RSA Nominees for Board of Directors
The Board of Directors of the Rhetoric Society of America is the principal policy-making body of the Society and is responsible for promoting the Society's purposes. In addition to its policy making function, directors serve on the various standing committees of the Society, as are indicated in its bylaws, and serve as a conduit for member issues, concerns, and proposals to the officers and the other board members of the Society. The bylaws stipulate that RSA shall have a Board of Directors consisting of nine members, one of whom is to be a student member. Board members serve four-year terms. The student member serves a two-year term. Elections to the board are held every two years, so that approximately half the board members are retained and terms of the other half terminated at each election (i.e. 4/5 members). An electoral contest for the designated student member, who serves a two-year term, must be on the ballot every two years. Election contests are between paired candidates to insure that the composition of the board reflects the diversity of the Society's various disciplines, teaching and research traditions, as well as region, race, and gender.
The RSA Nominating Committee is pleased to announce that the RSA Board unanimously accepted its recommendation that Michael Leff, Communications, University of Memphis, be installed as President-Elect as of January 2008 (see RSA Constitution, Article IV, Section B). The Nominating Committee is further pleased to offer for your consideration the following slate of candidates (the Jasinski-Warnick contest will elect a person to complete the last two years of Leff's term as Board member). The election winners will take office as of January 2008. The Society thanks all for their willingness to serve.
Candidates for position held by Michael Leff (2 year term)
James Jasinski, Communication, University of Puget Sound
I am currently Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Communication Studies at the University of Puget Sound and a member of Puget Sound's African American Studies Advisory Committee. I'm beginning my fourth term as an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and I have served on (and am serving on) several other editorial boards. I helped organize a workshop on "The Discourses of Slavery" at RSA's inaugural 2005 institute, and am working with University of Washington colleagues as a local site coordinator for the 2008 conference. If elected to the board of directors, my goals would include: working through RSA and with RSA members to promote the "interdiscipline" of rhetorical studies, working through RSA and with RSA members to facilitate greater interaction among rhetoricians across disciplinary lines, and working through RSA and with RSA members, especially those at liberal arts institutions, to encourage greater attention to, and reflection on, rhetoric's historical relationship to the liberal arts.
Barbara Warnick, Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh.
My professional work for RSA includes membership on the editorial board for Rhetoric Society Quarterly for two terms, work on the RSA nominating committee in 2006, and serving as a seminar leader at the RSA 2007 summer institute. I am former editor of the Quarterly Journal of Speech and former Vice President and President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric. My current research focuses on the use of rhetoric in online environments (Rhetoric Online, Lang, 2007). My prior work has focused on rhetorical theory, argumentation theory, and the history of rhetoric. I believe that RSA should continue to focus some of its efforts on helping early career scholars to develop research and teaching programs that focus on communication in electronic environments. I also believe that we should foster interdisciplinary initiatives in which rhetoric plays a role in addressing the major issues of our time.
Candidates for position held by: Susan Jarratt (4 years)
Jane Donawerth, English, University of Maryland
A long-time member of RSA, I have served as an RSA program reviewer, on the CCCC program committee and the CCCC Dissertation Prize Committee. I designed the first graduate course in the history of rhetoric for my department, as well as the MA with a minor in Rhetoric and Composition. I have served as UM Director of Introductory Writing, and Coordinator of the disciplinary group on Language, Writing, and Rhetoric, and helped put in place the undergraduate certificate program in Rhetoric (now a Minor). I continue to teach composition studies and history of rhetoric. I authored Shakespeare and the Sixteenth-Century Study of Language, edited Rhetorical Theory by Women: An Anthology, and co-translated with a student the prize-winning Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues of Madeleine de Scudry. I helped to found the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, the international conference, "Attending to Early Modern Women," and the journal, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. In these organizations and at my university, I have fought shamelessly to incorporate under-represented groups, and I would continue to do so on the RSA Board. I would also bring my considerable experience from other organizations to think about innovative ways to help finance and increase participation in RSA.
