RhetCanada 2019 Conference Programme
Final Program with Maps (PDF)
Tuesday, June 4
| Time | Session (Geog 200) |
|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 | Coffee & pay membership dues |
| 9:00-9:15 | Welcome, Tania Smith |
| 9:15-10:15 |
Keynote Roderick Hart, “Finding Hope in Turbulent Times“ |
| 10:15-10:30 | Coffee |
| 10:30-12:00 |
Rhetorical Practices of Hope (Chair: Andrew McGillivray)
|
| 12:00-13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30-14:30 |
Canadian Communities: Sagas and Myths (Chair: Shivaun Corry)
|
| 14:30-15:00 | Coffee & pay membership dues |
| 15:00-16:00 |
A Canadian Horror and a Hero (Chair: Colleen Derkatch) |
| 19:30-22:30 |
RhetCanada / CSSR Banquet UCLL Ideas Lounge |
Wednesday, June 5
| Time | Session (Math 104) | Session (Math 105) |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00-10:30 | Coffee & pay membership dues | |
| 10:30-12:00 |
Two Movements and a Memorial (Chair: Sigrid Streit) |
The Cognitive-Computational Approach to Rhetorical Figures (Chair: Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder)
|
| 12:00-13:30 | Lunch | |
| 13:30-14:30 |
Rhetorics of Health and Wellness (Chair: Sean Zwagerman) |
Our Past and Future: From Geology to Robotics [English, French] (Chair: Katherine Tu)
|
| 14:30-15:00 | Coffee & pay membership dues | |
| 15:00-16:00 |
Heated Controversies (Chair: Masa Torbica) |
|
| 16:00-19:30 |
Roundtable & Reception: The Role of Rhetoric in Shaping Hope (LSK 121 ) With refreshments Pay $30 via online Congress registration. |
Thursday, June 6
| Time | Session (Math 102) | Session (Math 105) |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 | Coffee & pay membership dues | |
| 9:00-10:00 |
Chinese Rhetorics [Presented in English] (Chair: Taylor Morphett) |
Ancient Battles and Oracles [French w. English handouts] (Chair: Saeed Sabzian)
|
| 10:00-10:30 | Coffee | |
| 10:30-12:00 |
Hope for Communities (Chair Devon Moriarty)
|
Visual, Linguistic, and Multi-modal Rhetorics (Chair: Julie Dainville)
|
| 12:00-13:30 | Lunch | |
| 13:30-14:30 |
Citizenship and Politics in New Media (Chair: Liwei Zhang) |
|
| 14:30-15:00 | Coffee & refreshments | |
| 15:00-16:00 |
Roundtable: RhetCanada’s Hopes. Charting a rhetorical future Free event, open discussion |
|
| 16:00-17:30 |
RhetCanada / CSSR AGM (Chair: Tania Smith) |
|
| 17:30-19:00 |
Congress President’s Reception for 13 associations Use your complimentary drink ticket in your badge |
Descriptions
Keynote Address/ Discours d’ouverture
Finding Hope in Turbulent Times
Roderick Hart
The world is now beset with new forms of tribalism and old forms of nationalism. New and angry voices abound, with political leaders often appealing to the churlishness within us. What to do? This address presents the concept of civic hope, an expectation (1) that enlightened leadership is possible despite human foibles, (2) that productive forms of citizenship will result from cultural pluralism, (3) that democratic traditions will yield prudent governance, but (4) that none of this can happen without vigorous forms of argument at the grassroots level.
The address draws on my recent book, Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive (Cambridge, 2018) that asks (1) Who believes in political hope? (2) Have such feelings changed over the years? and (3) What does political hope sounds like when expressed? Drawing on a twenty-year research project, I focus on what people say about politics, what they say but do not mean, and what they mean but do not say.
My core argument is that the strength of a democracy lies in its weaknesses and in the willingness of its people to address those weaknesses without surcease. If democracies were not shot-through with unstable premises and unsteady compacts, its citizens would remain quiet, removed from one another. Disagreements – endless, raucous disagreements – draw them in, or at least enough of them to have a debate. Political already hope exists. We just need to learn how to recognize it and, after doing so, how to applaud it.
