After working in Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom for over thirty years, and completing a doctoral thesis on the subject of lecturers’ perceptions of academic writing in HE (French 2014), it became very clear to me that many students and lecturers (although that is a subject of another paper) experience the processes of producing academic writing in very physical and emotional ways. In this paper, I will be discussing how my students often articulated the intensity and emotional nature of their academic writing experiences using words like ‘fear’, ‘frustration’, ‘outrage’, ‘exhaustion’ and ‘yearning’. This emotion and strength of feeling drew me to consider the relationship between the development of a positive writing identity and the affective domain. Subsequently, in my practice as a tutor in HE, I incorporated the affective domain into my work and seek here to stimulate debate with subject lecturers about how important emotions, even negative emotions like confusion and anxiety, can be to the development of a positive academic writing identity for students. The paper argues that, by using the affective domain as a pedagogic springboard, subject lecturers can formulate more collaborative, supportive and emotionally sensitive communities of writing practice.

Writing center directors have to face complex leadership tasks, but often do not have a background in management or administration studies. This study asks how they accomplish this demanding effort. Following a grounded theory approach, 16 writing centers in the USA were visited and expert interviews with the center directors were carried out. In bringing together the emerging concepts of the empirical work with the theoretical framework of the study of institutional work, this article shows that writing center directors transfer the pedagogy of writing centers to their leadership tasks. They use a stance of collaborative learning to deal with the challenges in their everyday work and to institutionalize their writing centers.

English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education presents challenges at many different levels for educators and students. One of the challenges is disciplinary writing, as students typically study disciplinary content through, and also write in, English as a second or a foreign language. The present, exploratory intervention study uses the redesign of a writing assignment in a Master’s level engineering course at a Swedish university to investigate challenges of disciplinary writing in an EMI context. The study describes how collaboration between content and communication staff helped unpack some of the challenges that students faced. The results show that the students’ texts improved and that the redesign helped them to better adjust to a genre partially new to them. The study also underscores the value for programmes to have a clear plan for writing. The planning is likely to benefit from collaboration between disciplinary and communication faculty, as these participants bring different knowledge to the process.

This article provides a critical narrative of a flipped professional development program for experienced graduate teaching associates teaching a second-year writing course. We use a narrative approach to demonstrate that decisions about how and what to flip in a professional development program are intimately linked to the local exigencies—material, cultural, and pedagogical—that constitute administrative, teaching, and learning contexts. Furthermore, we theorize that our decision to flip professional development aligns with feminist ethics of power distribution and collaboration, raises questions about how this also changes the visibility of faculty's administrative labor, and may contribute to misperceptions about the intellectual work and expertise required for service and writing program administration. We close by proposing design as a critical and defining feature of WPA work.

This qualitative study investigates peer feedback among adolescent English and Spanish learners writing together in an extracurricular bilingual literacy program. Data sources include audio recordings, writing revision history on Google documents and interviews. This study reveals the complexity of peer interaction, feedback processes, and the potential for mutual growth. Oriented by Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) and informed by the concept of languaging (Mercer, 2004; Swain, 2006), this study conceptualizes peer feedback as acts that students take to mediate the thinking, writing, and communication processes while working together on a language autobiography. Findings show that students strategically used dynamic feedback acts mediating the writing and revising process, such as 'Ask questions', 'Give information', 'Make corrections'. We also found the use of translanguaging in the feedback acts expanded opportunities for learning as linguistically diverse peers were engaged in metalinguistic discussions, text co-construction, and language experiments. This study contributes to a new understanding of peer feedback which leverages the cultural and linguistic resources students bring to school.

Introduction: With the growing need for intensive and online course formats, it has become increasingly difficult to determine what combinations of knowledge and skills that are important for both academia and industry can best provide students with the grounding for exploring the questions of global technical communication (TC) during their programs. About the case: The 7.5-week online global TC course at Arizona State University is divided into six theme-based units and a unit that focuses on a research/revision project. Situating the case: While over the last 20 years, excellent practical materials for teaching global TC have been published, there is a need for comprehensive course descriptions, particularly for courses in online and intensive formats. Methods/approach: The course was based on an extensive literature review of academic and trade publications. The course's effectiveness was analyzed based on final reflective discussion assignments and anonymous student course evaluations. Results/discussion: The literature review revealed six major themes that define global TC: culture and communication, the frameworks of culture, verbal communication, global content and technology, visual communication, and cross-cultural collaboration and audience work. Each unit addressed one of these themes. The course was well-received, and students started posing critical questions to explore in future courses. Conclusions: In our program, having a dedicated global TC course was very beneficial because it introduced students to concepts that they could further explore in other 7.5-week online courses. In addition, I present recommendations for adopting/adapting the course, as well as its limitations and suggestions for future research.

