RhetCanada 2023 Conference Programme
Held in conjunction with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at York University, Toronto, Ontario.
Note: If you are registered for the RhetCanada 2023, you should have received an email with instructions to access the Conference Site. If you have not received an email, please contact Bruce Dadey (badadey@uwaterloo.ca) for instructions.
RhetCanada 2023 Conference Room: Calumet College 211 [Map]
Note: All times EDT (Toronto) Time. Adjust for your time zone: -3 BC | -2 AB/SK | -1 MB | +1 Maritimes (+1.5 NL)
Tuesday, May 30
| Time | Session |
| 8:45-9:00 | Bruce Dadey, Welcome |
| 9:00-10:00 | Terministic Screens: Resilience and Preparedness Chair: Bruce Dadey |
| 10:30-12:00 | International, Transnational, and Classical Perspectives on Rhetorical Practice Chair: Jonathan Doering
|
| 1:30-3:00 | Patient Rhetoric Chair: Sigrid Streit |
| 3:30-4:30 | Burkean Parlour Chair: Bruce Dadey How will artificial intelligence affect the practice, study, or teaching of rhetoric? Opening speakers: Jonathan Doering, Randy Harris, Shannon Lodoen |
| 6:00 | RhetCanada Banquet
Granite Brewery |
Wednesday, May 31
| Time | Session |
| 8:30-10:00 | Anger, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation Chair: Ryan McGuckin |
| 10:30-12:00 | Rhetoric and the Body Chair: Tania Smith
|
| 1:30-3:00 | On Persuasion Chair: Andrea Valente
|
| 3:30-4:30 | Burkean Parlour Chair: Bruce Dadey What are the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinarity in rhetorical studies and how can it be fostered? Opening speakers: David Beard, Loren Gaudet, Zhaozhe Wang |
| 5:00-7:00 | President’s Reception
Congress Hub |
Thursday, June 1
| Time | Session |
| 8:30-10:00 | Rhetoric, Technology, and Humanity Chair: Kyle Gerber
|
| 10:30-12:00 | Rhetorical Applications: Music, Literature, Nature Chair: David Beard |
| 1:30-3:30 | RhetCanada Annual General Meeting
|
Descriptions
Resilience Rhetoric in the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada’s 2020 Report
Corey Owen, University of Saskatchewan
This presentation analyzes the various conceptualizations of resilience in the 2020 annual report of the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada (CPHO): From Risk to Resilience: An Equity Approach to Covid-19 (Tam 2020) and discusses the degree to which such rhetorical transformations of resilience recognize the agency of affected individuals and communities.
Reckoning the Rhetoric of ‘Pedagogy of Preparedness’ and its Classroom Implications
Andrea Valente, York University
With Education 4.0, the question “What’s Education For?” returns to stage. A Pedagogy of Preparedness lies at the centre to handle the uncertainties and instabilities of the future. This study discusses the Kairos, Ethos, Logos, Pathos of this pedagogical concept concerning its epistemological and methodological implications in the classroom.
Transnational Rhetorical Circulation in the Splinternet Age
Zhaozhe Wang, University of Toronto Mississauga
I argue for reconceptualizing and recentering the notion of place to account for the infrastructural and geopolitical reality of a disconnected cyberspace. In doing so, I investigate how the global online campaign in the name of “stop Russian invasion” and “stand with Ukraine” in 2022 was suspended, repurposed, co-opted, and rejuvenated across the border of the splintered network of China.
The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han and Rhetorical Theory
Gary McCarron, Simon Fraser University
This presentation outlines the essential ideas of German scholar Byung-Chul Han and shows how his analysis of modernity is also a form of rhetorical critique. Whereas Han’s work has been welcomed in philosophical circles, his arguments also articulate with modern rhetoric theory. Ultimately, I present Byung-Chul Han as an emerging figure in the field of contemporary rhetorical scholarship.