Dr. Roderick P. Hart (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1970) holds the Allan Shivers Centennial Chair in Communication at The University. His area of special interest is politics and the mass media and he is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Political Tone: How Leaders Talk and Why (University of Chicago Press, 2013). He is also the author of DICTION 7.0, a computer program designed to analyze language patterns. Dr. Hart has delivered public lectures at more than ninety colleges and universities and received grant support from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Exxon Foundation, Hatton Sumners Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Dorot Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. He was named a Research Fellow of the International Communication Association, a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association, and the National Scholar of the Year Award from Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and has received the Murray Edelman Career Award from the American Political Science Association. Dr. Hart has been inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas and has also been designated Professor of the Year for the State of Texas from the Carnegie/C.A.S.E. Foundation. Previously he received the Eyes of Texas Student Involvement Award and the Texas Excellence Teaching Award from the University of Texas, the Excellence in Teaching Award in the Humanities from Purdue University, and the Outstanding Young Teacher Award from the Central States Communication Association. He has supervised over sixty graduate theses and dissertations. He is the founding director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life and served as Dean of the Moody College of Communication from 2004 to 2015.
Wellness as a Hopeful Rhetoric: Finding Life in a State of Exhaustion
By Colleen Derkatch
Abstract: This presentation begins from Lauren Berlant’s provocation to consider how we might view “unhealthy” behaviours—consuming junk food and alcohol, playing videogames, or even smoking—not as disregard for life but as attachment to it. So-called unhealthy behaviours function as survival strategies under neoliberal logics of self-surveillance and self-improvement by offering “vitalizing pleasure” as respite for the exhausted self (27). This presentation argues that the concept of wellness similarly operates, counterintuitively, as a survival strategy, the flip side of a tub of Häagen-Dazs at nighttime: wellness-oriented products such as supplements offer a sense of agency, a means of reducing the burdens of everyday life even when nothing else seems possible.
Poetry and Performance from Black Arts to Black Optimism
By Dale Smith
Abstract: Black performativity and entertainment are complex results of centuries-long proximities to violence in North America. While spectacular forms of violence often dominate news headlines, more mundane social forms are common. This paper looks at how epideictic rhetoric is used to address social tension and revise attitudes and values connected to race.
John Locke’s Hope for Civil Discourse through Civil Silence
By Mark Longaker
Abstract: Hope for toleration may reside in close attention to the daily rhetorical habits of citizen interaction. Close analysis of John Locke’s early writings shows that he chose argumentative tactics in order to pursue a more tolerant society during the Restoration.
The Manitoba Sagas
By Andrew McGillivray
Abstract: Icelandic settlers in Manitoba composed their local histories as “sagas,” setting the publications within an extended Icelandic historiographical tradition. The speaker defines The Manitoba Sagas, contextualizes their European-Indigenous encounters, and compares these episodes with similar episodes from The Vinland Sagas.
Myths of Community: Legal Fictions and Rhetoric in Canadian Religious Freedom
By Nicolas Noble
Abstract: Focusing on the provincial and federal hearings related to Trinity Western University’s recent legal bid to open a law school, this presentation explores the legal fictions underpinning freedom of religion in Canada and the rhetorical strategies formulated by responsive religious communities in relevant legal case.
“Rotten with Perfection”: Hope and the Repeated Apologies for The Indian Residential School System
By M. Shivaun Corry
Abstract: The repeated apologies for Canadian aboriginal boarding schools help us understand apologies as “rotten with perfection”: Because no iteration of an apology is perfect, the apology must be repeated ad infinitum. Yet, with each iteration, the nation is reborn, distancing itself from its crimes and coming closer to its ideals.
Constituting a Canadian Hero: The Material Rhetoric of Terry Fox in the Canadian History Museum.
By Derek Foster
Abstract: Douglas Coupland said that Terry Fox is the only citizen who can never divide us. This may or may not be true. However, I analyze the rhetorical power of the Canadian Museum of History’s exhibit “Terry Fox: Running to the Heart of Canada” and demonstrate how it is made believable.
Persuasion in motion: the rhetorical role of youth-led long marches within the Idle No More Movement
By Masa Torbica
Abstract: This paper examines the rhetorical affordances and impacts of long marches within the Idle No More Movement. Drawing upon work by Indigenous scholars Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, I posit that ventures like the Nishiyuu Walkers’ 1,600km journey from Whapmagoostui to Ottawa constitute a powerful manifestation of an embodied and land-based rhetoric of hope.
Rhetoric Without End: Occupy and the Strategy of Silence
By Bruce Dadey
Abstract: The most unorthodox aspect of the Occupy movement was its resistance to creating an official list of demands (“Occupy everything, demand nothing”). While many saw this as a fault, the movement’s strategic silence was in fact a rhetorical tactic that allowed it to evoke participation and resist political co-option.
The Material Rhetoric of Silent Witnessing: Remembering the Crash of Arrow Air 1285
By Tracy Whalen
Abstract: This paper studies a trauma site—specifically, the 1985 crash site of an American military plane in Gander—as a “material” witness that testifies. With attention to naming, statuary, and landscape, it explores what kind of testimony the site makes possible, especially in the context of official narratives of remembering.
