49 episodes

Rhetoricity is a quasi-academic podcast that draws on rhetoric, theory, weird sound effects, and the insights of a lot of other people. It's something that's a little strange and, with luck, a little interesting. The podcast's description will evolve along with it. So far, most episodes feature interviews with rhetoric and writing scholars.

The podcast is a project of Eric Detweiler, an assistant professor in the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. For more on Rhetoricity and his other work, visit http://RhetEric.org.

Rhetoricity Eric Detweiler

    • Education
    • 4.7 • 19 Ratings

Rhetoricity is a quasi-academic podcast that draws on rhetoric, theory, weird sound effects, and the insights of a lot of other people. It's something that's a little strange and, with luck, a little interesting. The podcast's description will evolve along with it. So far, most episodes feature interviews with rhetoric and writing scholars.

The podcast is a project of Eric Detweiler, an assistant professor in the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. For more on Rhetoricity and his other work, visit http://RhetEric.org.

    Rhetoricians Assemble: A Roundtable of Black Rhetoric Faculty

    Rhetoricians Assemble: A Roundtable of Black Rhetoric Faculty

    This is the third Rhetoricity episode guest-hosted by Dr. Derek Handley. It's also part of The Third Annual Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival.
    The episode was recorded at the 2022 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, and marks the two-year anniversary of the protests against anti-Black police violence that took place in the summer of 2020. Moderated by Dr. Handley, it features a roundtable of Black rhetoricians: Tamika Carey, David Green, Andre Johnson, Ersula Ore, and Gwendolyn Pough. They share the paths and choices that led them to become rhetoric scholars, reflect on the limitations of antiracist initiatives in higher education since 2020, and discuss the extra work colleges and universities often demand of Black faculty as well as the ongoing work and importance of supporting Black students and faculty across educational institutions.
    This episode features clips from the following:
    "Circle Round" by Spinning Clocks "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from The Muppet Movie Episode Transcript

    • 1 hr 25 min
    Futures in the Present Tense

    Futures in the Present Tense

    Today's episode was originally broadcast as part of The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival 2020, but is finding its way to the Rhetoricity feed in full for the first time. Focus on the carnival's theme of "The Digital Future of Rhetoric and Composition," the episode draws on shows like Adventure Time and Lovecraft Country as well as the present and future realities of the COVID pandemic, racism, and climate change to consider what our disciplinary futures might hold.
    This episode includes clips and quotations from the following:
    “Come Along With Me” – Adventure Time The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin “Future Peace” – Uuriter “Future You” – Chad Crouch “Future’s Entry” – Lately Kind of Yeah “How Long ‘til Black Future Month” – N. K. Jemisin “Our Future” – Sergey Cheremisinov “Simon & Marcy” – Adventure Time “Sundown” – Lovecraft Country Episode Transcript

    • 24 min
    Crossing Over with Cedric Burrows

    Crossing Over with Cedric Burrows

    This episode features an interview with Cedric Burrows conducted by guest interviewer Derek G. Handley. Their conversation focuses on Dr. Burrows' 2020 book Rhetorical Crossover: The Black Presence in White Culture. Along with many other topics, they discuss his writing process, the music and social movements he takes up in his research, the role of personal stories in theoretical writing and Black intellectual traditions, and how he decided to pursue a career in rhetoric and composition.
    Dr. Burrows is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Marquette University. In addition to being the author of Rhetorical Crossover, he has published work in an array of scholarly journals and was the winner of Marquette's 2020 Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Faculty Award.
    Dr. Derek Handley is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. He is currently working on a book project that explores the rhetorical and civic actions taken by African Americans in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 1950s and ‘60s as they attempted to protect their communities from urban renewal.
    This episode includes clips from the following:
    "Milwaukee" by talons' "Leftovers" by Millie Jackson "What a Difference a Day Makes" by Dinah Washington "Big Long Slidin' Thing" by Dinah Washington The Five Heartbeats "Mrs. Huxtable Goes to Kindergarten" The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove Episode Transcript

    • 55 min
    Demanding Black Linguistic Justice: An Interview with April Baker-Bell

    Demanding Black Linguistic Justice: An Interview with April Baker-Bell

    This episode features guest interviewer Derek G. Handley speaking with Dr. April Baker-Bell. They discuss Dr. Baker-Bell's book Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy as well as her work on such projects as the Black Language Syllabus and "This Ain't Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!"
    Dr. April Baker-Bell is a transdisciplinary teacher-researcher-activist and Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. A national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women.

