• rsa
• the profession

Team Rhetoric at Texas A&M (in both Comm and English) is going to buy a full-page ad in the RSA program. I"ve been brainstorming about the visual layout of the ad (of course, we could never attain the epic heights of Northwestern's ad in 2006). Any ideas? Serious or not-so? I had proposed photos of Rick Perry and Phil Gramm, but no one seemed to like that.

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• the profession

Have cybersecurity measures at your institution reached the extent they have in Aggieland? My office desktop now requires a login (and the password needs to be changed rather frequently). I suppose that's all right, although it's irritating. More irritating is that I cannot even download iTunes for myself at the office without official permission (much less, say, Google Chrome, which is the best browser I've ever used). Is this "normal"?

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• the profession

From an interesting article on the American Historical Association convention, going on now. According to the article, Duke University's history department has made a number of reforms, including:

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• announcements and queries
• the profession

Two requests: 1. Please submit journal TOC's. David Beard reminded me this week that Pre/Text used to include these. Since there are a number of subfields within rhetorical studies (and our bibliographic resources are, as Jack Seltzer often says, not in great shape), TOC's would help introduce our RSA readers to other ways of doing rhetoric. 2. What would you identify as the main subfields in rhetorical studies? Argumentation/Informal Logic is one. Public Address is another. Is "Cultural Studies" separate from rhetorical studies? Others?

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• academic writing
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A big Amen to this (from the forthcoming book of conversations with Terry Eagleton): “I am sometimes horrified," he says, "by the implicit acquiescence in academicism maintained by even supposedly quite radical thinkers and writers. This is particularly objectionable in the case of literary theory, because I believe that -- contrary to all appearances -- it is a genuinely democratic activity.

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• the profession

It might be nice if IHE's reporter did some background research on these things. As with the Chronicle article on the Evanston conference of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies a few years ago, why can't we organize our public relations a little better? Or get better journalists? Or both?

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• the profession

Continuing the earlier discussion with Josh and DB: I'm not sure the methods or theories matter if we choose an object of study that suits us. From Charles Olson, A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn:

"PRIMARY DOCUMENTS. And to hook on here is a lifetime of assiduity. Best thing to do is to dig one thing or place or man until you yourself know more abt that than is possible to any other man. It doesn't matter whether it's Barbed Wire or Pemmican or Paterson or Iowa. But *exhaust* it. Saturate it. Beat it.

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• the profession

The US Commission on Civil Rights has been investigating preferential admissions for men in higher education (report due out in six months). I'd be interested in knowing which public universities are silently breaking the law, as this article alleges. This issue fascinates me, both because I can see it in the classroom and because it goes against various left- and right-wing pieties.

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• the profession
• wankery

They might choose a market that, like, actually reads.

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• the profession

Our graduate program has two 1-credit classes for grad students--one in pedagogy, and one in professional development. I'm doing the 1-hour pedagogy course next semester; I've taught it before, but want to tinker with it a bit more (perhaps turning it into an online book or wiki of some sort). So, I'm soliciting suggestions for topics. Here's what I have so far: 1. I like to start by having students take the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, because it helps explain different learning styles (sensing v. intuiting), emotional stances toward grading (t's v. f's), etc. 2.

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