Applied Rhetoric Collaborative

What is the Applied Rhetoric Collaborative?

The Applied Rhetoric Collaborative is an ongoing gathering of people who enact a particular type of rhetorical work (applied rhetoric) in their professional and/or non-professional spaces. The ARC offers a para-professional space for support, feedback, collaboration, and encouragement to those who seek to solve problems and achieve positive ends in communities. 

Applied rhetoric: Our evolving definition of applied rhetoric is that it is a rhetorically-grounded method for and study of action-oriented research, teaching, and service in live situations that seeks to solve problems and achieve positive ends in communities. 

For more information about the theoretical argument for our focus on applied rhetoric, please read "Applied Rhetoric as Disciplinary Umbrella: Community, Connections, and Identity" by Veltsos, Sharp, Rawlins, Patriarca, and Pope-Ruark in Assembling Critical Components: A Framework for Sustaining Technical and Professional Communication, edited by Joanna Schreiber and Lisa Melonçon.

ARC History: In June 2018, an interdisciplinary group of scholars from across the U.S. gathered to discuss the characteristics that link their work. We determined that this link was the application of rhetoric to problems at work, in our classrooms, in our communities, and in our public and private lives. We envisioned a new professional organization that might give us a place to have conversations that cross existing disciplinary lines. We met again in May 2019 and continued to refine our understanding of applied rhetoric and the many ways it can be a force for good in the world. The 2020 symposium began online but was eventually put on hold. The 2022 symposium returned to Provo with a robust hybrid option, and the 2024 symposium is fully virtual.