Upcoming Events:

 

Ongoing Club Events:

Agraphia

Shame goes where willpower fears to tread. People do weird things to avoid looking bad in front of their peers. This is why weekly writing groups work. In How to Write a Lot, Paul Silvia describes the agraphia group, a structured writing group focused on concrete writing goals. Members meet and set specific goals for what they'll write before the next meeting. The group's record-keeper writes the goals down for posterity, and the next week's meeting starts with checking off which goals were met and unmet. You might get good feedback about your writing from your agraphia group, but the best thing you'll get is anxiety about being the only one who didn't meet his or her writing goal.If you would like to join us, email us at Rhetoric.Reno@gmail.com.

Journal Club

This students-only reading group meets several times a semester to meet, read, and discuss current articles in rhetoric. The purpose of this event is to encourage students to engage with on-going scholarship and supplement the reading from seminars. Articles are always student-selected, and discussions are facilitated by an R@R member. If you would like to join us, email us at Rhetoric.Reno@gmail.com.

Professionalization Workshops

We hold several professionalization workshops each academic year. Previous topics have included CVs, conference proposal writing, and academic publishing. Please see our calendar for upcoming workshops.

Social Events:

The Rhetoric@Reno club regularly hosts social events such as dinners for new graduate students and end-of-semester happy hours.

past Events:

Capitalism, Climate, and Public Discourse: The Limits and Possibilities of Rhetorical Intervention

A day-long symposium of in conjunction with Naomi Klein's Forum on Excellence lecture
February 12, 2016 || University of Nevada, Reno
Knowledge Center Graduate & Faculty Reading Room (422)

Rhetoric@Reno invites you to attend “Capitalism, Climate, and Public Discourse: The Limits and Possibilities of Rhetorical Invention,” a one-day symposium held in conjunction with a public lecture by Naomi Klein about her recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate. The symposium speakers are comprised of 16 nationally recognized scholars from English, rhetoric, and communication programs from across the country who have worked directly or tangentially on climate or capitalism as well as those who have expertise in movement politics and institutional critique, all themes found in Klein’s book. Using Klein’s book as a common text, four thematically focused panels will discuss 1) the relationship between knowledge production and public policy; 2) social movement strategizing; 3) the critique and construction of alternative institutional spaces; and 4) the relationship between the economy and discursive production. Though each panel will foster important academic debate in particular areas of rhetorical study, the symposium will more broadly address the role of the critical rhetorician as public intellectual and critically explore the ethical responsibilities of the University in knowledge and cultural production.

 

"Ancient Rhetoric as an Imperial Project"

Susan Jarratt

We are pleased to be hosting Susan Jarratt for a public lecture in April, 2015.

Her talk will be entitled "Ancient Rhetoric as an Imperial Project." It will address possible ways of reading ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric in light of contemporary theory with attention to topoi such as violence and complicity, and free and figured speech with primary examples coming from post-classical Greek rhetoric produced in the Roman imperial era.

 

Western States Rhetoric and Literacy Conference: LITERACIES AND RHETORICS OF CRISIS

November 7-8, 2014 || University of Nevada, Reno
Keynote Address: Peter Mortensen

Program Draft Now Available.

Crisis is not a new subject for either literacy or rhetoric studies. A crisis between oral and written literacies produced the dynamic ideological conception of literacy as an interdisciplinary study situated in specific social and cultural contexts. Rhetoric is similarly animated by identity crises: the sophists, Plato, and Aristotle vied with a sense of urgency to define the uses and misuses of rhetoric. We rehearse these origin stories to emphasize two points: first, crises are part and parcel of our disciplinary fabric, and, second, crises are both restrictive and productive. Every crisis marks the boundary between what we have been doing and what we have yet to do, gesturing toward pathways beyond those limitations.