the athletes learned to trust authorities over themselves. Their testimonies destabilize assault as a crime limited to an assailant and a victim, demand accountability from those who looked away, and reclaim trust in their own witnessing.

This essay conceptualizes and applies a theory of rhetorical debility to new materialist rhetorical studies. Drawing from critical disability studies, rhetorical debility frames the ways that hierarchical human and nonhuman relations can inhibit certain rhetoricities while enabling others under neoliberalism. This theory extends the concept of “rhetorical capacities,” located within a genealogy of new materialist and posthuman thought in rhetorical studies, in response to intersectional critique of new materialism from Indigenous scholars and disability studies. The essay demonstrates rhetorical debility’s applicability to transnational sites of oppression along axes of disability, colonialism, and neoliberalism through a case study analysis of Palestinian protest rhetoric.

This article centers on Faith, a Latinx bilingual student who, because of her failure to pass a standardized exam in English language arts, had to repeat 11th-grade English. Despite this stigma of being a “repeater,” during the year-long ethnographic study I conducted in her classroom, Faith proved to be an insightful and critical reader and self-described poet who shared her writing with her peers as well as with other poets in online forums. Drawing from that more expansive classroom study, this article features Faith’s metacommentary on language and her own writing process and explores how her insights (1) disrupt monoglossic, raciolinguistic ideologies by highlighting the disconnect between her sophisticated understandings of language and the writing process and her status as a “struggling” student; (2) draw attention her wayfinding, which chronicles her navigation of those ideologies that complicate her search for a writerly identity and obscure the translingual nature of all texts and all writers; and (3) can move teachers and researchers of writing to reimagine the writing classroom so that it (re)positions students like Faith as “writers in residence,” whose existing translingual writing practices and wayfinding can serve as mentors and guides for others.

Scholarship on trajectories of becoming with literate activities is of growing interest in Writing Studies, particularly in accounts of writing grounded in cultural-historical and dialogic approaches, and in lifespan accounts of writing. The research reported here contributes to those conversations by tracing trajectories of becoming that are dynamically nonlinear, necessarily messy, and predicated on exceptionally complex streams of times, places, life experiences, artifacts, and literate activities. I draw from one case study with Alex, once a deeply faithful Christian who, over complex trajectories of semiotic becoming, lost her faith and was left to make sense of drastic perspectival shifts, in large part, through literate activity. Weaving analyses of talk across 2 years, 15 interviews, and multiple texts and textual interactions, I trace a narrative of Alex’s trajectories of unbecoming/becoming. I argue that Writing Studies needs flexible, theoretically grounded methods to trace becoming across lifespan trajectories and I address this imperative by showcasing one approach— dialogic animation protocols coupled with dialogic analyses.