Anaximenes and the Species of Rhetorical Speeches
David Mirhady, Simon Fraser University
Although Aristotle discusses genres of speeches (like RhetCan discussing Reckonings and Re-imaginings) in terms of past, present, and future, his contemporary Anaximenes, in Rhetoric to Alexander, organizes much the same material into seven species. He does so without reference to chronology, but implicitly draws on Socrates and Athenian oratory.
Thinking with the Tick: Non-human Rhetorical Agency and the Making of Lyme Disease Patients
Loren Gaudet, University of Victoria
In Lyme disease rhetoric, the presence of the tick is seen as causing the disease by transmitting the bacteria and therefore is something to be feared, vigilant against, and even hated. This paper argues that the presence of a tick also facilitates a transformation from sufferer to patient, as it becomes a rhetorical actor in itself in persuading individuals and health care providers.
The Shifting Rhetoric of Thyroid Treatment: Patient Symptoms and Lab Values
Tania Smith, University of Calgary
In the treatment of thyroid diseases, the relative weight and interpretation of patients’ symptoms and laboratory tests has shifted over time. The rhetorical analysis of a medical association’s book, Understanding Thyroid Disorders (Toft, 1995-2006) reveals enduring challenges in thyroid healthcare, such as patient diversity and the complexity of thyroid disorders.
How to Talk so that Doctors will Listen
Shivaun Corry, Graceland University
A 2019 study by K.A. Phillips et al recognized that doctors interrupt patients after a median of only eleven seconds. Drawing on intersectionality theory, research on persuasion, and interviews with patients and doctors, this paper offers advice on how to speak so that doctors will listen.
Righteous Anger and Empire Building: Anger as a Rhetorical Tool used by the Kremlin to Manipulate and Recolonize Audiences in Postcolonial Kazakhstan
Thomas Duke, Nazarbayev University
This presentation examines how Russian propaganda engenders anger in Kazakhstan, how that anger generates hostility to Russians, destabilizes Kazakhstan, and creates justifications for recolonizing Kazakhstan. Building on rhetorical theories that explain how to manage anger, this analysis seeks to expand our understanding of anger as a tool of propaganda.
Re-imagining the Rhetorical Powers of Prayer
Kyle Gerber, University of Waterloo
This paper extends William Fitzgerald’s work on prayer as rhetorical performance further into the field of cognitive rhetorics. I perform close rhetorical analysis of the personal and corporate devotional practices of Amish and Mennonite communities to see how rhetorical principles reveal and shape unique attitudes towards forgiveness.
Idle No More and the Limits of Reconciliation Rhetoric
Maša Torbica, University of Waterloo
This paper examines the temporal overlap between the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and the Idle No More (INM) movement. Insofar as they constitute two distinct and concurrent approaches to decolonization, analysis of public and state responses to the TRC and INM reveals constraints against and possibilities for decolonial resistance and existence.
Rhetorical Dimensions of the Performance of Injury, Illness, and Health Kayfabe in the Experience of Audiences of Professional Wrestling
David Beard, University of Minnesota – Duluth
The double-consciousness typical of audiences for pro wrestling may offer new insights into audience behavior. The ability for an audience to both identify wrestling as “fake” and yet care so very deeply for a match’s outcome is noted by the term “kayfabe” among wrestlers. A discussion of the image and reality of injury and illness among wrestlers will demonstrate the utility of a double-consciousness as typical of a rhetorical audience.
History of a Rhetorical Gesture: Kneeling in National, International, Religious, and Secular Contexts across the Centuries
Sigrid Streit, University of Detroit Mercy
As background to a larger project on kneeling as a rhetorical gesture (e.g., in religious contexts or as expression of protest), this presentation focuses on archival research of visual and written texts/representations of kneeling through which I explore historical and global examples, traditions, and perceptions of kneeling.