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The authors, an instructor and students, describe our practice of user-centered design on three levels: in the design and structure of an advanced undergraduate course in which we all participated, in student projects designed during the course, and in our reflections on the course presented here. We argue that principles of user-centered design can and should be more than course concepts and assignments; they can be core practices of the course that hold both students and teachers accountable for the impacts of their rhetorical choices. We offer a model for other teacher-scholars looking to involve students in the design of their courses and in writing together about their work.

In the recently declared “Stylistic (Re)Turn” in rhetoric and composition, several scholars reference pages fifty-eight and fifty-nine of A Rhetoric of Motives as being important to style studies. These pages, given Kenneth Burke’s perplexity, require further discussion. The rhetorical figures antithesis and gradatio are used on these pages as representative anecdotes of the figures’ capacity as forms to induce identification. Antithesis and gradatio illustrate a concept of somatic rhetorical figuration based on a rhetorical aesthetic which is summarized on page fifty-eight. Figures, or formal patterns, overlap and point to the continued relevance of classical rhetoric as a way of discussing style across disciplines.

Introduction:This case study examines students' and instructors' experiences with usability testing in technical communication service courses.Research questions:1. What prior experience do students and instructors have with usability testing? 2. What are their challenges with implementing usability testing in technical communication courses? 3. What are their recommendations for improving their efforts?About the case:This study was conducted in 2012 at a small Midwestern university where students and instructors in four sections of technical communication service courses participated in the study.Situating the case:Most technical communication scholarship focuses on usability practices, methods, or tools, and rarely explicitly addresses its pedagogy, especially the practical challenges faced by our students and instructors. Methods/approach:Data were gathered through preliminary and post-project student surveys and instructor interviews. Thematic coding was used to analyze the data. Results/discussion:Students faced the usual practical challenges such as time and resource constraints and collaboration with users. They found strategies such as using in-class activities, readings, and examples, and working directly with users to be helpful in their usability efforts. Instructors expressed the need for better preparation.Conclusions:Instructors should not only be required to take a usability course that will prepare them to be more effective usability instructors, but they should also incorporate readings and examples that will help students collaborate effectively with users and clients. The study is limited to research participants at one institution. Future research should involve larger, ethnographic studies of diverse students and instructors to address more aspects of usability pedagogy.

We examined medico-legal collaboration regarding dangerous sex offenders where state legislators have adopted statutes that determine the criteria for commitment to and discharge from civil commitment programs. The application of these statutes relies on medical diagnoses of pathologies such as paraphilia, anti-social personality disorder, and pedophilia along with prognoses for cure or recidivism. In our study, we examined court opinions from commitment hearings and observed a trial in federal court on the constitutionality of these commitments. We found that one result of this medico-legal collaboration is the marginalization or othering of sex offenders by essentializing, dividing, shaming, and impeaching them. We also found that this group attempted to resist othering by rhetorical strategies such as providing evidence of change in character, distinction within the othered group, and proof of internal controls over unacceptable impulses. Finally, we discovered that such othering relies heavily on medical expertise, even though some medical practitioners may disagree with, or be hesitant in, their roles in this medico-legal collaboration.

