The Futures of Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
DEADLINE EXTENDED: September 12, 2022
The Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ARSTM) invites the submission of individual papers, paper sessions, and panel discussions for the 2022 NCA preconference.
The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of ARSTM. We’re honoring our past by reflecting on our future. Theories, practices, and research in the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine are progressive and shifting toward describing our present. But they’re also prescribing and predicting what our future will be. Theories such as posthumanism and postmaterialism envision what rhetoric will be as we increasingly shift away from human-centric paradigms. Frameworks such as activity theory and actor-network theory anticipate non-human agency. The use of natural language processes and computational rhetoric enlists algorithms to make generalizations from archives of unstructured data to predict rhetorical and linguistic trends. We have transversed the second and third orality as multimedia dominates new and emerging forms of communication. New materialism renews a turn to matter, emphasizing the world’s materiality and everything social and natural. Critical race theory, postcolonial/decolonial criticism, and recovery of indigenous rhetorics examine the intersection of race, matter, society, ethnicity, history, and law to challenge mainstream approaches to justice and rhetoric, science, and technology studies. These models, theories, and reframings themselves enlist technologies in ways that might privilege mediation over other modes of rhetorical agency and ontology. Reflections on the future opportunities and challenges reflect what we think about the past and how we process the past. ARSTM@NCA invites papers to discuss the future of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine.
To mark its 30th anniversary, ARSTM will invest in the futures of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine by introducing three ARSTM Research Grants for graduate students, NTTs, and scholars of color who submit both a pre-conference paper proposal (500 words) and a short but detailed proposal of the scope for their next phase of research. Recipients will be present at this year’s ARSTM @ NCA preconference in New Orleans For details, see the ARSTM Research Grants CFP.
Submissions may cover any area of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine, including but not limited to the rhetorical analysis and criticism of (1) scientific, technological, and medical texts, materials, practices, and genres; (2) the production, deployment, invocation, and contestation of scientific ideas and technological visions in political, professional or disciplinary, and literary or social contexts (e.g., policy debates, controversies, popular culture); (3) discourses of reason and rationality, including reflexive engagement with the rhetoric of science as a field; and (4) issues of social justice as they intersect with scientific, technological, and medical problematics.
Potential Topics
- What continuities/breaks from the past are necessary or important?
- How does the addition of medical rhetoric under the banner of ARSTM open new vistas or let go of those from the past?
- What actions have ARSTM and its members committed to as part of their 2020 commitment to anti-racist change?
- How have theories of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine changed over time? For better or worse? What have we gained? What have we lost?
- What new topics have emerged in the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine that show change or development of the field?
- How can we advance the field toward the future in more inclusive and equitable ways?
- How have our teaching practices in the rhetoric of science, technology, and rhetoric changed over time? For better or worse? What have we gained? What have we lost?
- How have our methods of inquiry and research changed? For better or worse? What have we gained? What have we lost?
Submissions may be in the form of individual abstracts or panel proposals, and should detail in 500 words or fewer how papers will address the futures of ARSTM. Panel proposals should include three or four presenters and an additional 100-word rationale for the panel that carefully details how each paper contributes to an overall argument. Panels must include speakers from multiple institutions.
Submissions should be sent as an attachment without any identifying information to akr@txstate.edu by Monday, August 15th, 2022. 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 preconference at NCA may be addressed to Aimee Roundtree at akr@txstate.edu.
The Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine 30th Anniversary Preconference will be held at the 108th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association on Wednesday, November 16th, 2022 in New Orleans, LA, USA.
For more details about the preconference, please subscribe to the ARSTM listserv and sign up for ARSTM Membership.
Future of RSTM Readings
Graham, S. S. (2020). Where’s the Rhetoric? Imagining a Unified Field. The Ohio State University Press.
Jensen, R. E. (2015). An ecological turn in rhetoric of health scholarship: Attending to the historical flow and percolation of ideas, assumptions, and arguments. Communication Quarterly, 5(5), 522–526.
Keranen, L. (2013). Conspectus: Inventing Futures for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Poroi, 9(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1167
Jones, N. N., Moore, K. R., & Walton, R. (2016). Disrupting the past to disrupt the future: An antenarrative of technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 25(4), 211-229.
McKerrow, R. E. (2010). Research in rhetoric: A glance at our recent past, present, and potential future. The Review of Communication, 10(3), 197-210.
Parrish, A. C. (2017). Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw: Animals, Language, Sensation, by Debra Hawhee: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 248 pages. $45.00 hardcover. Rhetoric Review, 36(4), 379-382.
Roundtree, A. K. (2019). Exploring public engagement in environmental rhetoric. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Science (pp. 279-294). Routledge.
Rowland, A. L. (2020). Zoetropes and the Politics of Humanhood. Ohio State University Press.
Ryan, C., Hifferon, B., & Fountain, T. K. (2020). Perspectives on the rhetoric of health and medicine as/is past, present, and future. In L. Melonçon, S. S. Graham, J. Johnson, J. A. Lynch, & C. Ryan (Eds.), Rhetoric of health and medicine as/is: Theories and approaches for the field (pp. 237-243). Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.
Sundvall, S. (Ed.). (2019). Rhetorical speculations: The future of rhetoric, writing, and technology. University Press of Colorado
Walker, K., Malinkowski, J., & Pfister, D. S. (2014). A Choreography of Living Texts: Selections from the ARST Oral History Project. Rhetoric Review, 33(3), 262–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2014.917515
Walsh, L., & Boyle, C. A. (2017). Topologies as techniques for a post-critical rhetoric. Palgrave Macmillan.