[Forwarded announcement]

As your semester is coming to a close, I hope you will keep in mind the great student research writing that your undergraduate and graduate students turned in during the 2012-2013 academic year!  If particular student projects stand out in your mind, please encourage those student writers to submit their research to Xchanges for one of our next two issues.  We accept new primary-research-driven scholarship in the fields of rhetoric, writing studies, and technical communication; we also consider submissions that deal with issues facing writing centers and those engaged in writing across the curriculum.  We publish traditional and multimedia projects.
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Call for Papers

Weapons of Mass Seduction: Rhetoric and Political Discourse in The United States

Middelburg & Ghent, November 6-9, 2013

One year after the 2012 US presidential elections an international conference will be held in the neighbouring towns of Middelburg (the Netherlands) and Ghent (Belgium). This four-day event (November 6-9, 2013) will be hosted jointly by the Roosevelt Study Center (Middelburg) and Ghent University.

Both Ghent and Middelburg possess close links with former US presidents: the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams, negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, while the Roosevelt family originated from the province of Zeeland, of which Middelburg is the main town.

The conference encompasses American political discourse and rhetoric in their widest sense. We welcome paper proposals that analyse aspects of discourse and rhetoric in the United States since the 18^th century. The conference aims to cover a wide range of political actors, from presidential rhetoric and campaigns to state-level politics, from the role of the media to online fora, from social movements to public intellectuals.

The conference aims to bring together specialists of ancient and modern rhetoric, historians, political scientists, linguists, and communication specialists. While the event welcomes perspectives on the use of both classical and modern rhetoric in American politics. This will allow not only for contrast and comparison but will also emphasise the continuity between the two. By bringing classicists and modernists together around the subject of American political discourse and rhetoric, the conference will develop a fruitful interaction between disciplines that have been held apart too often.

The language of the conference will be English. Continue reading →