Collaborative writing is one of the twenty-first century writing competencies critical for college and career success. Technology-enhanced writing platforms, such as Google Docs, can serve as effective media for written collaboration. Although cloudbased tools such as Google Docs are increasingly used in secondary schools, little is known about how students collaboratively write in these environments, including how feedback sources and types of tasks affect collaborative writing patterns. This study examined the content of feedback and revision in 424 Google Docs written by 145 sixth grade students to understand the variations in feedback and revision patterns across key contextual factors: the source of feedback (i.e., teacher vs. peer) and assigned task type (i.e., argumentative, narrative, report). We conducted a qualitative content analysis of feedback and revision, followed by Chi-square and ANCOVA analyses. With regards to variations across feedback sources, we found that teacher feedback addressed more macro-level features (e.g., content, organization) whereas student feedback focused more on micro-level features (e.g., mechanics, conventions), and neither teacher nor peer feedback led to subsequent revisions. With regards to variations across task types, we found that among the three writing genres, the narrative genre had the greatest number of coauthors and feedback activities, and most of these activities consisted of affective feedback or direct edits. In contrast, in the report genre, the feedback activities tended to focus on content and organization, and the language functions of both feedback (e.g., advice, explanation) and revision (e.g., acknowledging, clarifying) were most evident in the report genre. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design and implementation of technology-based collaborative writing tasks in academic settings, as well as the limitations and directions for future studies.

The use of technology for collaborative writing and the delivery of electronic corrective feedback is becoming widespread in educational settings. However, to date, little research has focused on comparing the suitability of different Web 2.0 applications for technology-enhanced peer feedback. This study explores three free-to-use applications: Google Docs, the Sakai Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), and the Sakai Wiki. The study reports on the practicalities and peer reviewers’ experiences of these applications and, most importantly, compares the electronic feedback comments across applications. Seventy-eight English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at an Austrian university participated in this counterbalanced, repeated-measures study. Over a ten-week period, participants wrote three draft essays, reviewed a peer’s unique draft using each application, and received peer feedback on their own drafts using each application. Comments were coded for the quantity, area, nature, location, and type of feedback. An entrance questionnaire elicited background information, and an exit questionnaire elicited quantitative and qualitative insights into the participants’ comparative experiences. The findings show that each application supports the exchange of peer feedback and that the applications’ feedback modes influence the reviewers’ comment foci. This study should help teachers make more informed decisions about which application is most appropriate for their desired peer feedback learning objectives.

Based on teacher research conducted in an ethnography course in a writing studies department, this ethnographic case study demonstrates the pedagogical benefits of institutional review board–approved, collaborative student research projects. Implementing an experiential learning approach to teaching undergraduate research also revealed that students’ perceptions of what counts as “real” research are more complex than previous studies have indicated.

To investigate how college students understand and use cloud technology for collaborative writing, the authors studied two asynchronous online courses, on science communication and on technical communication. Students worked on a group assignment (3–4 per group) using Google Docs and individually reflected on their experience writing collaboratively. This article explores leadership and how it interacts with team knowledge making and the collaborative writing process. Guidelines are outlined for instructors interested in adopting collaborative, cloud-based assignments, and the tension between providing clear instructional guidance for student teams and allowing teams to embrace the ambiguity and messiness of virtual collaboration are discussed.

Through a study of collaborative writing at a student advocacy nonprofit, this article explores how writers distribute their text planning across tools, artifacts, and gestures, with a particular focus on how embodied representations of texts are present in text planning. Findings indicate that these and other representations generated by the writers move through a spectrum of durability, from provisional to more persistent representations. The author argues that these findings offer useful insights into the relationships among distributed cognition, materiality, embodiment, and text planning and have implications for practitioners and students of writing. Additionally, the author recommends that scholars further investigate the ways in which embodied representations of texts are generated through lived experiences with the materials of writing.

Robert T. Oliver, a professor of speech at Pennsylvania State University, served as a ghostwriter for Syngman Rhee, the first president of the Republic of South Korea between 1943 and 1960. Within the larger context of an ongoing global Cold War and the division of the Korean peninsula in August 1945, Oliver and Rhee developed a foundational myth, Puk-jin Tongil (), to build the new nation of South Korea. The Puk-jin Tongil myth called for a reunification of the Korean people and land through a US-led invasion of North Korea and was paired with a myth of enemyship that named the Communists of North Korea as essentially evil, estranged them as beyond the pale of rationality, and escalated the conflict between the two Koreas. In this essay, we consider the first full presentation of the Puk-jin Tongil myth in Rhee’s August 15, 1948, inaugural address, which had significantly different versions: an English version written by Oliver and a Korean version delivered at the inaugural ceremony by Rhee. Rhee’s confrontational version of the myth was delivered in Korean to his South Korean audience while Oliver presented a much tamer version in his English draft of the inaugural, targeting an American audience. Rhee’s speech, we suggest, foreshadowed his dictatorial approach to the presidency and revealed tensions between the president and the US government and in the Rhee-Oliver collaboration. Our essay fills a gap in our understanding of nation building through mythic rhetoric in the global Cold War, contributes to our disciplinary history with its focus on Oliver’s role in Rhee’s symbolic efforts, and offers a judgment of the mythic rhetoric crafted by the Rhee-Oliver collaboration.

