Ralph Cintron, University of Illinois Chicago

Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, University of Wisconsin Madison

Michelle Hall Kells, University of New Mexico

Donnie Sackey, University of Texas Austin

The peoples of the world may be at a remarkable juncture. On the one hand, climate scientists are predicting catastrophic disruptions to our food systems, our built environment, and the ability of nation-states to adapt to internal and external migrations. On the other hand, such impending calamities may also drive remarkable innovations in terms of technology, political/economic/legal institutions, and even our epistemological/ontological/cosmological presumptions. This seminar will engage some of these discussions.

Our co-leaders are transdisciplinary scholars of rhetoric: from the anthropology of democracies; to science studies; to local policy-making; to environmental rhetorics and extraction industries; to technical communication; to race studies. More significantly, however, we will be inviting scholars with different disciplinary formations such as climate science, migration studies, philosophy, indigenous scholarship, and so on. One of our goals will be to bridge across this siloed knowledge and explore emerging theories of rhetoric.

Our seminar will form four workshop groups of 7-8 seminarians. The groups will shift among themselves and across the four co-leaders. A typical day will consist first of engaging over zoom (more than likely) one or more invited speakers. Later that day in our workshops we will translate the speakers’ words and arguments into a steadily expanding set of heuristics that will be useful to the individual projects of the seminarians and for rhetorical theory in general. Before the start of the seminar the leaders will provide an evolving bibliography of their own and others relevant work. Given the flow of the discussions during the seminar, some of this bibliography may be collectively discussed. The end product of the seminar will be the improvement of our collective thinking (seminarians and co-leaders both). Such improvement might be recorded in the form of a redrafted dissertation proposal, a dissertation chapter, an article, and so on. In taking seriously the phrase “Poieses of the Future” we fully expect that our collaborative discussions and drafts during the seminar will continue beyond the end of the institute in much the same way that the peoples of the world will continue negotiating the (dis)juncture(s) of climate change.

NCERW Business Meeting: Coffee “Meet & Greet” Friday, May 27, 2022 at 10:00-11:00 a.m. Bristol Room

NCERW Sessions:

• C11 - Environmental Narratives of Change, Sponsored by the National Consortium of Environmental Rhetoric and Writing

Friday, May 27, 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM, Essex A, 4^th Floor

• D11 - Environmental Rhetoric as Resistance & Resilience, Sponsored by the National Consortium of Environmental Rhetoric and Writing

Friday, May 27, 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM, Essex A, 4^th Floor

Environmental Rhetoric Panels and Presentations Strand:

Session: B-23 - Room: Laurel D

• Reinhabiting the Earth: Charging Environmental Conversations

• Chair(s): Elisa Cogbill-Seiders Panelists: Lisa Phillips, Russell Mayo, Justin Everett, Lindsay Jacoby

Session: C16

• Towards an Epistemology of Change: Plato and the Rhetoricity of Knowledge Room: Heron Rhetorical Theory's Interventional Potential in Scientific Discourses

• Chair(s): Mohammed Iddrisu

• A Posthuman Epideixis: Detaching Blame and Causality in Environmental Disasters Daniel Richards

Session: C27 Room: Harbor E

• Transforming Belief: Rhetoric, Religion, and Climate Change

• Chair(s): Mari Ramler Panelists: Emma Bloomfield, John Purfield, Chaim McNamee

Session: D-19 - Room: Kent C

• New Stewards: Changing Climate after Denial

• Chair(s): James Zeigler Panelists: Evin Groundwater, Roxanne Mountford, James Zeigler, Erin Brock Carlson

Session: D26Room: Harbor D

• Plagued Hospitality: Biopolitics Amidst the Host of Hosts

• Chair(s): Stuart Murray Panelists: Dave Tell, Diane Davis, Stuart Murray, Bernice Hausman

Session: E20 - Room: Laurel A

• The Rhetoric of Climate Change and Technology: Living in and Making Sense of the Anthropocene

• Chair(s): Emma Bloomfield Panelists: Marcia Allison, Kundai Chirindo, Esben Nielsen, Mitch Reyes

Session: I15 Room: Galena

• From Precarity to Invasion: Nonhuman Rhetorics in Times of Global Climate Change

• Chair(s): Jennifer Clary-Lemon Panelists: Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Jennifer Clary-Lemon, Donnie Sackey

