Author: Bruce Dadey

Our peer review of proposals is now complete. Here is a list of titles of presentation proposals accepted for the CSSR/SCÉR 2017 conference. Hopefully this interesting set of titles will entice others to attend our conference in Toronto, ON, May 30-June 1, 2017.

In alphabetical order:

•    A neurocognitive ontology of rhetorical figures
•    Apartheid Legal Screens and Nelson Mandela’s Luminescence
•    Cautiously Optimistic: Imagining a Multicultural Canada in 1941
•    Communication across lay/expert divides: A rhetorical decision-making framework
•    From persuasion to presumption to standards and surveillance: Rhetorical mechanisms in the promotion of surgical checklists
•    From Usability to UX: Visual Rhetoric, Comics, and Technical Communication
•    Hidden in Plain Sight: Memory, Fake News and the Rhetoric of Ignorance
•    How to Survive Food-pocalypse: The Politics of Food Resilience Narratives
•    Hyperreal Gentrification in Istanbul
•    Identification Strategies in China’s National-Image Discourse Construction
•    Laughing Stocks: Prison, Surplus, Comic Relief
•    Les usages de l’ekphrasis / The uses of ekphrasis
•    “Liberals Lead:” The Rhetorical Influence of CBC’s Aggregate Polling Data on Voters in the 2015 Canadian National Election
•    Occupy Wall Street, C.S. Peirce’s Theory of Rhetoric, and the Right to the Commons
•    “On Earth as it is in Heaven”: Transitive Action in The Lord’s Prayer
•    Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Pirouette as Canadian Ideograph
•    Publicly Anonymous: Ethical Rhetorical Analysis Online
•    Reimagining the Political: Weaving Aesthetics & Sensation in Communication & Rhetoric Theory
•    Resonance Chambers & Industrial Nightmares: Big Wind’s Rhetorical Afflictions
•    Re-turning the Rhetorical Turn to Narrative Practice
•    Rhetoric And/ Rhetoric of
•    Rhetoric Meets Structuralism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
•    Rhétorique et divination : comment rendre le divin évident dans la Grèce classique ?
Rhetoric and divination: how to make the divine obvious in classical Greece?
•    The Context of Melmoth’s 1749 English Translation of Tacitus’ Dialogue on Oratory
•    The Meme is the Message: Subtervising through Self-Care Internet Memes
•    The Transformative Power of Rhetoric:  Speaking to Become the President or Prime Minister
•    Une rhétorique critique et inclusive. L’enseignement des questions rhétoriques à des professionnels se formant en éthique appliquée
•    Vico’s rhetorical angle: geometry, genealogy, and argumentative ingenuity
•    Viral Vaccines: Proposed Policy and the Rhetoric of Redditors Response

The DRAFT programme will be in developement after Feb. 27, by which time I hope to have received replies from proposers indicating whether they are planning to attend.

Keynote speakers’ presentations may be added to the programme at a later date.

Did you miss the deadline to submit your 2017 CSSR proposal?

It was Sunday, January 15th.

The good news is that we’ve got a wealth of proposals from new people! However, I am somewhat dismayed that some of our regulars haven’t submitted proposals.

Therefore, IF you are a currently paid CSSR member, OR you are a past paid CSSR member, and you would still like to submit a proposal for the 2017 conference,

1. Please email me (Tania Smith) ASAP to declare your intention to submit a proposal. I would like to know how many are coming late so I can start preparing peer review now.
2. I would be willing to receive your late proposal by end of day, Saturday, January 21 if you are a current paid member or a past member.  Consider this a bonus “membership benefit” this year!  See the 2017 conference page for information and the CFP.

I’m sorry we cannot afford an extended deadline of longer than 1 week for members. We must start reviewing right away. Several people who submitted proposals need early review results in order to obtain travel funding.

I also aim to give results in time for every presenter to register while Congress still offers a reduced “early bird” registration fee and to plan their accommodations before rooms are not sold out at conference hotels nearby.

Dear rhetoric scholars, please plan ahead some time to draft your proposal to present at the CSSR 2017 conference.  The deadline is coming in one month.

• Download the full CFP document from https://app.box.com/v/cssr-cfp-2017
• Proposals are due by January 15, 2017.

You’re welcome to consult with me (Tania S. Smith) about your proposal ideas in advance.  It’s also nice to know some more proposals are likely to come in by the deadline.

Please distribute our call for papers to individual colleagues and offer a personal note to encourage them to submit a proposal. I’ve already sent the CFP to a number of distribution lists. I’ve also distributed it internationally. We may be a society based in Canada, but our presentation topics and membership reach far beyond Canada.

Encourage your best students of rhetoric (graduate and undergraduate) to submit a proposal and/or attend our conference and become a member. We offer a prize for the best student paper, and we have positions on committees earmarked for students.

Unlike several other rhetoric societies that meet biennially, we host annual conferences. Your regular participation in our conferences can sustain and deepen your collegial relationships and networks of academic support (and perhaps even collaboration) beyond your own institution and region.

Rhetoricians may currently be a rare breed (at least outside of the US), but good rhetoric and good rhetorical scholarship is crucially important today. Rhetoric can be a growing (inter)disciplinary area if we continue to demonstrate the field’s breadth, relevance and usefulness.

I’m looking forward to many high-quality submissions for an invigorating conference in 2017 in Toronto.

Dr Tania S. Smith, President, CSSR/SCER