    Baker-Bell’s award-winning book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, brings together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism (a term Baker-Bell coined) and white linguistic supremacy. The book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts, and it captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in community with Black youth. Linguistic Justice features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.
     
    Baker-Bell is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Directions Fellowship, the 2021 Michigan State University's Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the 2021 Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity, the 2020 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, the 2019 Michigan State University Alumni Award for Innovation & Leadership in Teaching and Learning, and the 2018 AERA Language and Social Processes Early Career Scholar Award.

    Dr. Derek G. Handley is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies. He’s currently working on a book project that explores the rhetorical and civic actions taken by African Americans in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 1950s and ‘60s as they attempted to protect their communities from urban renewal. He is also collaborating on a digital public humanities project with his UW-Milwaukee colleague Anne Bonds entitled “Mapping Racism and Resistance in Milwaukee County.” That project uses GIS mapping and rhetorical analysis of racial housing covenants and African American resistance to them in Milwaukee County.
    This episode contains a clip from Podington Bear's "Detroit."
    Episode Transcript

    • 1 hr 2 min
    Writing After Writing: An Interview with John Gallagher

    Writing After Writing: An Interview with John Gallagher

    This episode features an interview with John R. Gallagher conducted by guest interviewer Sarah Riddick. The interview focuses on Gallagher's 2020 book Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing. Gallagher and Riddick discuss the labor and upkeep involved in the digital writing practices of journalists, Amazon reviewers, and redditors, the methods and questions that inform Gallagher's work, and that work's implications for scholarly writing.
    John Gallagher is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He studies interfaces, digital rhetoric, participatory audiences, and technical communication. He has been published in Computers and Composition, enculturation, Rhetoric Review, Transformations, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Written Communication. In addition to Update Culture, he co-edited a 77-chapter collection with Dànielle Nicole DeVoss titled Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. As he mentions in the episode, he's also part of a team working on a National Science Foundation grant entitled "Advancing Adaptation of Writing Pedagogies for Undergraduate STEM Education Through Transdisciplinary Action Research."
    Sarah Riddick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she directs the degree-granting Professional Writing program and teaches courses about rhetoric and writing. Her research focuses on the intersections of rhetorical theory, digital rhetoric and cultures, and emergent media. She is currently exploring how social media offers new methodological and pedagogical opportunities for rhetorical studies, with a particular emphasis on how online audience engagement can inform and enhance methodological approaches to rhetorical audience studies and digital rhetorics.
    This episode features a clip from YACHT's "The Afterlife (Instrumental)."
    Episode Transcript

    • 36 min
    Unflattening Global Rhetorics and Archival Pedagogies: An Interview with Tarez Samra Graban

    Unflattening Global Rhetorics and Archival Pedagogies: An Interview with Tarez Samra Graban

    This episode features an interview with Tarez Samra Graban, an associate professor in the Department of English at Florida State University. Dr. Graban was also the keynote speaker at Middle Tennessee State University’s annual Peck Research on Writing Symposium in February 2020. This interview was recorded just after that keynote, which was titled “Rhetoric, Feminism, and the Transnational Archive.”
    In this interview, Dr. Graban discusses her work on global and transnational rhetorics, archival methods, and rethinking the role and structure of rhetoric and writing majors at US universities. In particular, we discuss four of her projects. First, Alternative Sources for Rhetorical Traditions, an collection coedited by Graban and Hui Wu. Second, Teaching Rhetoric and Composition through the Archives, another collection Dr. Graban is coediting, this time with Wendy Hayden. Third, her 2017 article “Decolonising the Transnational Archive,” which was published in the African Journal of Rhetoric. And finally, a chapter she cowrote with Meghan Velez for the Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics, which came out last year.
    This episode features a clip from Mystery Mammal's "Archives."
    Episode Transcript

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
19 Ratings

19 Ratings

leempierce ,

I love needing out in rhetoric, what can I say?!

Hello from another rhetorician and podcast host (RhetoricLee Speaking). I came across this podcast looking for other in-depth podcasts in rhetoric and am loving it! The interview on juxtaposition was excellent and I’m excited for more

Amesasaurous ,

Can't get enough!

This is an incredible resource for a newbie to the field like me. I especially love the segment where each scholar being interviewed poses a new question to the next interviewee without knowing who it will be, and answers the question from the previous interviewee. Keep up the great work!

UAH Tech Comm ,

Rhetoric nerds unite!!

Great insight on rhetoric and the field of composition. The interviews are informative and the host is engaging. Check it out!

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