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
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
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!]