Introduction: This case study examines the impacts of component content management (CCM) on the ways global technical communication (TC) stakeholders practice multilingual quality. About the case: The case study is based on the results of a 12-month qualitative case study of global technical communication stakeholders at DreamMedi, a Fortune 500 manufacturer of medical devices. Situating the case:Three areas of inquiry informed the study. Academic and trade literature from technical communication and technical translation revealed disagreements and contradictions that surround multilingual quality in CCM environments. Rhetorical genre theory allowed analyzing multilingual quality by distinguishing content components as a new genre, a unit of analysis, and a mediator of global technical communication. Activity theory provided the theoretical foundation for examining a global TC activity system at its nodes and then elucidating the contradictions within these nodes.Methods/approach:The case study was a multiple-method research project that included observations, in-depth interviews, questionnaires, document collection/content analysis, and software exploration. The Institutional Review Board-approved study focused on technical communicators, translators, and bilingual reviewers. Results/discussion: Relying on thick descriptions of the storylines of global TC stakeholders, this paper pinpoints contradictions in how stakeholders understand and approach multilingual quality. These contradictions are rooted in stakeholders' backgrounds and experience, and become more dramatic after the transition to CCM. Conclusions: Global TC stakeholders lacked strategies for negotiating their understandings of and approaches to multilingual quality in the new information development and management paradigm. Developing such strategies is the key prerequisite for effective cross-functional and cross-cultural collaboration in multilingual CCM environments. Technical communicators are well-positioned to take on leadership roles in developing such strategies.

