RhetCanada’s 2024 Annual General Meeting will take place online on Tuesday, Sept. 3 starting at 3 p.m. EDT (Toronto time), which is noon in Vancouver, 1 p.m. in Calgary, 2 p.m. in Winnipeg, and 4 p.m. in the Maritimes (a half-hour later in Newfoundland). Members will receive an email with a Zoom link, and meeting documents will be posted shortly.
Member News April 2024
Welcome to our 2024 Member News post, in which we share news about the activities of RhetCanada members over the past year with the goal of helping us keep in touch with one another’s work. As usual, people have been busy!
We hope to see you at the 2024 RhetCanada Conference, which takes place online on June 8 and in person June 12-14 in association with the 2024 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at McGill University in Montreal. The conference program will be available in May.
New Positions/Promotions
Jonathan Doering is now an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) in the Department of Literature, Folklore, and the Arts at Cape Breton University.
Shannon Lodoen has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, beginning in August 2024.
Pierre Zoberman is professor emeritus, Université Sorbonne-Paris-Nord.
Awards and Honours
Sheila Batacharya received the University of Toronto Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy 2023-2024 ISUP Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.
Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley was awarded a $5,000 research grant from Women in Mining Canada.
Zhaozhe Wang received the University of Toronto Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy 2023-2024 ISUP Faculty Research Excellence Award.
New and Forthcoming Publications
David Beard
“Rethinking the three origin stories for communication studies in North America.” Media Ecology. (forthcoming)
Editor [with E. Wright]. A Charge for Change. Parlor Press, 2023.
[with L. Horton, P. Soulen, A. Propes, C. Ford, and J. Ford] “From Television to Videotape and Back Again: Intellectual Property in Doctor Who.” Televisual Shared Universes: Expanded and Converged Storyworlds, Lexington Books, 2023.
Editor, special issue of Survive and Thrive, a Journal of Medical Humanities and Narrative Medicine: Health, Illness and Injury in Professional Wrestling, Vol. 8, no. 2, 2022.
Shivaun Corry
“How to Talk so that Doctors Will Listen.” Survive and Thrive. (forthcoming, and based on her talk at last year’s RhetCanada conference).
Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley
“Responding to the Kairotic Moment: Advancing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion through Allyship in Canadian Mining.” The Journal of Leadership Accountability and Ethics, vol. 20, no. 1, 2023, https://doi.org/10.33423/jlae.v20i1.5986.
[with Jovita Dias] “Insights from Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Allies: Results from the Second Phase of an Interdisciplinary Study on the Retention of Underrepresented People in Mining.” 26th World Mining Congress Conference Proceedings, 2023, https://tinyurl.com/ymxyfypz.
“Leading DEI Transformations: What HR Needs to Know.” CPHR Saskatchewan Magazine, vol. 16, no. 2, 2023, https://www.hrsaskatchewan-digital.com/sahb/0223_fall_winter_2023/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1916135#articleId1916135.
“World Mining Congress Raises Awareness of Gender Inequity from the Mine Face to the Main Stage.” Mining Your Business, no. 2, 2023, p. 22, https://issuu.com/delcomminc/docs/mining_your_business_-_issue_2_2023_4b33cf931e1694.
Ryan James McGuckin
“E. M. Forster’s Female Musicality: Inconclusive Counter-romance in A Room with a View.” Journal of Modern Literature. (forthcoming)
“Temporal Limits: Modernist Refrain, Modern Disruption in the Music of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled.” Music in World Literature: From Tolstoy to Manga, edited by David Racker and Julia Titus, Palgrave Macmillan. (forthcoming)
Zhaozhe Wang
“Transnational Rhetorical Circulation in the Splinternet Age.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 5, 2023, pp. 670-684.
“Rhetorical Economy: Affect, Labor, and Capital in Transnational Digital Circulation.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 108, no. 4, 2022, pp. 382-401.
“The Switched-Off Circulation: A Rhetoric of Disconnect.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 40, no. 4, 2021, pp. 395-411.
