Leaders: Annie Hill (University of Texas at Austin) and Catherine Palczewski (University of Northern Iowa) What does it mean to be a witness, a spectator, a voyeur, or a bystander? What are the in/actions involved in these ways of looking? This RSA seminar will explore the role of agency and action when encountering violence directed […]

Leaders: Scott Sundvall (Florida International University), Sergio Figueiredo (Kennesaw State University) and Jason Crider (Texas A&M University) Everyday examples of post-truth continue to abound: conspiracy theorization; the undermining of institutions of knowledge production; and violent resistance to democratic processes. Critical analysis of, and resistance to, these various instantiations of post-truth do not resolve the underlying […]

Leaders: Timothy Barney (University of Richmond) and Heather Ashley Hayes (University of Alabama) Maps make arguments. They naturalize borders, render some places central and others peripheral, and convert contested terrain into apparent neutrality. This seminar explores rhetorical and cultural cartography on two fronts. First, as an object of rhetorical analysis and second, as a method […]

Leaders: Noor Ghazal Aswad (University of Alabama) and Kendall Gerdes (University of Utah) This seminar explores theories of solidarity, coalition, and collective action. In a global yet increasingly divided world, solidarity remains an urgent political aspiration, a difficult rhetorical practice, and a condition of possibility for rhetorical address and response. We invite participants to examine […]

Leaders: Timothy Johnson (University of Louisville) and Gwendolyn Inocencio (Tarleton State University) Crisis has become our ambient condition. Pandemic, climate collapse, political polarization, extinction, precarity, and more. These situations anchor much of what rhetoricians study, and each reaches us already translated into an economy: of attention, of health, of nature, of security. Before we can […]

Leaders: Caddie Alford (Virginia Commonwealth University ), Robert Asen (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Jonathan Carter (Georgia Southwestern State University) Reaction–in digital culture and in politics–defines our contemporary era. Insisting on reactions, social media and digital platforms demand our attention. Big Tech products seek prolonged use and charged takes, nudging us to like, share, troll, and […]

Leaders: Rich Rice (Texas Tech University) and Lauren Maher (Texas Tech University) Proposal writing is a powerful form of public rhetoric. Grant proposals define problems and translate evidence into action. They also shape which forms of research, care, teaching, and community work become fundable. This workshop invites participants to approach grant writing as rhetorical strategy […]

Leaders: Lauren Cagle (University of Kentucky), Sharon Yam (University of Kentucky) and Melissa Yang (Emory University) Embodied rhetorics have drawn our attention to the role bodies play in rhetorical ecologies. However, we are rarely invited to center our actual, literal, physical bodies in our rhetorical work or professional lives. “Acrobalancing Academics: Moving Bodies in the […]

Leaders: Theon Hill (Wheaton College) and Jennifer LeMesurier (Pennsylvania State University) The leaders of the standalone Emerging Scholars program offer this Summer Institute Workshop as an extension of the larger program's curriculum. RSA remains committed to anti-racism, the decolonization of rhetoric, access as a core praxis, and the diversification of the professoriat, and this workshop […]

Leaders: Hannah Hopkins (Georgia State University) and Jennifer Clary-Lemon (University of Waterloo) Climate loss demands renewed strategies for attending to and composing with environs-in-flux. We might think of these as strategies for witnessing climate change: ways of knowing and responding to the embodied, multiscalar valences of climate crisis. This workshop invites scholars in environmental rhetoric, […]

Leaders: Kaitlyn Haynal (University of Mary Washington) and Ryan Cheek (Missouri University of Science & Technology) Artificial intelligence companies have produced a growing body of advertisements, launch videos, product pages, keynote presentations, demonstrations, and public statements that explain what AI is and what kind of future it promises. The RhetAI Coalition’s Core Advertising Narratives Task […]