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

With this issue, Philosophy & Rhetoric begins its fifty-first year. It is an honor to play a role in this turn and a privilege to serve the journal as editor.Looking back for a moment, I remember my first encounter with P&R as a young graduate student at Northwestern—Tom Farrell gave me the galleys of a forthcoming article, a gift that led me into the journal's archive and left me to hope that my first piece of scholarship would appear in its pages (almost, but not quite). Since then, P&R has been a constant source of inspiration, provocation, and understanding. In 2005, I was quick to accept Gerard Hauser's invitation to serve as the journal's book review editor, all the more so as it offered a chance to work closely with a scholar that I had long admired. The opportunity exceeded every expectation. Over the course of a twelve-year collaboration, I benefited so very much from Hauser's sharp insight, intellectual generosity, and friendship. Jerry is a cherished colleague and a good friend.This is a moment to underscore the importance of the inquiry that has defined and distinguished Philosophy & Rhetoric from its very first issue—with respect to this remarkable history, I strongly recommend reading Hauser's introduction to the fiftieth anniversary issue (50.4). Whether one looks inside or outside the academy, there is an evident if not urgent need for original scholarship that addresses the intersection of philosophy and rhetoric. This is a moment to extend and deepen P&R's longstanding mission, not least in light of emerging lines of inquiry, shifting disciplinary constellations, new forms of writing and reading, and popular skepticism about the value of the humanities.The work ahead is a joint effort. From the beginning, I want to express my thanks to each member of the journal's editorial board, including several individuals who agreed to serve after the print deadline for this issue. In the same breath, it is my pleasure to announce Daniel M. Gross as the journal's new essay and forum editor and Kelly Happe as the P&R book review editor. I am grateful for their willingness to serve the journal. All editors should be so lucky as to have the chance to work with such talented and thoughtful colleagues.Perhaps transition is the norm, not least for philosophical-rhetorical and rhetorical-philosophical inquiry. But transition is neither uninterrupted continuity nor unhinged change. With its fifty-first volume, the journal publishes articles that exemplify its best traditions. They are an original and important mix, a set of jointly-edited inquiries that ask after our most important questions, afford theoretical and practice insight, and open space for debate. With them appear select book reviews and a variety of forums and critical essays, along with a new “books of interest” list. The volume's fourth issue will be a guest-edited special issue.There will be time to speak more about what's to come. Here, in this moment, there is a more pressing call, a need to pause and reflect on a truly remarkable record of intellectual leadership and scholarly service.Gerard Hauser edited Philosophy & Rhetoric for fourteen years, assuming the position in 2003. Fourteen years! Before that, between 1976 and 2002, he served variously as the journal's coeditor, associate editor, and consulting editor. And before that, from 1970 to 1976, he held the post of book review editor. One of Hauser's many articles appeared in the journal's second issue.This record is not simply commendable, though it is that. It is astounding, a truly extraordinary accomplishment, one that testifies to Hauser's sustained intellectual vision, tireless leadership, and steadfast commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, all of which have served the interests of multiple fields, supported groundbreaking scholarship, and promoted crucial intellectual exchange. For the vast majority of the last fifty years, Hauser has served if not led Philosophy & Rhetoric. He has broadened the journal's audience and deepened its reach. His patient and visionary work has distinguished the journal—nationally and internationally. Hauser's contribution to Philosophy & Rhetoric is not simply self-evident—it is indelible, properly so.In this light, and on behalf of the journal and the Pennsylvania State University Press, it is my utmost pleasure to name Gerard Hauser as Philosophy & Rhetoric's editor emeritus. I do so with abiding gratitude and in the hope that there will be moments in the future when I have the good fortune to work closely with Jerry.Last but by no means least, I want to express my deepest thanks to Jean Hauser, who has served as P&R's managing editor for the last ten years. This extraordinary service demands the fullest possible recognition. As so many well know, Jean's work has made a crucial difference—to the journal's editorial group, its contributing authors, and its readers. I have personally relied very much on her skill, insight, dedication, and wit. On more than a few occasions, she has kept me out of the tall grass. In the last months, she has taken the time to introduce me to some of the more hidden ways and means of the journal—I am very grateful for this help.In the coming weeks, I hope that Philosophy & Rhetoric's readers will take a moment to reach out and express their appreciation to both Gerard Hauser and Jean Hauser. Individually and together, they have served—and indeed built—Philosophy & Rhetoric with grace and with the greatest distinction.

As wearable medical technologies take on an increasingly prominent role in how health care is delivered, pressure to make the development process for such devices shorter increases. This case study will recount one attempt at a do-it-yourself (DIY) development process and collaborative usability testing. I argue that these efforts can complement traditional usability methods used in the development process of a wearable diabetes technology and provide more immediate access to technologies that can meet the diverse needs of end users. The case involves an open source DIY project developed by parents of children with type 1 diabetes in order to remotely monitor the blood sugar levels of their children.

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

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

To forge collaborative ties among the rhetoric of health and medicine, the medical humanities, and medicine itself, scholars need shared terms. We argue that techne can unite researchers from across these disciplines. To demonstrate, we discuss our interdisciplinary research study, Writing Diabetes. By learning about the techne of rhetoric and writing about diabetes, participants became more attentive to the techne of their health experience—or “health techne”—enabling them to invent new ways of “doing” diabetes.

The rhetoric of health and medicine has only begun to intervene in health pedagogy. In contrast, the medical humanities has spearheaded curriculum to address dehumanizing trends in medicine. This article argues that rhetorical scholars can align with medical humanities’ initiatives and uniquely contribute to health curriculum. Drawing on the author’s research on clinical simulation, the article discusses rhetorical methodologies, genre theory, and critical lenses as areas for pedagogical collaboration between rhetoricians and health practitioners.

T he Community Literacy Journal is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes both scholarly work that contributes to theories, methodologies, and research agendas and work by literacy workers, practitioners, and community literacy program staff.We are especially committed to presenting work done in collaboration between academics and community members, organizers, activists, teachers, and artists.We understand "community literacy" as including multiple domains for literacy work extending beyond mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, or work with marginalized populations.It can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects, including creative writing, graffiti art, protest songwriting, and social media campaigns.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference not just to letters and to text but to other multimodal, technological, and embodied representations, as well.Community literacy is interdisciplinary and intersectional in nature, drawing from rhetoric and composition, communication, literacy studies, English studies, gender studies, race and ethnic studies, environmental studies, critical theory, linguistics, cultural studies, education, and more.