A Figure Is a Figure Is a Figure: The Cognitive-computational Approach to Rhetorical Figures
By Kyle Gerber, Danielle Bisnar Griffin, Katherine Tu, & Randy Allen Harris
Abstract: This paper outlines a set of principles for understanding and utilizing rhetorical figures. These principles come out of a project on the neurocognitive dimensions of figures, aided by computational methods (ontological modelling and algorithmic detection), with computational goals (including augmented criticism, argument mining, genre detection, and authorship attribution) and cross-linguistic goals (the presence and function of figures in different languages and different language types). They include such criterial axioms as figures are semiotic form/function pairings, and such methodological heuristics as figures are atomic (they can be uniquely identified with specific linguistic configurations) and style is molecular (it is manifest, in large part, by combinations of figures, in preferential or definitional ways).
Rhetorical Figures as Cognitive: A Case Study of Isocolon
By Katherine Tu
Abstract: Isocolon, the figure of prosodic parallelism characteristic of poetry and prominent among the great orators (Churchill, Kennedy, Obama), is preeminently cognitive. It leverages two neurocognitive affinities, repetition and sequencing. What repeats is the intonation contour of a sequence of words, otherwise known as rhythm, and repeated rhythms, by activating (basically) the same neural pathways, reduce the processing burden, increase the salience, memorability, and aesthetic effect of the language, and iconically induces the function of conceptual alignment. What sounds alike, means alike.
Chiastic Mirrors: Reverse-repetition Figures in Martyrs Mirror
By Kyle Gerber
Abstract: This paper illustrates the utility of computational tools for rhetorical analysis by critically applying figure detection software to a 17th century theological tome. I demonstrate how rhetorical figures, like antimetabole, cluster together in highly functional relationships and argue these relationships illuminate rhetorical structures, perhaps even epitomizing entire spheres of reasoning.
The T3 Hormone in Hypothyroid Therapy, 2012-2018
By Tania Smith
Abstract: I analyze arguments in scientific literature from 2012 to 2018 for and against the use of T3 (triiodothyronine) in hypothyroid therapy, employing theories by Aristotle, Perelman, Vatz, and Burke. Dismissal and fear of T3’s power continue to diminish and filter T3 research and experience, but rhetorics of hope are arising.
Finding Hope in Miracles: An Exploration of Illness Narratives in Alternative Medicine
By Sigrid Streit
Abstract: Practitioners and clients of alternative medicine will, at times, use references to magic and miracles when discussing treatment outcomes. Exploring their arguments, I propose a new kind of illness narrative, the magical healing story, which introduces hope of restored health to the chronically ill and, simultaneously, represents alternative medicine’s unique identity outside mainstream medicine.
Rhetoric and Geology: Uncommon Grounds for the Anthropocene
By Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder
Abstract: A “rhetoric for the geologic now” points us to material and symbolic forces that construct our Earth and ground our relations. For complex environmental situations in the Anthropocene, like the geoengineering test conducted off of Haida Gwaii in 2012, a geologic emphasis provides new lessons for environmental rhetoric.
Le Guetteur de rêves : un ethos pour les experts en robotique ? [The Watchkeeper : an ethos for experts in robotics ?]
By Céline Pieters et Lucie Donckier de Donceel (Coauthors)
Bref résumé : L’ethos du « Guetteur de rêves », décrit par Miguel Abensour, fait référence à une personne qui possèderait la capacité de guider une communauté vers un monde futur possible, souhaitable et vraisemblable. Nous explorons le potentiel de cet ethos pour le cas des experts en robotique qui souhaitent présenter leur discipline à l’auditoire universel, sans pour autant générer un sentiment d’anxiété envers les robots.
Abstract: The ethos of the Watchkeeper (‘Guetteur de Rêves’) described by Miguel Abensour, refers to a person who possesses the ability to guide a community towards another future that seems possible, likely and desirable. We question the potential of this ethos for experts in robotics who wish to introduce their work without generating anxiety towards robots.
De/Securitizing Supreme Court Rhetoric and the Transformative Access to Guns
By Ian Hill
Abstract: Legal rhetoric that grants, restricts, and prohibits access to weapons differentiates who experiences security and who experiences insecurity. Analyses of important U.S. Supreme Court decisions show that they altered the U.S. Constitution, effectively rewriting the Second Amendment to incorporate the rights of lethal self-defense and to bear any carry-able firearms.
“I Just Don’t Believe It:” Ideology, Conviction, and Dialogue
By Sean Zwagerman
Abstract: In identifying the forces which degrade public discourse, scholarly analyses tend to place the blame on vast ideologies: capitalism, neoliberalism, etc. But such analyses say more about the scholar than about public discourse—while many academics are ideologues, most people are not. Against ideology, the concept of conviction better describes the problem of unpersuadability in public controversies.