“Activist Rhetoric in Transnational Cyber-Public Spaces: Toward a Comparative Materialist Approach.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, 2020, pp. 240-253.
Pierre Zoberman
Editor, special Issue of Intertexts : (Re-en)Gendering Intertexuality: Queer Pasts and Futures. (forthcoming)
“Proust and the Intertextual Construction of Identity.” Intertexts. (forthcoming)
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Translation edited by Pierre Zoberman, with an introduction by David Wetsel and notes by David Wetsel and Pierre Zoberman. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2023.
Projects
Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley is completing her final data collection phase of her PhD project (Activating Allies) and drafting her manuscript dissertation. She hopes to defend before the summer. The Active Allies course trailer video and summary articles for each study phase of her dissertation are available on her research website, and public reports/guidlines co-published with clients are available on the website of her consulting company, Prairie Catalyst.
Ryan James McGuckin is working with Joshua Myers (Ball State U.), on a co-edited critical anthology tentatively titled New Brave New World: Memory, Technology, and the Word in Kazuo Ishiguro.
Pierre Zoberman was co-organizer of the panel of the ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association) research committee for Comparative Gender Studies: Queer Contemporaneities: Anachronism and Gender (Annual Congress of the American Comparative Literature Association, Montreal, March 2024), and will co-organize a two-day international seminar on the same topic in Paris (11-12 October 2024). He will also be presenting a paper, “Being in the Pink and Seeing Red: Topoi and the Intertextual Construction / Subversion of Gender Identity from Saint-Simon to Proust,” at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric in July 2024.
Sean Zwagerman is organizing the Kenneth Burke panel at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric Conference in July and will be presenting a paper entitled “Indigenous Justice and the Social Status of the Uninvited Guest” at RSA in May.
Other News
Shivaun Corry is living in Mexico this semester, and like many of us is adjusting to the presence of GenAI in her courses. “I’ve taken inspiration from my grandpa who owned a movie theatre in the 1950s. When televisions became popular, and movie theatre attendance declined, he didn’t rage and rail against televisions; instead, he shut down the theatre and opened up a TV repair shop. Following Grandpa’s ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ attitude; I’ve adjusted my syllabi to include lessons on prompt engineering and the ethical use A.I.”
Member News, March 2023
This is the first in a series of semi-annual posts sharing news about the activities of RhetCanada members, with the goal of helping us keep in touch with one another’s work. This post is a catch-up post, covering news from over the course of the pandemic. People have been busy!
We’ll be sending out an email requesting news items from current members about a month ahead of the next member news post in October.
We hope to see you (either in-person or virtually) at our annual conference May 30-June 1 at York University in Toronto. The program will be available in April.
New Positions/Promotions
Jonathan Doering started a two-year contract as Assistant Professor of English (Department of Literature, Folklore, and The Arts) at Cape Breton University.
Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher became the Canada Research Chair in Science, Health, and Technology Communication.
Sigrid Streit was recently tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit Mercy.
Graduations
Monique Kampherm earned her Ph.D. in English-Rhetoric from the University of Waterloo in December 2022. Her dissertation, Masks and Caricatures: Prosopopoeia, Ethopoeia, and the Effect of Social Media on Canadian Political Leaders’ Debates (2023), reveals how 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. Monique publishes on the effect of rhetoric and social media on Canadian political elections.
[Note: Arguments from Monique’s dissertation have been developed in the RhetCanada incubator over the years, including her prize-winning essay, “Democratic Prosopopoeia: The Rhetorical Influence Of The I-Will-Vote Image Filter On Social Media Profile Pictures During The 2015 Canadian Federal Election,” published in Rhetor 8.]
Awards and Honours
Randy Harris was elected Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada in 2022.
Shannon Lodoen received a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship in 2022.
Sigrid Streit received the University of Detroit Mercy 2021/2022 Faculty Achievement Award.
New Publications
Jonathan Doering
“The Rhetorical Apprenticeship of Roland Barthes.” Barthes Studies, vol. 7, 2021, pp. 110-39.