While rich scholarship has delved into the lives, accomplishments, and struggles of writing centers, the closing, or “death” of writing centers has been largely underexplored. With a survey and a focus group, this study examines students’ perceptions of and reaction to the closing of a satellite writing center on a regional campus of a Northeastern, mid-size, public research university in the United States. This study revealed: 1) the student participants not only viewed the satellite writing center as an important resource but also a community, 2) they expressed sadness and disappointment toward the writing center closing, maintaining that the writing support should be offered to students, and 3) after the writing center was closed, some of them utilized various alternative writing support, while others did not. By inquiring into the death of a writing center, this study enriches and complicates the writing center grand narrative that McKinney (2013) calls us to problematize. Furthermore, based on findings that revealed students’ writing-related help-seeking behaviors in response to dramatic changes, implications are offered to writing center professionals and educators who seek to cultivate students to become resourceful and resource-savvy writers, especially in a time of challenges and changes. Keywords : Writing center closing, satellite writing center, writing center storying, writing resourcefulness “It’s been a fun ride: Armstrong State University says farewell to the SWCA Annual Conference” “Writing center closes due to lack of funding” “The death of a ‘writing center’?” “Farewell,” “close,” “death,” … these words are sad, final, and carry a sense of despair. When such words are associated with writing centers, they tell sorrowful stories that dishearten us writing center professionals. As a scholar dedicated to writing center work and research, I have not only heard about such stories but also lived one myself. With my exciting experience of creating a writing center from scratch with my colleagues in China and directing it for three and a half ye ars, I found it all the more difficult to witness the death of a satellite writing center in a United States university during my first doctoral year as a graduate assistant. Having worked at this small satellite writing center as the assistant director for a semester, I still remember how I felt when I first stepped into the cozy, colorful room that we called “writing center” on that small regional campus, which is about 33 miles from the main campus of a Northeastern, mid-size, public research university: I felt joy, excitement, and promise; I was ready to work closely with student writers, create new initiates, and make real changes within my anticipated two years there—the same kind of vitality and aspiration that I had when I created my writing center at a Chinese university four years ago. However, I did not have all that much time to compose my chapter in the story of this writing center—my chapter came to an abrupt end in the m iddle of the academic year. Without much of a warning, the decision to close the satellite writing center was passed down and all of a sudden, I found myself helping my director take down posters and students’ works from the wall, packing books and tutoring records with huge, black plastic bags, and giving stationery away to students. We finished it within a few hours, so quickly that I couldn’t help asking myself: so, this is it? That’s how we ended the life of a writing center after it had served the campus for more than a decade? Had it served its purposes? What about our students? What are they going to do when they need help with their writing? My head was spinning. I didn’t know. A winter break later, I start ed my new assignment working at the university writing center on the main campus, but those questions did not cease to bother me. In a quiet corner of my heart, I kept wondering about my closed satellite writing center and the students who I used to spend time with. I wanted to know, out of personal concern and curiosity, whether the disappearance of the writing center had any impact on the students and how they reacted to the loss of this long-existing campus resource; meanwhile, as a writing center scholar who found little literature on writing center closing, I wonder what knowledge we can gain by delving into the death of this small writing center to enrich our understanding of the lives of writing centers. To me, the life story of my writing center was finished without an ending. To tell its full story and to make meaning that might speak to many other writing centers’ (untold) stories, I conducted an empirical study to probe into my most pressing question: how did the students on the regional campus perceive and react to the closing of the satellite writing center? With a qualitative design that consisted of an online survey and a focus group discussion, I obtained input from the academic students who the satellite writing center had served, striving to draft the final chapter of this writing center’s life through students’ voices. As such, the significance of my study is two-fold: 1) by investigating how students felt about and coped with the closing of a satellite writing center, I examine the impact of the writing center closing through students’ voices, and 2) unlike the more prevalent research that has looked into the vigorous life of writing centers, I seek to tell another side of writing center stories through an iconoclastic inquiry into the death of a writing center, which can enrich and complicate the writing center grand narrative, one that Jackie Grutsch McKinney (2013) calls us to problematize. Furthermore, based on my findings that revealed students’ help-seeking behaviors in response to dramatic changes, I offer implications to writing center professionals and educators who seek to cultivate students to become resourceful and resource-savvy writers, especially in a time of challenges and changes. Amid scholarship that documents and theorizes the lives of writing centers, the “deaths” of writing centers are largely underexplored, and research that specifically examines writing center closing is rare. With the bulk of our scholarship focusing on the