Somatic Literacies: A Hermeneutics and Rhetoric of the Body
Andrew Weiler, University of Waterloo
The body is a fascinating topic and object of study, one we know little about outside the field of medicine. This unfortunate inheritance of the enlightenment, of viewing the body as a lower animal subservient to a higher mind, requires a re-imagining. I consider how the postmodern view of identity, though persuasive, limits the kinds of bodily knowledges institutions of higher learning will sanction. Then, I examine the rhetorical power of our bodies beyond the current constraint, that is, of viewing bodies mainly as rhetorically constructed and performative spaces.
On Influence and Actions of a Dubiously Rhetorical Sort
Jonathan Doering, Cape Breton University
Developing a reading list for an interdisciplinary seminar, this talk generalizes from the rhetor-audience relation to a broader study of how humans influence humans via symbolic and practical actions (in Burke’s sense) and their intriguing, messy intersections.
The Event Horizons of Rhetoric
Bruce Dadey, University of Waterloo
This paper uses belief systems theory to inform a rhetorical analysis of conspiracy theory discourse, with the goal of showing how the strategies used by conspiracy advocates effect epistemic closure. Understanding epistemic closure allows for a better understanding of the scope of rhetoric and of how rhetoric allows humans to establish and function within the domain of epistemic freedom.
Hofstader, Goode, Ben-Yeuhda, Freud and Williams: A Balanced Look at the Epistemology of Persuasion
Steven Joseph, Arizona State University
The hegemon exists as the actor whose desires, unconscious and conscious, have influence on how paranoid-styled rhetorics and the moral panics that result from them occur. This paper analyzes the epistemology of hegemonic entities and how their particular psychology influences them to create paranoid-styled and moral-panic-inducing rhetoric.
Ghostwriting Ethos: Social Media’s Effect on Political Leaders’ Debates
Monique Kampherm, University of Waterloo
The ethos of political leaders is shifting under the pressures of participatory media. Political leaders’ debates that were once a pivotal pillar to democracy are being (re)shaped in real time through social media, which is distorting information for voters, affecting the consciousness of political leaders, and disrupting the platform on which our democracy is built.
“Always-On/Always-On-You”: The Constancy of Kairos in Contemporary Smartphone Society
Shannon Lodoen, University of Waterloo
This presentation explores how the constant presence of smartphones is an important factor in their role as persuasive technologies. I argue that the combination of smartphones’ portability and connectivity has created an unprecedented user experience in which people are constantly invited to engage with both human and nonhuman agents.
Rhetorical Figures and Emergent Syntax
Randy Harris, University of Waterloo
Large Language Models, like ChatGPT, are trained on upwards of a trillion words, rather more than the average five-year-old human, or ninety-five-year old human; a human would take over forty years, without sleeping or eating, just to speak a trillion words. I argue that humans do more with less because they are tuned to specific kinds of patterns, the patterns exemplified by rhetorical figures.
Figuring Out Britney: Anacoluthon, Aposiopesis, and Ambiguous Signification in “If U Seek Amy”
Cathal Twomey, Dublin City University
Exploring the dense web of communicative devices in Britney Spears’s “If U Seek Amy,” I show that these devices lend credence both to the innocuous surface meaning and the lewd subtextual meaning of the titular phrase. This is argued to be of practical and aesthetic use to the creator.
Reimagining the Unimaginable: The Inconclusive Music of E.M. Forster’s Nuclear Aesthetics
Ryan McGuckin, Appalachian State University
This talk analyzes E. M. Forster’s doubts over musical and moral ambiguities in his novel A Room with a View, revealing his narrative inconclusiveness exposes tensions between the politics of love and individual freedom, prefiguring how post-war exigencies concurrently perpetuate conventions of social inheritance while also making them impossible propositions.
Shoreline Rhetoric: Welcoming Complexity in Fluid Spaces
Christopher Rogers, University of Waterloo
Centred on the Trent-Severn Waterway, this paper explores the rhetoric of shorelines through new material and ecocritical analysis of texts that consider its past, present, and future. Shoreline rhetoric challenges our ways of knowing watery spaces (Chen, MacLeod, and Neimanis) and attunes readers to what is unseen (Gendron).