Academic Publishing in Rhetorical Studies or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sending Manuscripts Out for Review (with apologies to Stanley Kubrick)

Workshop Leader: Jim Jasinski, University of Puget Sound

Workshop Leader:

Jim Jasinski, University of Puget Sound

Publishing remains the sine qua non of an academic teaching career, and publishing expectations (in order to be marketable and obtain tenure) continue to rise. Given its centrality, the publishing process can be a source of considerable anxiety and frustration. Its many stages—developing an idea and argument, determining the conversation or conversations to which your manuscript will contribute, addressing rhetoric’s interdisciplinary status, selecting a journal, responding to editor and reviewer comments, etc.—pose varied challenges for emerging scholars.

This hands-on workshop, led by the out-going editor of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, will help prepare participants to navigate the complexities of academic publishing so that (hopefully) publishing anxieties and frustrations can be diminished. To achieve this objective, workshop sessions will be divided between two activities. (1) Each participant will have the opportunity to workshop a manuscript on which they have been working with other participants. (2) In order to better understand the manuscript development process, participants will analyze example texts that include both the initial submission and the final version of an essay published in RSQ. Discussion will focus on identifying specific revisions made and understanding how those revisions strengthened the manuscript in various ways. Each participant will lead the discussion for a specific initial submission/published essay.  

Questions should be directed to Jim Jasinski, jjasinski@pugetsound.edu