Krista Ratcliffe, English, Marquette University
My participation in RSA began in my graduate student days at the Ohio State University and continued during my early career but in recent years has been interrupted by summer teaching schedules and a small child. Now, having regularly read _RSQ_ scholarship, having reacquainted myself with RSA at its last conference, and looking forward to Seattle, I hope to give back to RSA for the encouragement I received as a young scholar. If elected to the board, I would encourage RSA to continue promoting young scholar/teachers and to forward rhetoric scholarship that addresses feminist issues, critical race studies issues, and global rhetorics (as well as much-needed interventions). As for my credentials, I am currently Professor and Chair of English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, where I also served as Director of the First-Year Writing Program, which under my direction won a 2006 CCCC Certificate of Excellence Award for its emphasis on rhetoric, literacy and diversity. I have served as President of NCTE's College Forum and as President of CCCC's Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. My research considers how listening may function as a means of cross-cultural communication; my book Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (SIUP, 2005) won the 2006 JAC Gary Olson Award and a 2007 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. And I regularly teach graduate and undergraduate courses in rhetorical theory, composition, and women's literature for which I received a university teaching award.
Candidates for position held by: James Aune (4 years)
Robert Hariman, Communication, Northwestern University
I moved to Northwestern University three years ago after teaching at Drake University for twenty-five years. Having worked in both a "teaching institution" and a research university, I am aware of the need to support scholarship in rhetoric while also being sensitive to the differing problems that faculty face in different institutions. RSA will continue to prosper as it can both develop a "united front" on rhetoric and become more supportive internally of diversity, disagreement, innovation, and multiple identities in the continuing development of rhetoric as a vital tradition of intellectual and civic engagement. My work in RSA has included serving on the editorial board of RSQ and chairing the Kneupper award committee. I'm also on the boards of QJS, RPA, and other journals and book series in rhetoric and communication studies. Publications include Political Style, edited volumes on Popular Trials, Post-Realism, and Prudence, and the forthcoming volume with John Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy.
Mary Stuckey, Communication/Political Science, Georgia State University
I am a Professor of Communication and Political Science at Georgia State University. I consider myself a political scientist by training and a rhetorician by choice. I have authored, edited, or co-edited eight books, with another under contract, all of which deal with some aspect of presidential rhetoric. My work has been published in QJS, RPA, RSQ, Comm Studies, Comm Quarterly, WJC, Presidential Studies Quarterly and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. I was the book review editor for RPA for eight years, and have served in a wide variety of positions for the American Political Science Association, its Women's Caucus, and its regional affiliates as well as the National Communication Association, its Public Address Division, and its Political Communication Division, where I am presently Vice Chair Elect. I have chaired the Rhetoric and Public Address Division of SSCA, and I am now Editor-Elect of the Southern Communication Journal. I both believe in and practice interdisciplinary research, and if elected will do my best to broaden the reach of rhetoric and rhetorical inquiry.
Candidates for position held by: Diane Davis (4 years)
Cinthia Gannett, English/Writing Program, Loyola University of Maryland
Cinthia Gannett is Associate Professor of Writing and the Director of the Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum at Loyola College in Maryland. She came to Loyola from the University of New Hampshire where she taught in the graduate program in Composition and Rhetoric and co-directed the linked UNH Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum with Dr. Robert Connors for nearly ten years. Before that she founded the Learning Center and WAC Program and coordinated the Writing Program at UNH at Manchester.
She is the author of Gender and the Journal (1992) and various articles on diaries, journals, and portfolios, with a special interest in American women's rhetorical training and teaching in the nineteenth century. She has also has been working with writing centers and Writing across the Curriculum programs for more than twenty years. Her current research and professional interests in that area include the development of rhetorical/discursive competence of graduate students in Communication Sciences and Disorders, theorizing the work of graduate student administrators in Writing Center/WAC Programs, applying current international translation studies as theoretical models and metaphors for writing center and WAC work, and developing local WAC/WID/Writing Center Archives. With Dr. Peggy O'Neill she has just finished co-editing a customized Loyola Writing Handbook with disciplinary style guides contributed from every department. She is also co-editing a collection of essays with Dr. Tom Pace at John Carroll University on Jesuit rhetoric and rhetorical pedagogy, The Jesuit Tradition: Looking Backward, Looking Forward.
