Events
See Video Here: Storytelling as Social Justice: With Voice of Witness Book Series Managing Editor and Education Program Director
Dao Tran, managing editor of the Voice of Witness Book Series, and Cliff Mayotte, Education Program Director at Voice of Witness (co-founded by novelist Dave Eggers), provided a fantastic workshop and a lecture related to oral history methodologies and discussed VOW support of “Resettled: Beginning (Again) in Appalachia,” a local oral history project conducted through CRS. Those interested in working on this project should contact Katrina Powell at kmpowell@vt.edu.
Visiting Lecture
Refugee Project: Data for Smart Policy Brief Launch
Join the International Refugee Research Project at the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) at Virginia Tech as it launches a policy brief on refugee integration. The findings of the research, the result of two years of work with international partners from Germany and Belgium, are impactful on a global scale and includes recommendations for governmental and non-governmental agencies working on refugee issues. September 5, 2018, Multipurpose Room, Newman Library, Blacksburg Campus.
Researcher-in-Residence
Dr. Cheryl Geisler will be visiting Virginia Tech November 5th and 6th, providing data analysis workshops and talking about her new book with Jason Swartz, Coding Streams of Language (WAC Clearinghouse, 2018). More information to come soon.
Remembering Home, Building Future Outreach
CRS partners with several community organizations and volunteer networks to hold workshops for newly resettled families in the area. In addition, the Center serves as a space for English language and high school tutoring during the summer months.
CRS Reading Groups
The Center for Rhetoric in Society hosts a series of reading groups that focus on a variety of issues in the fields of rhetoric and composition. These meetings are an informal chance to discuss this critical work in the field. Light snacks are generously provided by the Diggs Humanities endowment. Here is the schedule of readings from Fall 2017 semester focusing on queer rhetorics, and the Spring 2018 semester focusing on feminist rhetorics:
Ahmed, Sara. “Introduction: Find Your Way.” Queer Phenomenology. Duke UP, 2006, 1-24.
Alexander, Jonathan, and Jacqueline Rhodes. “Flattening Effects: Composition’s Multicultural Imperative and the Problem of Narrative Coherence.” College Composition and Communication, 65, 3, 2014, 430-454.
Shahani, Nishant G. “Pedagogical Practices and the Reparative Performance of Failure, or, ‘What Does [Queer] Knowledge Do?’” JAC, 25, 1, 2005, 185-207.
Brouwer, Daniel C. “Counterpublicity and Corporeality in HIV/AIDS Zines.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22, 2005, 351-71.
Sewell, John Ike. “‘Becoming Rather Than Being’: Queer’s Double-Edged Discourse as Deconstructive Practice.” Journal of Communication Inquiry, 38, 4, 2014, 291-307.
Rawson, K. J. “Rhetorical History 2.0: Toward a Digital Transgender Archive.” Enculturation, 16, 2013.
Bessette, Jean. “Queer Rhetoric in Situ.” Rhetoric Review, 35, 2, 2016, 148-164.
Dadas, Caroline. “Messy Methods: Queer Methodological Approaches to Researching Social Media.” Computers and Composition, 40, 2016, 60-72.
VanHaitsma, Pamela. “Gossip as Rhetorical Methodology for Queer and Feminist Historiography.” Rhetoric Review, 35, 2, 2016, 135-147.
Chen, Mel Y. “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 17, 2-3, 2011, 265-286.
Jack, Jordynn. “Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender.” Women’s Studies in Communication, 35, 1, 2012, 1-17.
Davis, Olga Idriss “A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic: Validating Self and Violating the Space of the Other,” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 21, no. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 77-89.
Royster, Jacqueline J. and Molly Cochran. “Human Rights and Civil Rights: The Advocacy and Activism of African American Women Writers,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3, 2011, pp. 213-230.
Carmen Kynard’s Open, Digital Classroom on Gender, Intersectionality & Black Women’s Rhetorics.
Lane, Liz. “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts.” ADA: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology (2007).
Meyer, Michaela D. E. “Women Speak(ing): Forty Years of Feminist Contributions to Rhetoric and an Agenda for Feminist Rhetorical Studies,” Communication Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1-17.
*Group Leader: Katie Garahan*
Dolmage, Jay. “Disabled Upon Arrival: The Rhetorical Construction of Disability and Race at Ellis Island,” Cultural Critique, vol. 77, Winter 2011, pp. 24-69.
Koerber, Amy and Mary Lay. “Understanding Women’s Concerns in the International Setting through the Lens of Science and Technology,” Encompassing Gender: Integrating International Studies and Women’s Studies, edited by Mary Lay, Janice J. Monk, and Deborak Silverton Rosenfelt, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2001, pp. 81-100.
Guest Speaker: John Muckelbauer
In April 2018, the Rhetoric Club and the Center for Rhetoric in Society hosted Dr. John Muckelbauer who provided a lecture titled, “Thinking Through Style: Derrida’s Unteachable Pedagogy.” Dr. Muckelbauer is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina.
Guest Speaker: S. Scott Graham
In February 2017, the Rhetoric Club (with generous support from the Center for Rhetoric in Society and the English Department) hosted guest speaker S. Scott Graham, director of the Public Engagement and Science Communication (PESC) Laboratory and an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Over the course of two days, Dr. Graham met students and faculty, visited a class on contemporary rhetorical theory, and gave a talk titled “Conflicted: Big Pharma and the Guardians of Public Trust.”