“The Linguistic Terror in France according to Jean Paulhan and Jean-Paul Sartre.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 83, no. 4, Oct. 2022, pp. 555-578.
Randy Harris
Fahnestock, Jeanne, and Randy Allen Harris, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Persuasion, Routledge, 2022.
“The Tropes: Metaphor and its Friends.” The Routledge Handbook of Language and Persuasion, edited by Jeanne Fahnestock and Randy Allen Harris, Routledge, 2022, pp. 227-45.
“Rules Are Rules: Rhetorical Figures as Algorithms.” Logic and Algorithms in Computational Linguistics, edited by Roussanka Loukanova, Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine, and Reinhard Muskens, Springer, 2023, pp. 217-259.
“Jagmeet’s Kairotic Challenge: Darkface, Turbans, and Hypocrisy Upwards.” Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture vol. 1, no. 2, 2022, pp. 171–204. [NOTE: Randy presented a version of this analysis at RhetCanada 2021]
“Grammatical Constructions and Rhetorical Figures: The Case of Chiasmus.” LACUS Forum vol. 46, no. 1, 2022, pp. 35-61.
“Chiastic Iconicity: Refiguring Symmetry.” Iconicity in Cognition and across Semiotic Systems, edited by Sara Lenninger, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg, and Elzbieta Tabakowska, John Benjamins), 2022, pp. 103-134.
Kara-Yakoubian, Mane, Alexander C. Walker, Konstantyn Sharpinskyi, Garni Assadourian, Jonathan A. Fugelsang, and Randy Allen Harris. 2022. “Beauty and Truth, Truth and Beauty: Chiastic Structure Increases the Subjective Accuracy of Statements.” Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale vol. 76, no. 2, 2022, pp. 144–155. [NOTE: Mane presented these experimental results at RhetCanada 2021]
Shannon Lodoen
“Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and the Limits of Optimism: A Pessimistic Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 64, no. 1, 2023, pp. 85-97.
“Progress and Power in the First, Second, and Third Universities: A Case Study of the University of Waterloo”.” Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics vol. 2, no. 1, winter 2021.
Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher
On Expertise: Cultivating Character, Goodwill, and Practical Wisdom, Penn State UP, 2022.
Paula Nuñez de Villavicencio
Jeremy Packer, Paula Nuñez de Villavicencio, Alexander Monea, Kathleen Oswald, Kate Maddalena, and Joshua Reeves. The Prison House of the Circuit: Politics of Control from Analog to Digital. U of Minnesota P, 2023.
Tania Smith
Sigrid Streit
“Mapping the Conversation: A Graphic Organizer Tool for Synthesis Assignments.” Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, vol. 6, no. 22, 2022.
Newman, Sara, and Sigrid Streit. Gilbert Austin’s Chironomia Revisited: Sympathy, Science, and the Representation of Movement. Southern Illinois UP, 2020.
Pierre Zoberman
Translator, Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Catholic University of America Press, 2023.
Projects
Shannon Lodoen participated in conferences in Rome, Edmonton, and cyberspace on topics ranging from critical theory to poetry-reading. Since then, Shannon has been lucky enough to receive two independent teaching roles in composition and engineering communications courses, and is looking forward to teaching a course on her dissertation research entitled “The Rhetoric of Smartphones” in Fall 2023.
Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher is the inaugural Co-Director, with Nobel Prize recipient Donna Strickland, for the Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology (TRuST).
Sigrid Streit was awarded a research leave for the upcoming academic year and is working on her monograph project, exploring kneeling as a rhetorical gesture, of which she will be discussing her early research at this year’s RhetCanada conference. Sigrid is also excited about her current engagement with Detroit Mercy’s Institute of Leadership and Service, where she is working with Fr. Tim Hipskind on developing Detroit Mercy’s service learning courses into community engaged learning initiatives.
Other News
Shannon Lodoen got married in summer 2022. Congratulations!
Pierre Zoberman retired in October 2021. [But, fortunately for us, he is still an active scholar!]