Collaborative learning theory points to knowledge construction as an outcome of peer interaction, justifying widespread implementation of collaborative activities (like small group discussion) that scaffold toward individual writing projects. This article offers a qualitative investigation into the process of collaborating with peers and the extent to which peer interaction facilitates knowledge construction. More specifically, I present two case studies from FYC courses, one of a debate activity that successfully facilitated knowledge construction and the other of a Google document activity that was not successful. The methodology—triangulating interviews, observations, and an analysis of student writing—presents a replicable strategy for measuring knowledge construction as a result of peer interaction in FYC. I analyze these findings in light of the Community of Inquiry Framework, arguing that the knowledge construction (cognitive presence) that resulted from the collaborative activities I observed was supported by the instructor emphasizing multiple perspectives in the activity design (teaching presence) and establishing a strong sense of community (social presence).

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

This profile describes how the Writing Program at Southern Utah University enacts a rhetorical humanist framework in its administrative and curricular structures. At the administrative level, rhetorical humanism offers a collaborative governance model that gives all faculty a voice in programmatic decisions, while managing the cacophony created by those voices. At the curricular level, rhetorical humanism balances the benefits and critiques of traditional humanism with outward-facing social constructionist writing pedagogies of the last few decades.

Students who receive instruction in discipline-specific communication perform better in introductory and upper-level STEM courses. In this study, researchers investigate how writing center intervention can aid STEM faculty in revising assignment rubrics and conveying to students the discourse conventions and expectations for writing tasks. The results suggest that the writing center, though often discussed and marketed as a student support service, can fill a gap by providing support to faculty.

Advertisement, IEEE. IEEE Collabratec is a new, integrated online community where IEEE members, researchers, authors, and technology professionals with similar fields of interest can network and collaborate, as well as create and manage content. Featuring a suite of powerful online networking and collaboration tools, IEEE Collabratec allows you to connect according to geographic location, technical interests, or career pursuits. You can also create and share a professional identity that showcases key accomplishments and participate in groups focused around mutual interests, actively learning from and contributing to knowledgeable communities. All in one place! Learn about IEEE Collabratec at ieeecollabratec.org.

This essay reports on a writing-based formative assessment of a university-wide initiative to enhance students’ global learning. Our mixed (and unanticipated) results show the need for enhanced expertise in writing assessment as well as for sustained partnerships among diverse institutional stakeholders so that public programming—from events linked to classroom-level learning to broader cross unit mandates like accreditation—can yield more rigorous, responsive, and mixed method assessments.

This article describes an after-school family literacy program as a model of multiliterate collaboration under and against English Only and anti-immigrant conditions. The model reveals how state politics surrounding language, ethnicity, and citizenship may interact with the activity systems of family literacy programs to redefine what counts as sanctioned language and literacy learning within school spaces. This article details the findings of a qualitative study and includes the goals and curriculum of the program, as well as the recruiting mechanisms, participants, participant feedback, and participant experiences. Findings from the study reveal the role of parental investment in language and literacy learning, language co-construction, and honoring of all languages, cultures, and experiences. This family literacy model contributes to literacy studies by offering possibilities for future school-sponsored, multiliterate family literacy research collaborations to draw from and extend the language and literacy practices and funds of knowledge of ELL students, parents, teachers, and literacy scholars working within English Only and anti-immigrant contexts.

Multimodal composing can activate literacy practices and identities not typically privileged in verbocentric English classrooms, and students’ identities as particular kinds of learners (e.g.,“visual artist”) may propel—or limit—their engagement in classroom work, including in multimodal composing. Although researchers have studied the ways multimodal projects can evidence literacy learning and have argued that identity is negotiated, improvisational, and hybrid, they have offered few sustained analyses of the processes by which identities evolve during and across multimodal composing tasks. By examining how students position themselves and one another as particular kinds of learners over time, researchers can better understand the ways in which multimodal tasks help students explore new skills and roles or reify old ones. Drawing on an approach to discourse analysis from the linguistic anthropology of education, we trace the pathways of three 12th graders’ learner identities across two events as they worked in a group to compose visual responses to literary texts for their English class. We examine how one student’s robust identity as an artist emerged in tandem with the devaluing of other participants’ artist identities. Seven weeks later, these positionings led her to act as the painting’s primary author and other students to act in increasingly perfunctory ways. We call for teachers and researchers to consider how students’ identities—interacting with factors such as the teacher’s expectations for group work and the affordances of particular media and materials for collaboration—drive students’ participation in and ownership of multimodal compositions.

