Category: Announcements

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Research Presentation for the Institute for Advanced Studies: “The Settler’s Secret: Analepsis, Paralipsis, Prolepsis”

On February 27th, 2024, I delivered a research presentation as part of a spring semester fellowship with the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. The presentation draws on a recently completed chapter of my manuscript, which is likewise titled “The Settler’s Secret.”

I had previously presented a longer version of this presentation for the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin Madison on February 15, 2024, as part of their Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture Colloquium Series. My thanks go out to Drs. Allison Prasch, Rob Asen, Jennell Johnson, Rob Howard, Mary McCoy, and the graduate students of Communication Arts at UW Madison for extending this invitation and opportunity to share research.

Abstract/Synopsis: The presentation examines narrative tropes that characterize the psyche and worldview of the “settler subject”—the Western protagonist across stories of neocolonial conquest. Specifically, this settler subject adopts the role of detective, imagining themselves as a detector of atrocities while disavowing complicity in the systems of violence they discover. Rather than drawing on the detective’s substantive traits, this egoic position is triangulated by narrative tropes: analepsis (past), paralipsis (present), and prolepsis (future). Rhetorically, the prefixes ana-, para-, and pro- evoke forms of self-effacement that place the settler “in the middle of things,” as the main character in a story that is not about them. Analepsis establishes the settler’s narrative past by rewriting history, paralipsis enables the settler to acknowledge but disidentify with neocolonial acts, and prolepsis forecasts apocalyptic outcomes that perversely reinforce the settler’s need for continuous armament. Each trope also aligns with a psychoanalytic register – the Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real, respectively – which manage the absent center of settler subjectivity. The discussion of each trope is paired with a unique collection of texts to demonstrate the dispersion of these subject-constituting tropes across coverage of contemporary, high-tech war.

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DRPC Privacy Week Presentation: “We Live In Public”

On January 22, 2024, the Digital Rhetoric and Privacy Collective hosted an online session titled “Teaching About Privacy in an Age of Generative AI“ with Drs. Calvin Pollak of the University of Washington (who presented “Navigating Publicity and Privacy: Genre-Based Technical Communication Pedagogy With, For, and Against ChatGPT”) and Reed Hepler, a Digital Initiatives Librarian and Archivist at College of Southern Idaho (who presented “Deliberately Safeguarding Privacy and Confidentiality in the Era of Generative AI”) and myself. The title of my presentation was “We Live in Public: Teaching Publicity, Privacy, and Secrecy.” Links to both the DRPC and a video of the presentation(s) can be found below.

DRPC Privacy Week
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Keynote Speech from the 2024 Midwest Winter Workshop @ UW Madison

On February 16-17, the graduate students of the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison hosted the 14th annual Midwest Winter Workshop! It was an amazing event, consisting of 7 panel sessions on topics ranging from writing scholarship to the academic job market and 19 “pods” comprised of faculty and graduate student small groups. You can find more information about the event here.

For the keynote, I presented a talk titled “What is Rhetoric Enough? Forms in and of Rhetorical Scholarship.” You can find a written version of the presentation here. It was a great, generative conference and I am grateful just to have been part of it! Many thanks to Allyson Gross, Ali Rushevics, Megan Zahay, and Ailea Merriam-Pigg, who organized the event.

You can also access the recorded Keynote here.

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New In Print: “What is the Sound of One Hand Playing?” in Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Excited to share this new essay, “What is the Sound of One Hand Playing: Aural Body Rhetoric in the Music of Horace Parlan and Paul Wittgenstein,” co-authored with Bill Heinze in Rhetoric Society Quarterly!

Abstract: This essay examines the lives of two pianists with significant impairments of their right arms: Paul Wittgenstein, a classical pianist who lost his right arm in World War I, and Horace Parlan, a jazz pianist who lost full use of his right hand due to childhood polio. Drawing on theories of mêtis and passing developed by queer theory and disability studies scholars, we theorize aural passing to examine how Parlan and Wittgenstein differently navigated the rhetorical constraints of their respective musical genres. Engaging a rhetorical biography of each performer’s unique mêtis, we compare how disabled forms of passing are not equivalent across all instances and conclude by meditating on the entrenched ableism of musical pedagogy and performance.

Link to article: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10…/02773945.2023.2232774

Free copies (while available):https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PDEKA4GKGRIINQFC5GDH/full?target=10.1080/02773945.2023.2232774

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“Reading Rhetorical Theory” featured in UMN Libraries’ “Targeting Textbooks Project” Fundraiser

As part of UMN Libraries’ “Give to the Max” campaign, Mark Engebretson, Shane Nackerud, and former students Rory King and Anna Larson (and yours truly) collaborated to produce this short video. Please check it out! Open access materials like Reading Rhetorical Theory can save students a significant amount of money, and ensure that course materials remain accessible across a range of modalities.

“COMM Students Save Money on Textbooks Thanks to the Libraries”

If you are teaching a class where this textbook might be useful and are seeking additional course materials, please reach out to rhetoricaltheoryuntextbook@gmail.com! I’m happy to answer your questions and share additional resources.

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“Rhetorical Forms of the Secret” and Other Presentations at NCA 2022

This year at the 2022 National Communication Association Convention, I am presenting (remotely/virtually) a truncated version of the introduction to my book, This Page Left Intentionally Blank: Rhetorical Forms of the Secret. The presentation is scheduled to appear during a Thursday 11/19 11:00am-12:00pm session entitled “Secrecy and Memory in Popular and Political Culture.” (Sheraton, Napoleon Ballroom C2 on the 3rd Floor) If you are interested in the topic, there is other excellent work being presented there by Christopher Wernecke and Virginia Massignan of Georgia State University, Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager of Colorado State University, and Patrick K Jones of Northeastern University. Please do attend if you have the opportunity!