Session: I21 Room: Laurel B

• Time, Memory, and the Environment

• Chair(s): Atilla Hallsby Panelists: Kurt Zemlicka, Savannah Downing, Scot Barnett, John Lynch

Session: K01 - Room: Atlantic

• Time for Change? What Rhetorical Constructions of Time Reveal About Environmental Risks to Public Health

• Chair(s): Ana Cooke Panelists: Ana Cooke, Elisa Cogbill-Seiders, Erin Gangstad

Session: K02 - Room: Bristol

• Ecological Actions in the Face of Crisis

• Chair(s): Cody Hunter

• “Anthropause” and Aftershocks: Post-Pandemic Attunement Elizabeth Baddour

• Interacting Ecologies Across Time: COVID-19 in Border Communities William Ordeman

• Future Publics: Citizenship and Belonging in Climate Activism Haley Schneider

• In Motu Rhetoric: Environmental Refugees and Non-Place-Ness Alessandra Von Burg

Session: L04 Room: Dover A

• Everyday Exigencies

• Chair(s): Megan Mapes

• Yinz Smell That?: Embodied, Everyday Rhetoric Surrounding Pittsburgh's Polluted Air and Water Cody Januszko

Session: L22Room: Laurel C

• The Environmental and Climate Crisis

• Chair(s): Nkenna Onwuzuruoha

• Markers of Time: Repeat Photography, Landscape Images, and Environmental Issues Pam Axtman-Barker

• The visual rhetoric of global youth activism for climate justice: Childhood subjectivities and the global inequalities of image events Frida Buhre

• Redefining the Climate Crisis as a “Security” Threat: The Biden Administration’s Progress and Limitations in Addressing this Charge to Change Heidi Hamilton

• Outlaws for Environmental Change in a Comic Book World: A Charge Against Corrupt Industries in a BIPOC Graphic Novel Elvira Carrizal-Dukes

Session: N-12 - Room: Essex B

• Climate Questions Chair(s): TBD Change is Good? Emergent Ethics’ Challenge to the Promises of Emergent Rhetorics Tom Bowers

• “Catalog Conservation: The Environmental Rhetoric of Outdoor Clothing Catalogs” Michaelann Nelson

• Becoming Cassandra: Reading the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report as an Indictment Steven LeMieux

• Self-Emptying: Climate Crises and a Buddhist Rhetoric/Ethics Ralph Cintron

Virtual Programs

Session: K04V

• Anthropocene Rhetorics (Virtual)

• A Fungal Future for Ecological Rhetoric Ian Ferris

• Embodying Climate Numerically: Exploring the Quantitative Rhetoric of Climate Change Activists and Advocates Daniel Libertz

• Partnering with Puffins 2: Virtual Cthulucene Michael Salvo

• The Noösphere as Naturalistic Fallacy in Geoengineering Discourse Ehren Pflugfelder

Session: L03V

• Rethinking Environmental Rhetoric (Virtual)

• Back to the Future: The Visual Rhetoric of the Green New Deal Matt Bellinger

• From Wonder to Action: Rhetorical Strategies for Conservation Communication Laura McGrath

• Rhetorical Hexis and Changing Environmental Beliefs Ehren Pflugfelder

• “Birds Used to Live Here:” George Mason Students Speak for the Trees: Illustration in Environmental Discourse and Rhetoric After the Fact Kathryn Meeks

RSA 2020 Pre-Convention Events

A variety of events are planned for May 21, the day before the opening of the conference, including:

Pre-conference Career Development Retreats (Co-Chairs: Cheryl Geisler and Lynée Lewis Gaillet)

Career Retreat for Associate Professors

For associate professors seeking to complete a scholarly project and achieve promotion to full professor. The 2020 Associate Professor Retreat will offer participants the opportunity to work with a senior Career Mentor and to form a writing workgroup to stay on track following the conference.

Career Retreat for Contingent Faculty

For contingent faculty seeking to find or enhance their ability to do research/scholarship. The 2020 Contingent Faculty Retreat will offer participants the opportunity to develop a manageable research trajectory, access research funds, and establish collaborations. The facilitators, experienced labor activists, can also help contingent faculty strategize and advocate for improved working conditions.

Career Retreat on Leadership

For participants on a leadership trajectory and interested in preparing for the “next step.” The 2020 Leadership Retreat will help participants explore the rhetorical basis of leadership, assessing their strengths as leaders and the way the material structures and exigencies of their organizations influence their leadership style and decision-making.

