Abstract submission deadline: Thursday, September 4, 2020 at 11:59pm ET
Decision notification: Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Papers/presentations due for upload: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 at 11:59 ET
Preconference date: 12:00-6:30pm ET, Wednesday, November 18, 2020
The Association for Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ARSTM) will host its annual preconference prior to the National Communication Association conference. We will meet online via a video conferencing platform on November 18, 2020, the day before the 106th Annual Convention of National Communication Association.
The preconference will be a half-day virtual gathering of RSTM scholars presenting about, reflecting on, and planning actions related to the theme of social justice. All sessions will be live-captioned by professional CART captioners.
What is the virtual ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference about?
For this ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference, we invite you to consider how the rhetorical and social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine (STM) intersect with (in)justices of all kinds. Rhetoricians are well positioned to consider how STM discourses might enable or preclude just social processes and outcomes. The inextricable social and material threads of STM’s many onto-epistemological systems have real consequences for real people. And rhetoric offers multiple tools for making sense of these consequences and striving to bend these systems towards justice.
Social justice, as concept, study, and practice, resists reduction. Natasha Jones, Kristen Moore, and Rebecca Walton describe social justice as “the bridge from diversity to inclusion” (2016, p. 219). It is the messy, complex, and constant work of “redressing inequities and acknowledging harm” in service of dismantling systems of oppression (Jones et al., 2016, p. 219). The ongoing nature of social justice work is reflected in the fact that this is a repeat theme from the 2014 ARSTM@RSA preconference, which took up social justice as a key concern in and of science.
As rhetoricians of STM, we can use our expertise to address the particular ways rhetoric, science, technology, and medicine are intertwined with (in)justice and people’s experiences of injustice. Rhetoricians have shown injustice’s ubiquitous entanglement with RSTM topics, from disease (see, e.g., Raquel Robvais’s work on Sickle Cell Anemia) to metaphor (see, e.g., Leah Ceccarelli’s work on the frontier metaphor in science) to medical theories (see, e.g., John Lynch’s work on genetics and race) to technological interpellations of minoritized people (see, e.g., Chris Gilliard’s work on surveillance and racial profiling). These examples illustrate how rhetoricians can theorize, circulate, and act on ideas about rhetoric and justice in order to make sense of the scientific, technological, and medical strands undergirding historical and contemporary systems of oppression.
And not only can we do this work. We should do this work. As the ARSTM leadership wrote in our June 8, 2020, “Statement on Anti-Black Racism and the Murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, David McAtee, and Others”:
As rhetoricians of science, technology, and medicine, it is our ethical responsibility to acknowledge and reckon with the injustices central to the topics we study. And it is our responsibility to critique and resist the use of science, technology, and medicine as tools for the oppression of Black, Brown, and Indigenous People. We can and should use the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine to call out and address institutional racism and to amplify and support those who are already doing that work, from #BlackInSTEM advocates to anti-surveillance community groups to reproductive justice activists and beyond.
In service of this ethical responsibility, we envision the ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference as a place to tease out, share, and deliberate on the connections to social justice that unquestionably exist in all our work. We also envision the preconference as an opportunity to reflect on how we can acknowledge harms and redress inequities in our professional communities.
For the 2020 ARSTM@NCA Preconference, we invite individual papers that address or embody the following questions:
- What does “social justice” mean in the context of your research questions, research sites, methodologies, and teaching of RSTM? What frameworks for justice can and/or do you bring to your RSTM work?
- How have science, technology, and medicine contributed to injustices, both historical and contemporary? How has science, technology, and medicine been used in the pursuit of justice, both historically and today?
- How can engaged RSTM contribute to social justice efforts? How can RSTM amplify the work of practitioners and activists?
- How do our professional RSTM spaces and practices contribute to (in)justice? What social justice actions should institutional leaders and privileged members of the field in particular take to acknowledge harms and redress inequities?
How will the virtual ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference work?
The preconference will have some traditional elements, such as keynote speakers, prepared papers and/or presentations, Q&A with paper and/or presentation authors, and networking opportunities. However, to make this work in a virtual format, we’ll be approaching these traditional elements in a somewhat non-traditional fashion. Here’s the process:
- Applicants submit abstracts.
Interested authors are invited to submit individual paper/presentation abstracts for anonymous peer review. - Accepted authors upload a full paper and/or video recording of a presentation.
Authors with accepted abstracts will submit a 1000-1500 word paper and/or 5-10 minute video-recorded presentation to a secure cloud platform 2 weeks prior to the preconference. - Attendees read/view papers/presentations in advance.
Attendees will have 2 weeks to read and watch uploaded papers and presentations prior to the preconference. - Attendees and authors join the live preconference for a keynote panel followed by Q&A sessions with paper/presentation authors.
On the day of the preconference, we will begin with a traditional keynote panel with accomplished speakers and audience Q&A. Following that, we will have a series of paper discussion sessions in which a session chair briefly introduces 3-4 papers and then the remaining synchronous meeting time is dedicated to Q&A with the audience. Attendees will be able to come and go as needed based on their schedules.
How do I submit a proposal to give a paper/presentation at the ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference?
In an individual abstract of 300 words or fewer, detail how your paper and/or presentation will further our understanding of social justice in relation to rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine as a research site and/or as a professional space. Individual abstracts may have multiple authors. Because of this year’s abbreviated virtual format, we are not inviting panel proposals.
Send your abstract as an attachment without any identifying information to lauren.cagle@uky.edu by September 4, 2020. Please use “ARSTM Preconference Submission” as your email subject, and provide your preferred contact information and the contact information for any co-authors in the email body. Any questions about this CFP and the ARSTM@NCA 2020 preconference may be addressed to lauren.cagle@uky.edu.
For more details about the preconference, please be sure to subscribe to the ARSTM listserv, where we’ll share a series of blog posts with announcements about keynote speakers, membership costs, and other details over the coming weeks.