This essay explores how undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses incorporate archival research. It reviews a number of assignments described in recent publications where students undertake archival research to recover lost voices, (re)read the archive as a source of public memory, and create their own archives. These assignments demonstrate a feminist pedagogy of undergraduate archival literacy in emphasizing the feminist values of collaboration, invitation, and activism in local contexts. Finally, this essay shows how students who develop the kind of archival literacy discussed in this essay often transform their definitions and practice of academic research, while professors who teach such assignments often transform their definitions and practice of undergraduate research.

This article presents a case study using ethnographic and visual methods to investigate the framing activity of engineering students. Findings suggest students use the rhetorical figure of hypotyposis to produce the vivid images needed to frame engineering constraints. Data reveal students multimodally inducing collaboration between group members to construct images as ways to configure engineering constraints. The author argues for the usefulness of hypotyposis for understanding the framing of engineers, technical communicators, and other designers.

Women first entered East Coast fire departments through forming ladies auxiliary groups, where women provided critical support services—offering assistance at the fire, holding fundraising events for the department, and building community relationships—while maintaining conventional gender roles. Exploring auxiliary work through the lens of collaboration reveals feminist strategies for creating ethos in a highly gendered workplace; this approach for studying the complexities of women’s movement between background and foreground roles opens new avenues for considering women’s navigation of rhetorical barriers in professional spaces.

This essay explores Dante's idea of trasumanar, “going beyond the human,” through a vertical reading of cantos 23 of the Commedia. It examines how Dante relies on bodies and their sensory experiences to explain heavenly paradise and the ineffable. The essay invokes D. W. Winnicott's idea of transitional phenomena to understand the cognitive activity of reading as an act of creativity and collaboration.

Research problem: The purpose of the study was to fill gaps in our knowledge about technical editors' work practices and perceptions, knowledge that might be useful for teachers and practitioners, as well as current and prospective students. Research questions: (1) What work activities do technical editors engage in? (2) How do people become and progress in careers as technical editors? (3) What do technical editors perceive about the complexity of their work and its value to themselves and others? Literature review: The literature review focuses on previous surveys of technical editors, which have tended to focus on technology-related issues and been largely limited to samples obtained from the Society for Technical Communication.Methodology: A link to an online survey was sent to 32 professional organizations for technical and other professional, nonliterary, and nonjournalism editors. The leadership of each organization was asked to forward the link to its members; 12 complied, with a resulting 253 respondents. Responses to closed-ended questions were tabulated, while responses to the open-ended questions were analyzed thematically.Results and conclusions:The results revealed a broad range of job titles, disciplinary and professional fields, genres and media, editing-related tasks, and extent and type of collaboration. Respondents perceived as useful several forms of academic preparation, personality traits, and attitudes. About half the respondents had become editors through deliberate preparation during college (direct route) and half had not (indirect route). Thus, one implication of the results is that college students majoring in the sciences and other technical fields (indirect route) might be attracted to complementary minors and certificate programs in technical communication/editing. The sample was obtained from among a broader range of technical editors than samples used in previous surveys but was relatively small and, therefore, nongeneralizable. Future surveys should strive for a larger sample size and include questions about a wide range of demographic variables that can be correlated with the independent variables.

Advertisement, IEEE. IEEE Collabratec is a new, integrated online community where IEEE members, researchers, authors, and technology professionals with similar fields of interest can network and collaborate, as well as create and manage content. Featuring a suite of powerful online networking and collaboration tools, IEEE Collabratec allows you to connect according to geographic location, technical interests, or career pursuits. You can also create and share a professional identity that showcases key accomplishments and participate in groups focused around mutual interests, actively learning from and contributing to knowledgeable communities. All in one place! Learn about IEEE Collabratec at ieeecollabratec.org.