“The Sea Admits Hundreds of Rivers for Its Capacity to Hold: Revisiting the Rhetoric of “Hé” Culture in China’s Reform and Opening-up Discourse”
By Liwei Zhang
Abstract: 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China’s Reform and Opening-up. Drawing upon Burkeian (1984) rhetorical criticism, this paper explores how Chinese President Xi Jinping revisits the rhetoric of Chinese “Hé” culture at the world events hosted by China in 2018 in encouraging the international community to conduct cooperation with China.
“Reproduction with Chinese Characteristics”: on the Rhetoric of Postpartum Confinement in China
By Kejia Wang
Abstract: This presentation traces the (rhetorical) history of Chinese reproductive policy and performs a close reading on Chinese online media artifacts to explore the current Chinese conceptualization of postpartum confinement as a uniquely Chinese experience that confirms PC practitioners’ Chinese identities and reinforces their faith in Chinese exceptionalism.
Inspirer l’espoir ou la peur : harangues militaires de Polybe et de Tite-Live [Inspiring hope or fear: lessons from Polybius’ and Livy’s battle speeches]
By: Benoit Sans
Court résumé: (FR): Au travers d’une étude comparée de harangues militaires tirées de Polybe et Tite-Live, cette présentation propose d’étudier la technique et la composition de ce type de discours. Abstract (ENG): Through a comparative study of battle speeches from Polybius’ and Livy’s works, this paper intends to study the technique and composition of such kind of speeches.
Peur, espoir et prise de décision : la délibération oraculaire dans l’historiographie ancienne [Fear, hope, and decision: oracular deliberation in ancient historiography]
By Julie Dainville
Court résumé: (FR): L’objet de cette présentation est une étude du rôle joué par l’espoir et la peur dans le processus de prise de décision qui précède ou suit une consultation oraculaire. Cette étude s’appuiera sur une analyse et une comparaison d’extraits d’historiographie ancienne mettant en scène différentes formes de divination. Abstract (ENG): This presentation aims at investigating the role played by fear and hope in the decision-making process preceding or following an oracular consultation. The study will rely on an analysis and a comparison of several abstracts from ancient historiography involving different divinatory aspect.
“Worry about the University”: Hope and Despair in the Academy
By Taylor Morphett
Abstract: The polemical and binary debate around the nature of the university has projected a rather bleak future for the university. By looking at cultural context from which the polemic and binary discourse around the university springs, this paper will argue that there is more hope in the academy than is normally considered.
World Makers and the Rhetorical Work of Emergent Hope, Amidst Systems Change
By Nicole R. Brown
Abstract: Informed by 5+ years field work amidst grassroots groups and members of Coast Salish Tribes/Nations, “World Makers” are makers of things, rituals, and spaces. At a time of turbulence in economic/ecological/social/political systems, world makers shift focus from materialism towards hopeful rhetorical strategies of “doing” and “making.”
The Road to Seeing: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Visual Rhetoric
By Saeed Sabzian
Abstract: We see with the eyes; but we see with mind too. Once we understand saying as a means to induce seeing, language can be examined for its ways of handling our mental eyes, guided to the rhetor’s intended directions. Based in a close reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, as film and as novel, I advance a rhetorically informed cinematic approach to reading.
“Canadian Multimodal Rhetorics: The Case of Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire’s The Secret Path.”
By David Beard and John Moffatt
Abstract: Secret Path, by Gord Downie, tells the story of “Chanie Wenjack, who died [in] 1966, in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, walking home to the family he was taken from over 400 miles away.” Secret Path is of cultural importance, visible in concert performances, radio documentaries, and print coverage. We will demonstrate that the repetition
across media in the Secret Path mirror the process of repetition inherent in rhetoric acknowledging, mourning, and addressing the trauma of residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada.
A New Reddit: Reviving Hope through Rhetorical Citizenship
By Devon Moriarty
Abstract: Beginning with Kock and Villadsen’s conception of “rhetorical citizenship” to argue that Reddit is a contemporary, digital embodiment of the Ancient Greek agora, I propose ways that Reddit’s digital citizens can work to eliminate vitriolic users and subreddits that have begun to spill across the site.
Social Media’s Suasion on Political Rhetoric: A Case Study of the 2015 Maclean’s Leaders’ Debate #macdebate
By Monique Kampherm
Abstract: Election campaigns are being revolutionized, taking on a new form through social media platforms, primarily Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I use the 2015 Maclean’s Leaders’ Debate #macdebate as a case study to probe the effects of social media on political rhetoric in the 2015 Canadian federal election.