ABSTRACTThis essay argues for the value of presence as rhetorical heuristic. Beginning with the philosophical tradition, the authors establish a long-standing interest in presence or isness, understood as the thing-itself outside subjectivity. We then trace how rhetorical theorists including Aristotle, Quintilian, and Perelman have privileged isness as a baseline for true conviction, positioning rhetoric as an effort to imitate material proofs. Such views highlight the tension between presence (things of the world in their isness) and the arts of presencing (the capacity of words and symbols to shape an isness), suggesting a generative frame for analysis. To demonstrate, we examine global migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among undocumented migrants, we posit that these individuals' paradoxical experiences of bodily presence but legal absence reveal a fraught interplay among rhetoric, state power, and competing notions of truth. However, immigration is only a case study; presence is a much more widely applicable heuristic.

Despite increased enrollments of multilingual students at US colleges and universities, many composition faculty lack specialized training to support second language writers. This article offers a framework through which faculty and administrators can begin developing knowledge about applied linguistics that is relevant to the teaching of multilingual writers.

Enrollments of international students are at very high levels in the U.S., a development that has altered the demographics of first-year composition classes in recent years. Nonetheless, writing instructors and administrators often know little about these students’ backgrounds, which can make it difficult to design pedagogies that are responsive to their specific needs. Drawing on data from a qualitative, longitudinal study with a cohort of undergraduate international students, this article addresses three interrelated issues: 1) pre-college writing experiences of international students in both their first languages and English; 2) key points of challenge and discovery for international students as they enter the culture of U.S. academic writing; and 3) possible pedagogic interventions designed to better support international students. Situating findings in relation to recent scholarship on students’ transitions from high school to college, the article explores ways in which the experiences of international students are both similar to and different than those of their U.S.-educated peers.