Elizabethada Wright, English/Communication, Rivier College
Two years ago, I decided to become a life member of RSA because I recognized how the organization has benefited me and will continue to do so. Excited by all the possibilities that RSA's conference, institute, and journal offers to established scholars, beginning graduate students, and those of us in between, I would like to become a member of the board so I can assist with all the work that needs to be done. As a professor at a small college, I hope to encourage others from similar institutions realize that RSA's supportive intellectual environment can benefit them just as much as it benefits scholars at Research 1 Institutions. My current research is in the field of public memory; I have also done work in nineteenth-century American women's rhetoric. Additionally, I am active with the NCA and the Constance Woolson Society. and I have a talk radio show on WSCA fmlp, 106.1.
Candidates for position held by: Barbara Willard (4 years)
Kendall Phillips, Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University
Associate Professor and Chair, Communication and Rhetorical Studies, affiliate in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric and in the Program for the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict, Syracuse University I have been committed to the values of RSA since my first convention in Tucson in 1996 and would be honored to serve it in some way. My scholarly work attends to issues of dissension, power and resistance and has appeared in journals like Philosophy and Rhetoric, RSQ, and Communication Monographs. I have also pursued these ideas in critical works attending to rhetoric in the contexts of public education, in my book Testing Controversy: A Rhetoric of Educational Reform, and in popular film, in my book Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. In my time at Syracuse, I have been fortunate enough to work in a number of interdisciplinary projects. I am coordinator of SU's Public Memory Project' and have organized our two international conferences, edited the book Framing Public Memory, and facilitated various public engagement projects. These experiences lead me to three broad goals for RSA: 1) to continue promoting dialogue among rhetoricians in various departmental homes; 2) to promote rhetorical studies through interdisciplinary projects; and, 3) to encourage community engagement throughout rhetorical studies.
Beth Manolescu, Communication, University of Kansas
My national service experience includes serving on ASHR's steering committee, RSA's ad hoc permissions statement committee, NCA's Rhetoric and Communication Theory division nominating committee, and as the division's secretary at the 2006 national convention. My local service experience includes organizing teaching and research colloquia and rhetoric writing workshops, and serving on awards committees. I have studied rhetoric in both English and Communication departments and published in interdisciplinary journals including RSQ, Rhetoric Review, and Rhetorica. I hope to help RSA maintain and strengthen interdisciplinary discussions of teaching and research on historical and contemporary civic advocacy among students and faculty.
Candidates for position held by: Ginna Sanprie (student member)
Alexandra Sartor, Comparative Literature/Rhetoric, University of California-Irvine
My connection to RSA began with the first Biennial Institute, held at Kent State in 2005. I was fortunate enough to attend the Institute seminar, and the experience proved to be a galvanizing one, both in terms of my research and my dedication to RSA's lively scholarly community. I assisted with the planning of the 2007 RSA Institute and attended one of its seminars as well. As a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine, my scholarly interests include the history of environmental rhetoric. Additionally, I spent two years in the Office of the Campus Writing Coordinator where I worked with faculty and graduate students across the campus on integrating a rhetorical approach to writing into their classrooms. If elected, I will focus on fostering the development of scholarly camaraderie among graduate students across institutions through participation in conferences, institutes, and regional events.
Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke, English, University of Illinois-Chicago
After a crushing defeat in the fifth grade student council election at St. Margaret Mary, I vowed revenge. Seriously, though, I care much more about RSA than I did about the student council at S.M.M. (please don't tell Sister Eugenia!). My participation in RSA has been imperative to my development as a scholar, teacher, and advocate of rhetoric. After talking with Virginia Sanprie at CU-Boulder, I was inspired to form a chapter of RSA at the University of Illinois at Chicago dubbed "Horis Topo" literally "without place" in Greek. We are place-less because of the lack of a formal rhetoric program at UIC but, more importantly, we are place-less because we are actually place-full. "Horis Topo" is now supported by faculty members and graduate students in Rhetoric, Literature, Political Science, Latin American and Latino Studies, Biocultures, English Education, Gender and Women's Studies, and Communications, among other departments. Rhetoric has been a place for me to combine my background in Social Work (University of Iowa BSW 99), Literature (Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago MA 05), and Rhetoric (PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to enhance my education and strengthen my local communities. In recent years, I have published work in scholarly volumes and pedagogical journals, and I'm looking forward to my impending dissertation, a likely fusion of rhetoric, ethnography, urban studies, and ecofeminism. As a board member of RSA, I hope to promote graduate student participation across the disciplines, encouraging interdisciplinary student involvement and supporting pedagogical opportunities for scholars interested in rhetorical studies.