Statement in Support of the Black Canadian Studies Association
As an association, RhetCanada would like to express our support for the Black Canadian Studies Association and to urge the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences to concretely re-commit to a Congress on the theme of colonialism and anti-Black racism as soon as possible, given both the current urgency and ongoing importance of the theme. We also urge the Federation to implement strategies to better support the work of scholars who are Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, and we commit to finding ways to better include and support these scholars and their communities within our own association.
In memory of Michael Purves-Smith
Dear CSSR / RhetCanada members and associates, it is with sadness that I share news that one of our long-term and most cherished members, Michael Purves-Smith, passed away this week.
[Photo uploaded to the obituary website by the family] 
See his online obituary at http://dreisingerfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/1071/Michael-Purves-Smith/obituary.html#content-start
Michael and his wife Shannon Purves-Smith have contributed to the society for decades both separately and in partnership, playing many roles in the executive and committees and faithfully attending yearly CSSR conferences.
Michael’s gentlemanly kindness, organizational wisdom and deep intellect will be missed. He has left a strong legacy on our scholarly organization, and more importantly, he will be kindly remembered and respected in the hearts and minds of those who have worked together with him on committees, heard his presentations, shared meals or adventures with him, or discussed ideas with him. Michael has also left behind his writings for us to enjoy and ponder. He was not only a strong rhetorician and rhetorical critic, but he also used his eloquence as an active participant in Canadian and global society and culture, doing his best to leave an ethical, creative, and powerful impact on his audiences.
We thank you, Michael, for a life lived so well.
Dear Shannon, we send out our thoughts to you at this time and sincerely wish you and your family and friends comfort in your time of mourning.
Tania S. Smith
Current President, CSSR
Call for CSSR 2017 Nominations
Dear CSSR/SCER members, we need to elect people to fill the following roles on the Executive and Committees at the 2017 AGM. If you would like to nominate someone, or nominate yourself, please contact the president Tania Smith at president@cssr-scer.ca before May 25. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the AGM.
Executive committee
We will need to prepare a full slate of nominees in case proposed 2017 Constitutional Revisions are accepted at the AGM. If none of the revisions are accepted, we will require a new secretary-treasurer and member-at-large.
Persons currently serving in the Executive may seek re-election to their current role or may seek to be elected to a different role.
See position qualifications in the proposed 2017 constitution revisions at https://goo.gl/forms/iRtcrqjTsURUNwdn1
- President: Tania Smith (2015-2017)
- Nominees welcome
- Vice-President: John Moffatt (2015-2017)
- Nominees welcome
- Secretary-Treasurer: David Beard (2015-2017)
- Nominees welcome
- Past President & Rhetor journal editor: Pierre Zoberman (2015-2017)
- Past President 2017-2019 will be Tania Smith, whether or not she serves in another role as well.
- Past President 2017-2019 will be Tania Smith, whether or not she serves in another role as well.
- Member-at-Large: Benoit Sans (2016-2017)
- Nominees welcome
Additional Executive roles
If the revised constitution is accepted, the Editor role will be separated from the Past President role, and the Editor and Webmaster will be on the Executive committee.
- Rhetor Journal Editor
- Nominees welcome
- Webmaster: Tania Smith (2012 to present)
- Nominees welcome
Advisory committee
This committee reviews conference presentation proposals for the upcoming year’s conference.
- Bruce Dadey (2015-2017)
- Nominees welcome
- Jonathan Powers (2015-2017)
- Nominees welcome
- Tracy Whalen (2016-2018)
- Tess Laidlaw (2016-2018)
- Julie Dainville (student) (2016-2018)
Editorial committee
- Pierre Zoberman (Editor/directeur, 2015-2017)
- to be Replaced by newly elected Editor
- to be Replaced by newly elected Editor
- Jeanie Wills (2013-15 past editor, member to 2017)
- to be Replaced by Pierre Zoberman, past editor 2015-2017
- Alice den Otter (2016-2020)
- Randy Harris (2014-2018)
- Victor Ferry (2014-2018)
- Loic Nicolas (2014-2018)
- Patricia Ofili (student in 2016) (2016-2020)
- Kyle Gerber (student in 2016) (2016-2020)
Nominees welcome. It would be wise to add 1-2 people in 2017 so that terms are staggered. We need Francophones.