Keep an eye out for the call for applications for these retreats that will be released in the fall of 2019.

Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine Pre-Conference

The theme of ARSTM@RSA 2020, “Boundary Work,” invites rhetoricians of science, technology, and medicine to explore and reflect on practices of demarcation, coordination, and calibration. When positioned in relationship to the radical openness of the conference theme, hospitality, this pre-conference asks attendees to consider what is at stake when scientific, technological, and medical boundaries are defined, maintained, and destabilized.

Further details are forthcoming from ARSTM President, Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher.

American Society for the History of Rhetoric Pre-Convention Symposium

“EXCESS!!! The Overmuch in/and the History of Rhetoric”: Rhetoric’s strain of restraint and regulation is well known, identified and sustained by concepts like reason, order, fittingness, and civility. Less familiar is the strain characterized by excess, surplus, riotousness, redundancy, superfluidity, hyperbolicity, emotionality, generosity, infinity, overabundance, extravagance, decadence, exaggeration, abandon, or immoderation. ASHR’s pre-convention symposium will feature papers that generate conversation about excess or that use excess to generate conversation about the history of rhetoric.

Watch for the call for proposals (due by September 15, 2020) from ASHR President Michele Kennerly.

History of Rhetoric Biennial Seminar

Following its successful 2018 seminar (“The Sublime: Longinus and Beyond,” with Dr. Casper de Jonge from Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands), the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) is delighted to confirm it will offer a seminar before the 2020 RSA convention.

The seminar leader and topic will be announced after the ISHR conference in New Orleans at the Hotel Monteleone on July 24-27, 2019. A call for participants will circulate this fall.

Remember:

To submit proposals for the RSA 2020 Conference, go to:

https://ww3.aievolution.com/rsa2001/

Proposals are due: July 15, 2019 at 11:59 PM EST

Please note that to submit proposals you will need to follow the directions for “New Submitters” and create a profile before you can login. This submission site is administered by Attendee Interactive, and it is not linked to the RSA membership website (http://www.rhetoricsociety.org), so your existing RSA user ID and password are not recognized by this submission site.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and meeting with you in our host city, Portland, Oregon.

The Co-Chairs: Michelle Ballif, Diane Davis, Karma Chávez, Byron Hawk

All inquiries can be sent to rsasubmissions@rhetoricsociety.org

Re-Inventing Rhetoric: Celebrating the Past, Building the Future

• NCERW Affiliated Session Panel: Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

C10 Environmental Rhetoric as Invention: The National Consortium of Environmental Rhetoric & Writing—Performing Project Identities as Acts of Resistance

5 Minute Position Paper Working Titles:

• Risa Applegarth “Conditions of Embodiment for Sustainability Activism.”

• Paul Formisano “Humanists at the Headgates: Reimagining Western Water Management in the 21st Century”

• Michelle Hall Kells “Querencia: Rhetorics of Place and the Power of Radical Intimacy.”

• Michaelann Nelson “Rhetorics of Rebellion: What the Politics of the Bears Ear Monument Can Teach Us about Environmental Activism.”

• Noel Thistle Teague “Of Fields and Fieldwork: Doing Environmental Rhetoric in Rural Northern New York.”

• Susan Gilbertz “Sifting and Shifting: How Discovery and Uncertaintly Impact

Agenda: Chair: Michelle Hall Kells

• 5 Minute Position Papers (6 Panelists) 3:30-4:00

• Regional Roundtable Discussion 4:00-4:30

• Closing Remarks & Action Items 4:30-4:45

Panel Member Contact Information:

• Contact |Institution | NCERW Region | Email

• Risa Applegarth | UNC-Greensboro | Southeast | risa_applegarth@uncg.edu

• Michelle Hall Kells | U of New Mexico | Southwest | mkells@unm.edu

• Paul Formisano | U of South Dakota | Big Sky/Great Plains | Paul.Formisano@usd.edu

• Susan Gilbertz | Montana State-Billings | Northwest | sgilbertz@msubillings.edu

• Michaelann Nelson | Utah State East | ASLE NCERW | michaelann.nelson@usu.edu

• Noel Thistle | U of Pittsburgh | Northeast | net16@pitt.edu

NCERW RSA 2018 Follow Up Action Items:

• Identifying an Environmental Rhetoric Strand in RSA 2020 program;

• Including representatives from each regional chapter for 2020 RSA NCERW Affiliated panel;

