Resources

In my own practice of Rhetoric and Composition, I find it to be a rich field with slightly permeable boundaries—likely the result of institutional and disciplinary shifts that occurred in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and have recurred, off and on, since North America’s Progressive Era. It is difficult for me to valuate “rhetoric” or “composition” separately from one another. Together, they allow me to study language in a fairly wide variety of instantiations and contexts, examine the uses of public and political discourse, and ask diverse questions of diverse movements. Together, they also allow me to study knowledge-making practices and phenomena—both inside and outside the classroom—as historically emergent, exercising approaches that are critical, theoretical, and pedagogical at once.

From this vantage point, it is an exciting time for scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition. An abundance of digital resources and public-domain texts have made—and continue to make—historical inquiries more viable by inviting the de/reconstruction of extant narratives about our societies and our schools. At the same time, digital abundance creates severe and interesting gaps, requiring our critical and historical methodologies to grow as well. This page has emerged as a fairly eclectic set of resources that I regularly use to consider how evolving rhetorical traditions bear on feminist theory, archival theory, multi- and translingualism, epistemology, citizenship, digital scholarship, and writing program work. I list them with no motives of infringement; all links are assumed to be for educational fair use.

For more tailored resource lists (including critical glossaries), feel free to visit my course pages, many of which feature assignments or course plans that merge archives and archival practices with specific aspects of digital or rhetorical education. For a dynamic list of scholarly resources (including field journals), visit the RSA’s Rhetoric & Composition page. For a dynamic list of journals that take up rhetoric studies more broadly, visit American Rhetoric.com’s communication journals page.