development and improvement of writing center praxis, we tend to perpetuate the writing center grand narrative, which depicts writing centers as “comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing” (McKinney, 2013, p. 3). However, if we honor this representation as if it were the solely true version of writing center story, we risk creating “a sort of collective tunnel vision” (McKinney, 2013, p. 5) that fails to capture the complexity and richness of writing center storying—writing centers do struggle, they get eliminated, and their closing is by no means inconsequential. Writing center closing deserves scholarly attention, because they are not only a phase of writing center life, but also a generative component of writing center storying. Thus, one promising research direction is to delve into how the closing of a writing center impacts the students it used to serve. As such, this study aims to contribute new insights to the writing center community through an investigation of students’ perceptions of and reaction to the closing of a writing center. To do so, I review extant literature on writing closing as follows. Outside of traditional academic publication venues, brief reports of writing center closing have appeared on webpages, such as McDonald’s (2016) online article reporting on students’ and staff’s anger over the New Jersey City University’s plan to shut down their writing center, Spitzer-Hanks’ (2016) blog post about the shutdown of tutoring services at the University of British Columbia Writing Center, and Farley and Nealey’s (2017) report on the closing of the writing center at Savannah State University due to the lack of funding. However, all of these sources only report on the closings without in-depth discussion about their impact. On the other hand, writing center scholarship, especially empirical research, rarely investigates the reasons, processes, and repercussions of writing center closing, except for bits and pieces that scatter over literature. For example, in her study that examines how writing centers are positioned in the political-educational climate in the United States, Salem (2014) mentions in her method section that with a sample of nearly 400 accredited institutions, “a number of institutions included in the original sample ultimately had to be dropped from the analysis. Some had closed or lost accreditation, and others had stopped offering baccalaureate degrees” (p. 21). This statement reveals that some writing centers closed due to the closing of their housing institution, which is only one reason for writing center closing. Similarly, Essid (2018) states that the integration of writing centers to learning commons has appeared to be a means to re-structure academic entities, while Reese (2017) suggests that the merging of universities has led a university writing center to become a satellite institution. H owever, little research appears to delve into the disappearance, closing, and “deaths” of writing centers, which calls for thorough inquiries into the impact and consequences of writing center closing. An exception is Cirillo-McCarthy’s (2012) year-long comparative study of two writing centers through ethnographic and textographic methodologies: The University of Arizona Writing Center in the U.S. and London Metropolitan University’s Writing Center in the U.K. Cirillo-McCarthy (2012) discusses three crises that these two writing centers reacted to, including crisis of access, crisis of literacy, and crisis of funding. In particular, despite their director’s efforts of gaining support from international writing studies and writing center scholars through support letters, London Metropolitan University’s Writing Center was rendered in a reactive instead of proactive place and was finally eliminated due to the lack of funding. In contrast, although it was also faced with a funding cut, the University of Arizona’s Writing Center survived by reacting stra tegically, including finding a new home in a centralized student tutoring space and charging a nominal fee to all students. The struggles of these two writing centers portray a realistic picture of the various and mundane crises that writing centers face as well as the different fates of writing centers resulting from different reactions toward crises. In the case of the present study, the satellite writing center in question had also suffered from different crises prior to its closing: 1) it received little funding from the university (e.g., when activities such as a scavenger hunt was held at the satellite writing center, the director brought home-baked muffins rather than receiving financial support from the university), and 2) the drastic shrinkage of academic student enrolment on the regional campus—from several hundreds to around twenty five—called the necessity of the satellite writing center into questions and further threatened its already peripheral status, which all contributed to its final closing. In short, because the limited literature on writing center closing are either brief reports on closing or studies that approach the issue from the administrator’s perspective rather than the student’s perspective, our knowledge about writing center closing is limited to the reasons for closing and the fight against closing—which tends to end with the closure itself. Ther efore, by in vestigating the impact of writing center closing in a post-closure fashion and through students’ voices, the present study is the first of its kind. With a focus on how the students perceived and reacted to the closing of a satellite writing center, I aim to draw writing center scholars’ attention to and initiate much-needed conservations about writing center closing.

This article draws on data from 12 interviews with peer writing tutor alumni to demonstrate how their writing center training and experiences prepared them to work toward good (i.e., social justice or peace or rhetorical civility) in their post-graduation contexts. Recent scholarship in both writing center studies and writing studies calls for a redoubling of social justice efforts in our field (see Duffy, 2019 and Greenfield, 2020). This article asks how the field will recognize or know success in such efforts. Data from