• Recruiting emerging scholars to participate in NCERW affiliated panel and RSA strand;

• Establishing an NCERW SIG (Special Interest Group) as an official sub-group of RSA;

• Proposing an NCERW Pre-conference workshop;

• Hosting an NCERW Conference (or pre-conference) Meet & Greet Dinner at local restaurant in 2020 (for new and established NCERW members);

• Proposing NCERW RSA 2020 Conference Super-Session;

• Building NCERW Facebook RSA 2020 Meet & Greet social media platform;

• Including NCERW Full Page Advertisement in RSA 2020 Convention Program (with online invitations to NCERW sponsored RSA panels, workshops, RSA Meet & Greet dinner; 2019 NCERW Taos Workshop with links to NCERW resource website and membership directory);

• Generating an annual NCERW Online Newsletter with featured articles on current projects; member profiles; action items; etc.

OBJECTIVES FOR 2018 RSA NCERW Panel/ GOALS FOR NCERW

Our 5-minute position papers should respond in some way to the objectives of NCERW and/or the overarching goals of the Consortium. The objectives are as follows:

• Consider and confirm the NCERW Vision/Mission (goals/objectives) Statement;

• Extend open invitation to new NCERW members

• Articulate and define the NCERW organizational structure;

• Deliberate together over the NCERW Intellectual statement w/ professional guidelines for scholars of environmental rhetoric, ecological (community) literacies and their institutions;

• Extend the terms/benefits of NCERW membership as well as a plan for developing a membership directory;

• Invite new scholar cohort (8-10 participants) for 2019 NCERW Taos Writers Workshop;

• Develop a plan for expanding the NCWAC resource website (more inclusive and representative of expanding membership).

Guiding the achievement of the above objectives should be a consideration of the overarching goals of the NCERW to:

• Promote deliberative democratic practice in the public sphere and ecological literacy projects;

• Advocate for culturally-relevant, linguistically-informed approaches to environmental rhetoric initiatives and ecological literacy education for historically-underserved student populations;

• Promote curriculum development for new scholarship and pedagogical approaches to Environmental Rhetoric, Sustainability Studies programs, and Environmental Justice Activism, etc.

• Mentor graduate students and junior faculty (graduate school through tenure) so as to make it safe and feasible for them to do the scholarly work of environmental rhetoric and ecological literacy;

• Promote resource-sharing and collaborative scholarly projects between faculty and graduate students across institutions;

• Advocate for the inclusion of scholars of color and leaders of historically underrepresented communities in NCERW and RSA environmental rhetoric strands;

• Generate local and regional projects engaging environmental activism and civic education across communities.

• Dates: July 12-16, 2017

Each institute participant will contribute a work-in-progress project for Institute Workshop Sessions in Taos. We organize NCERW Working Groups and creating networking opportunities for NCERW Institute participants before the summer sessions.

Registration: 50 participants, Limited Enrollment. Advanced Registration open through December 15, 2016.

Location: Sagebrush Inn, Taos

No Registration Fees Required! Enrollment is Limited. Enrollment includes NCERW Group Rates for Lodging. Some meals during the program are included. Approximate cost for Lodging, Meals, and 3-Day Institute Sessions is $155-175/day. Advanced reservations for 2017 NCERW Summer Institute, Taos, must be made by December 15, 2016. Advanced registrants will be included on NCERW listserv for further details and updates re: 2017 NCERW Summer Institute, Taos.

The Inaugural Meeting of the National Consortium of Ecological Rhetoric & Writing will take place on Sunday, May 29, at the 16th Rhetoric Society of America Conference.

Dr. Michelle Hall Kells of the University of New Mexico and Robert Affeldt of Adams State University, Colorado, will present their panel "Environmental Rhetoric, Latinidad, & the Southwest: Place and the Language of Belonging," and lead a discussion on the following framing questions:

1. How can we as scholars cultivate environmental discourses to enhance civic engagement and rhetorical education?

2. Why do you feel such concepts (or metaphors) as “environment” and “ecology” continue to be useful ways of thinking about rhetoric and discourse?

3. What do you feel are the largest challenges (e.g., disciplinary, scholarly, social, institutional, etc.) facing those who are interested in exploring and implementing principles associated with environmental discourse?

Attendees to the panel will be encouraged to participate in the discussion and to coalesce action plans for the ongoing development of the RSA-affiliated NCERW.

Discussion notes and action plans will be posted to the NCERW website following the Inaugural Meeting.