So, I’m planning for conference number three this year…I thought it would be a good idea to begin teasing out the distinctions and connections among my papers. For my CCCCs paper, “Save Our School: Multimodal Activism and the Struggle to Save the Early Learning Center at Kutztown University,” I will be looking at how members of an emerging coalition of faculty, students, and parents made, in Nancy Welch’s terms, “rhetorical space through concerted, often protracted struggle for visibility, voice, and impact against power interests that deny visibility, voice, and impact” (Welch 477). In particular, this paper is interested in the “multimodal” character of that work. That is, the “Save the ELC” coalition not only made use of traditionally recognizable forms of activism like petitions and demonstrations, but also made use of new technologies and social networking software in making their case. I am also interested in how that rhetorical space took shape and how tricky it was to sustain it as the struggle to save the ELC wore on. For the record, the struggle continues and there remain serious concerns about the university’s long-term commitment to the school.
My second paper is for RSA in May: “Holding Back the Membership: Breaking Cycles of Despair and Rhetorics of Power in a Contract Negotiations Year.” This paper is part of the panel “Responsible to Whom for What?: Complex Audiences at Cross-Purposes in Labor Organizing,” with my fellow APSCUF-KU Exec member Ken Ehrensal as well as Seth Kahn and Cheryl Wanko from West Chester University. In that paper, I look at a dispute within members of our union, APSCUF, during our recent contract negotiations. I am particularly interested in the ways in which dominant and emergent concepts of unionism played out in terms of strategy and tactics and how members sought to remake a union identity.
Finally, I am now working on a paper proposal for the 2008 Watson Conference and I am thinking about similar issues. At the moment my working title (emphasis on “working”) is “Mediated Advocacy: A Look at the Impacts of New Technologies in a Campus Campaign.” We’ll see where this one goes. I just put the rough sketch of this paper together today (finally)…still very rough, but you get the idea.
As I was working on the Watson proposal today, I began to think about linkages and what shape these three papers might take as a project–both in terms of publishing, but also in terms of a direction for further scholarship. I guess I like the questions I am posing and the fact that each paper is taking up similar questions in different contexts. And all of this builds nicely, if I don’t say so myself, from Rachel’s and my forthcoming book, Democracies to Come. If there we are working through notions of rhetorical action, political-communities-in-struggle, and micro-negotiations of hegemony, these three papers seem like a fitting extension and elaboration on that work. Interesting.
Sorry for all this “insider” talk–inside my head that is. I just needed to get some of this stuff out on the page. I think it’s time to think about hitting the sack for the night. It’s a big weekend after all. My grandmother is turning 90! And she still bowls.
This is a podcast of the paper I gave at the Rhetoric Society of America 13th Biennial Conference in Seattle, WA on May 26, 2008. My paper, “Holding Back the Membership: Breaking Cycles of Despair and Rhetorics of Power in a Contract Negotiations Year,” was part of a panel I was on with Ken Ehrensal, Seth Kahn, and Cheryl Wanko. Our panel was titled, “Responsible to Whom, for What?: Complex Audiences at Cross-Purposes in Labor Organizing.” Our panel was focused on the last round of contract negotiations for our union, APSCUF.