Student prize committee
TOR: “At least one member must be currently on the Executive Committee and/or Editorial Board. At least one member should be a francophone. All members hold a Ph.D. and are not currently studying for a graduate degree.”
- J. Moffatt,
- D. Beard,
- Shannon Purves-Smith
- Nominees welcome
Webmaster Assistant & Social Media Assistants
- Ryan McGuckin (Google+ 2015 to present),
- Bruce Dadey (2016 to present)
- Brandon Katzir (Twitter, 2015 to present)
- M. Shivaun Corry (Facebook 2017 to present)
- Nominees welcome
As I do each year, I will check to see if these can continue to serve.
Reminder: 2017 Constitutional Revisions for Review
We have created two Google Forms (online surveys) that present the revisions and their rationales and gather feedback in advance of the 2017 AGM at our conference. There will be limited time for discussion during the AGM.
We welcome responses from all who consider themselves affiliated with CSSR.
- PART 1: Article 4 (Executive roles): https://goo.gl/forms/iRtcrqjTsURUNwdn1
- PART 2: Article 1 (Name) and Article 7 (Amendment of the Constitution): https://goo.gl/forms/KedS4EHSWVOmwoie2
Please try to respond on these forms before May 25, since we may need some time to compile and review the responses prior to the AGM.
For more information, see the original post April 16 at http://cssr-scer.ca/for-review-cssr-scer-constitutional-revisions/
For Review: Constitutional Revisions for the 2017 AGM
We plan to present important revisions to our constitution this year at our AGM.
The final article of our constitution states “The constitution may be amended by two-thirds of the members present and voting at the Annual General Meeting. The minimum six weeks written notice shall apply and members will be given six weeks to submit responses before the vote at the meeting.”
We have created two Google Forms (online surveys) that present the revisions and their rationales and gather feedback in advance of the AGM. There will be limited time for discussion during the AGM.
- PART 1: Article 4 (Executive roles): https://goo.gl/forms/iRtcrqjTsURUNwdn1
- PART 2: Article 1 (Name) and Article 7 (Amendment of the Constitution): https://goo.gl/forms/KedS4EHSWVOmwoie2
Please try to respond on these forms before May 25, since we may need some time to compile and review the responses prior to the AGM.
Review and responses are welcomed from 1) current members, 2) those who plan to pay or renew membership soon, as well as 3) past members who still consider themselves affiliated with us.
According to the constitution, your advance responses does NOT constitute an official vote, according to article 7 quoted above. However, at the AGM we would like to summarize the responses we have gathered to date, since it could aid us significantly in making wise decisions about the future of our organization.
Official voting will be held on each article at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), May 31, 2017 at Ryerson University, as part of the conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric / La Sociéte Canadienne pour l’Étude de la Rhétorique.
If you wish, you can return to the surveys several times to review the proposed revisions again and add further responses under your name, but you must fill out valid identifying information each time. We’ll group together your responses and consider all of them as one person’s input.
New CSSR / SCER Zotero Bibliography
CSSR / SCÉR hosts a bibliography group on Zotero.org.
Zotero is free open-source cloud-storage bibliographic software created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media in the USA. It collects source citations from library databases, Google books, Amazon, and various web sites, by working within your web browser.
The “CSSR SCER – Rhetoric” library of bibliographies can be browsed by the public at this address:
https://www.zotero.org/groups/cssr_scer_rhetoric/items
Our group’s bibliography houses
- a folder for all articles in our Rhetor journal,
- a folder for publications authored by CSSR members on the topic of rhetoric (even book reviews and conference papers are eligible, and you can also add an item with your CV and/or link to your profile)
- a folder containing an unlimited number of sub-folders for sub-topics within rhetorical studies.
See more info on our new Bibliographies page.