This article analyzes a public memory pedagogical partnership that disturbed the public memory of a community organization as an egalitarian space. How students, community partners, and I negotiated privately and represented publicly this legacy of the United States’ worst shame required us—and me—to figure out what partnership and collaboration mean in this context, whose interests come first and why, and the ethical implications of my and our choices.

Advertisement, IEEE. IEEE Collabratec is a new, integrated online community where IEEE members, researchers, authors, and technology professionals with similar fields of interest can network and collaborate, as well as create and manage content. Featuring a suite of powerful online networking and collaboration tools, IEEE Collabratec allows you to connect according to geographic location, technical interests, or career pursuits. You can also create and share a professional identity that showcases key accomplishments and participate in groups focused around mutual interests, actively learning from and contributing to knowledgeable communities. All in one place! Learn about IEEE Collabratec at ieeecollabratec.org.

User experience (UX), a common practice in corporate settings, is new for many nonprofit organizations. This case study details a community-based research project between nonprofit staff at a community health center and UX professionals to improve the design and usability of a document designed to help immigrant patients sign up for health insurance. UX professionals may need to adapt and be flexible with their efforts, but can offer valuable skills to community partners. Research questions: (1) What are the information needs and barriers faced by immigrant populations signing up for health insurance? (2) How does a usability study, adapted to meet the needs of immigrant populations, inform the design of a supplemental guidebook about health insurance? (3) What are the challenges and opportunities when engaging in community-based UX research projects? Situating the case: Other community-based research projects in technical communication and UX point to the need for a clear conceptualization of participation, a strong partnership with nonprofits, and the need to develop meaningful and actionable insights. Furthermore, when conducting studies with immigrant populations, the role of the translator on the research team is crucial. Methodology: As a community-based research project focused on the collaborative generation of practical knowledge, we conducted a usability study with 12 participants in two language groups, Chinese and Vietnamese, to evaluate the design and usability of a guidebook designed to provide guidance about enrolling in a health insurance plan. Data were analyzed to identify usability concerns and used to inform a second iteration of the guidebook. About the case: Immigrant populations struggle to sign up for health insurance for a variety of reasons, including limited English and health insurance literacy. As a result, a nonprofit community health center developed a guidebook to support immigrant populations. Version 1 of this guidebook was evaluated in a usability study, with results showing that users struggled to correctly choose a plan, determine their eligibility, and interpret abstract examples. As a result, Version 2 was designed to support the in-person experience, reduce visual complexity, and support patients' key questions. Conclusions: Community-based UX collaborations can amplify the expertise of UX and nonprofit professionals. However, UX methods may need to be adapted in community-based projects to better incorporate local knowledge and needs.

This article, the first of a two-part series, presents 13 teaching innovations debuted at the 2016 Association for Business Communication’s annual conference. The second edition of My Favorite Assignment will be published in the fall 2017 Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. Assignments include international collaborative projects, students’ professional development, fast skill-building exercises, data interpretation, event planning, and more. Additional assignment support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, grading rubrics, frequently asked questions, and sample student projects—are posted on these websites: http://www.businesscommunication.org/page/assignments and http://salesleadershipcenter.com/research .

ABSTRACT This essay uses the commemoration of Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta to explore the connections among race, geography, and memory. I provide four examples of how race and memory have conspired to fundamentally alter the geography of the Delta. I suggest that these four examples challenge the historic articulation of memory and site. While site is traditionally figured as a stable ground for commemorative work, I suggest that practices of commemoration can transform sites of memory. I conclude by previewing a collaborative, digital, public humanities initiative called the Emmett Till Memory Project. The project seeks to commemorate Till’s murder even as it alters the meaning and practice of commemoration.

Simple drawing tasks are effective for evaluating the many options communicators have during early design stages. These drawing strategies leverage the metaphoric meanings of basic geometric shapes, not complex artistic illustration, to represent ideas while they are in development. Our paper supports this perspective by linking previous research on sketching, collaboration, and ideation to identify a specific approach to this kind of drawing that we term Geometric Page Forms. To further illustrate the value of these strategies, we give an example of how technical communicators used drawing during a workshop to develop communication solutions explaining complex information about sun block efficacy.