Purdue Presenters at 4C23

Congratulations to the Purdue English Department's impressive roster of presenters at this year's Conference on College Composition & Communication. 4C23 takes place February 15-18, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. This year's conference theme is "Doing Hope in Desperate Times."

Below is a guide to presentations at 4C23 from our program. This year we're happy to see representation across ICaP, Professional Writing, and the Writing Lab. The following information is compiled from the available draft schedule posted on 1/9/2023, so be sure to double check official sources for updates as the event nears.

Thursday, B Sessions (12:15pm-1:30PM)

Robert Beck, Rhetorical Circulation in Legislation: Indiana General Assembly Act 1549–2021 and the Rhetorical Weight of Freedom of Speech B.12 Antiracist Labor in the Context of Racist Legislation.

These presentations consider the recursive work of antiracism in light of legislation that explicitly or covertly threatens antiracist education, including bans on teaching Critical Race Theory and acts that limit free speech by (re)defining its parameters.

Kailyn Shartel Hall, B.16 Career Options for Master’s Program Graduates: Expanding beyond Preparation for PhD Work

This panel explores several higher-ed career options for MA graduates as alternatives to seeking a PhD and becoming full-time faculty. To prepare graduates for employment in these types of positions, MA programs may need to adjust their curriculum, GA training, and more. MA alumni and current grad students will discuss how their programs prepared them for their current full-time jobs. Sponsored by the Master’s Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists (MDCWSS).

Eliza Gellis, “Arguing” with God: The Hebrew Bible’s Rhetoric of Divine Otherness in B.31 Rhetoric beyond Borders: A Hopeful Vision of Global Rhetorical Perspectives

This panel explores a hopeful vision of global perspectives on rhetoric and their implications for the classroom. Sponsored by the Global and Non-Western Rhetorics Standing Group.

Thursday, C Sessions (1:45pm-3:00pm)

Jenny Bay and Rick Johnson-Sheehan, Rhetoric, Indiana: Tracing the Foundations of Rhetoric at Purdue University in C.35 Rhetoric in Early Engineering Education

Previous scholarship has shown that rhetoric’s role in the earliest colleges in the American colonies and independent United States underwent many transformations over the 19th century. One transformation not well studied was the rise of engineering as a field of work and a curriculum. These papers explore the place of rhetoric in early engineering education at four representative institutions.

Thursday, E Sessions (4:45pm-6:00pm)

Antony Ricks, Hope for Transfer: Seeing and Supporting Cultural Backgrounds in Composition Classrooms in E.29 Rethinking Pedagogies in Multilingual and Multicultural Classrooms

These presentations explore language ideologies, white replacement theory, and cultural justice in writing pedagogies.

Friday, G Sessions (9:30am-10:45am)

Eric Joseph and Ghada Seifeddine (with Purdue-adjacent Alexandra Chakov), G.07 Malleable Spaces: Diversity, Accessibility, and Meaning-Making in Learning Environments

Sharing ethnographic studies that investigate the connections between diversity, rhetorical circulation, and meaning-making in various learning spaces, presenters examine how users and space (physical, virtual, mental, conceptual) shape each other, asking how writing spaces, despite their limitations, can be made more inclusive and accessible to the individual and collective needs of all learners.

Paul Hunter and Kaden Milliren, G.34 Reframing via the Popular Science Article Genre: Pedagogical Takeaways from Recent Publications about Psilocybin Mushrooms

This article brings Lakoff’s metaphor theory into conversation with rhetorical genre studies to examine how the popular science article allows for felicitous reframing of contested and controversial research topics. We conclude by offering a series of classroom activities based on these findings, thereby offering students access to powerful forms of discourse that will help them enact change.

Friday Poster Sessions (2:00pm-4:45pm)

Jianfen Chen, Leveraging the Power of Rhetoric and Social Networking Site (SNS) in Communicating the COVID-19 Pandemic to the Chinese Public

Focusing on his 45 WeChat posts from January 2020 to March 2022, this case study reveals that Dr. Wenhong Zhang in China has been apt at creating kairotic responses to the rhetorical exigencies caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, he employs constructed ethos, metaphors, and narratives as the key rhetorical devices to convey concepts, lessons, and practices about the pandemic.

Saturday, J Sessions (8:00am-9:15am)

Michael Johnson, Masculinities without Men: Reimagining Critical Masculinities Studies in J.06 New Interrogations of Gender

This panel considers and challenges the way that rhetoric and composition takes up ideas about gender and gender performativity. Presenter 1 examines the instructional, rhetorical, and memetic function of several of those webcomics, and explores their possible future impacts in composition classrooms. Presenter 2 discusses the field’s historical entanglements with Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities in order to reimagine the critical engagement of masculinities without latent androcentrism and through recent developments in New Materialism.

Tracy Clark, J.09 A Contradiction of Terms of Service: Accessibility as Federal Policy, Moral Imperative, and Moving Target (Starring Adobe Express)

Students and teachers in all writing courses must learn how to ensure accessibility for print and multimedia content, whether creating from scratch or using templates. It’s the right thing to do—and lapses by Adobe and other providers show that we cannot and should not assume that well-designed templates that facilitate presentation also incorporate accessibility to accommodate audiences.

Christopher Barber, The Dialogue Culture: Composition Textbooks and a Future for Argumentation Pedagogy in J.32 Teach Me How to Read

This panel will discuss ways that instructors can promote textbooks and OER resources to better engage with students class goals and motivations.

Saturday, K Sessions (9:30am-11:45am)

Michael Salvo, K.05 Infrastructures and/as Writing: Methodological Innovations and Pedagogical Approaches

The infrastructural turn has begun in writing studies, with a focus on writing as infrastructure and the social and material infrastructures of writing. This roundtable, consisting of authors of the upcoming CDQ special issues on infrastructure, creates space to discuss how the infrastructural turn translates to methodological innovation and pedagogical approaches.

Harry Denny, K.24 Challenging the Hegemonic Materials and Practices of Writing Centers

This roundtable takes a hard look at writing centers’ institutionalized materials and practices, seeing them as hegemonic mechanisms that reinscribe liberal multiculturalist, neoliberal, and white supremacist ideologies-even at writing centers led by practitioners who disavow such politics. Each presenter challenges a specific practice and posits how writing centers might better do hope.