Conferences & Institutes

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 2010 Conference
 Call for Proposals 
14^th Biennial Conference
May 28-31, 2010
The Minneapolis Marriott City Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota 

Conference Theme
RHETORIC: CONCORD AND CONTROVERSY 

I have often and seriously debated with myself whether men and communities have received more good or evil from oratory and a consuming devotion to eloquence.

Cicero 

But put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric.

Kenneth Burke  

In the de Inventione, Cicero recognizes two opposing dimensions of rhetoric, the one divisive and conflictive, the other irenic and unifying.  Kenneth Burke, in characteristic fashion, converts this either/or into a both/and.  For him, rhetoric simultaneously divides and unifies, separates as it identifies and dwells most naturally in the in-between space where sameness and difference ambiguously embrace one another.  The theme of our conference calls these distinctions and confusions to mind.  It asks, among many other things: Does rhetoric civilize? Or does it repress and control?  Or both?  Does it express the self?  Or dissolve it into a cultural miasma?  What is the price of community gained through the language of social control?  What is the limit of dissent expressed through the language of difference and personal liberation?  Where do diversity and sameness meet on the human tongue and in the human condition? 

We welcome any and all papers that touch on this theme or that redefine it or reconstruct it or deconstruct it.  We also welcome all other papers that deal with any aspect of rhetorical scholarship-historical, theoretical, critical, pedagogical, sophistical or Platonic, Aristotelian or Foucaultian.  All are welcome to meet in Minneapolis, a space between the coasts, and a place where nice is the norm, but where nastiness has left it as the only spot in the U.S. where the number of senators has equaled the number of governors for half a year.  Celebrate the confusion and the order of Minnesota and of the rhetorical world to which it belongs.  Join us at RSA in May. 

Questions?  Please contact Michael Leff (m_leff@bellsouth.net). 

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2009 Institute 

RSA INSTITUTE INVIGORATES OVER 300 PARTICIPANTS 

RSA members (new and continuing) have been reporting excellent experiences at the RSA Institute, held June 22-28 at University Park, Pennsylvania. 

The Institute format has proven to be popular and flexible.  From Monday through Friday morning, about 50 people, most of them graduate students or junior faculty members, took in the RSA Seminars:  one, on Visual Rhetoric, was led by Robert Hariman and John Lucaites; the other, led by Ruth Amossy, Michael Leff, Steve Mailloux, and Alysse Portnoy, was on Rhetorical Criticism.  Then on Friday afternoon, over 250 people (including some Seminar participants) joined one of the eighteen weekend Workshops.  Interestingly, there was a substantial international presence this year at the Institute, with participants from Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Israel, and Mexico.  RSA thanks the faculty and graduate students at Penn State, particularly Local Host Jeremy Engels, for hospitality, facilities, and great weather.  

The Institute program was put together by Institute Co-Directors David Kaufer (Carnegie Mellon) and Shawn Parry-Giles (Maryland).  "The Institute (both the seminars and workshops) affirmed both the disciplinary deepening and interdisciplinary expansion of the field of rhetoric," noted Kaufer. "It brought together twenty small groups of leading thinkers in rhetoric across a range of topical areas to explore and exchange ideas. The two seminars presented PhD and early career professors with the latest ideas in rhetorical criticism and visual rhetoric respectively. The eighteen workshops provided professors at all levels the opportunity to push the frontiers of rhetoric, from established topics like classical rhetoric, Lincoln, and Kenneth Burke, to emerging areas in medical rhetoric, performance theory, religious studies, gay and femiminist studies, globalization, multi-lingualism, digital writing, visualization, and science." 

Because these subdisciplines of rhetoric so frequently cross borders with other disciplines, the keynote address, by Barbara Johnstone, stressed the interdisciplinary nature of rhetoric and the challenges facing rhetorical scholars who seek to continue speaking to the center of the field even when pushing its edges. 

"The RSA Institute exceeded our expectations in terms of both attendance and scholarly success," noted Shawn Parry Giles.  "It was an intensive immersion experience that produced a week of energetic intellectual exchange and camaraderie addressing the theoretical, practical, and pedagogical dimensions of rhetoric." One of the Workshop leaders agreed.  She described the experience as "both productive and pleasant.  Although I was officially my Workshop's leader, I learned such a great deal myself from my participants and their projects."

The success of the 2009 RSA Summer Institute is perhaps most visible in its aftermath.  Participants are continuing their discussions beyond the five-day seminars and the two-day workshops. Google listserves have been established to advance the intellectual conversations (for a good example, take a look at the wiki of the Medical Rhetoric group:  http://2009medicalrhetoric.pbworks.com/). Associate professors in the Career Bootcamp are developing research proposals.  Panels are being proposed for RSA in Minneapolis and for other academic conferences. Collaborative research projects are underway, with many people already thinking ahead to the 2011 RSA Summer Institute, which will take place in Boulder, Colorado. 

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