If you are/were unable to attend the panel and would like to see what I am up to, I’ve included the abstract and my video presentation below.

Presentation Abstract: Secrets are part of a longstanding rhetorical situation best understood as a “spectacle” that draws public audiences in through the promise of revelation. They also comprise a longstanding topos for Rhetorical Studies as a mode of public address, a hidden meaning uncovered by a hermeneutics of suspicion, and a function of discursive totalities like the apparatus and assemblage. Here I add a fourth approach: a tropology of secrecy structured around naming, belatedness, and autoimmunity.

Finally, if you’re at NCA 2022, please consider attending these other excellent sessions I had a small part in assembling. I wish I could be there, but I wish the best to everyone down in New Orleans this week!

Re-Parsing Public Address: Computational Objects, Methods, and Ethics in Rhetorical Studies Thursday, November 17, 8:00am-9:15am (Marriott, Galerie 4 – 2nd Floor)

Session Description: Rhetoric’s objects and methods are changing amidst the spectacular rise of computational methods and big data analysis. Reflecting on rhetoric’s changing objects (e.g., tweets, memes, blogs, chatbots, cybersecurity, infrastructures, and networks) and methods (e.g., LDA, web scraping, TensorFlow, network analysis) this panel stages a conversation between rhetorical scholars who have expanded the scope of what counts as rhetoric’s objects and its methods. Our discussion takes stock of the ethical mandates and novel innovations in the new digital rhetoric by offering short position papers from a range of scholars with deep investments in the computational, followed by a moderated discussion with the audience.

Featured Roundtable Speakers: Andre E. Johnson, Emma Bedor Hiland, Daniel Faltesek, Heather Woods, Alex McVey, Jennifer Buchan, Jules Wight, Michael Lechuga, Misti Yang, Scott Graham, Sergio Fernando Juarez, Zoltan Majdik

Book Panel for Dr. Emma Bedor Hiland, “Therapy Tech: The Digital Transformation of Mental Healthcare” and Dr. Stephanie Larson, “What it Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture.” Saturday, November 19, 3:30pm-4:45pm (Marriott, Regent – 4th Floor, River Tower)

Session Description: Rhetorical and Communication Studies scholars respond to two new books: Emma Bedor Hiland’s Therapy Tech: The Digital Transformation of Mental Healthcare, from the University of Minnesota Press, and What it Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture, from Pennsylvania State University Press. Expert panelists are scholars in Rhetorical Studies with practical/theoretical expertise in rhetorics of mental health, feminism, and gender.

Featured Speakers: Emma Bedor Hiland (author/respondent), Stephanie Larson (author/respondent), Jenell Johnson (presenter), Bryan J. McCann (presenter), Natalie N. Fixmer-Oraiz (presenter), Erin Nicole Gangstad (presenter), Nou-Chee Chang (chair)

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“The Dobbs Leak and Reproductive Justice”

Emily Winderman and I have a new piece out in the Quarterly Journal of Speech Forum: Rhetorics of reproductive justice and injustice in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. We’re very grateful to Kari Vasby Anderson for the opportunity to share this work.

Abstract: Our contribution to this forum concerns the June 24th, 2022 leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson draft decision penned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The leak exemplifies how the transgressive and fluid movement of information across sealed institutional boundaries was channeled into a different bodily register, one that sought to police the gender fluidity imputed by the phrase “pregnant people” amidst the emergence of a new abortion coalition. As an alternative to the imperative to seal institutional leaks and limit gender fluidity, we highlight the importance of the Reproductive Justice framework to constitute more capacious coalitions with wider, more intersectional platforms than was once enshrined by Roe v. Wade.

The first fifty readers who access this forum piece through this link should be able to download for free. (no paywall)

Here is the dedicated link (paywall): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00335630.2022.2128205

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“Secrecy, Surveillance, and Settler Colonialism”: A Rhetoric Society of America Workshop (May 25-27, 2023)

Hi folks,

On alternating years, the Rhetoric Society of America hosts seminars and workshops for faculty and graduate students. This upcoming year, Dr. Michael Lechuga of the University of New Mexico and I will be leading a two-day workshop from May 25-27. The sessions will be held at Pennsylvania State University in College Park, with limited remote access. I’m writing now because the deadline to apply for this (and all other) sessions is approaching on October 15, 2022. Please follow this link to apply! As that site notes, applicants will be notified of your acceptance into a particular session (or multiple sessions) by November 15, 2022.

Below, you’ll find a description of our session on “Secrecy, Surveillance, and Settler Colonialism,” (also available via the hyperlink). I hope you’ll check it out!

Best wishes,

Atilla

Secrecy, Surveillance, and Settler Colonialism

Our topical focus is the rhetoric of settler colonialism with emphasis on erasure, disinformation, and conspiratorial reasoning, as exemplified by the dehumanization of migrants at the Mexico/US border, the “Stop the Steal” January 6, 2021, white supremacist insurrection, and the infiltration of colonialist themes in popular science fiction narratives. We invite participants to think through the connections between events like the January 6 insurrection, gun violence, and pandemic politics as explained through the lens of settler colonialism. Our workshop focuses on how the critical frameworks of psychoanalysis and assemblage theory are instrumental for rhetoricians’ understanding of the lasting legacy of settler colonialism in the United States. Together, we (Lechuga and Hallsby) represent expertise in both rhetorical criticism, assemblage/affect theory (Lechuga), and psychoanalysis (Hallsby). We offer attendees an affect-driven framework for emerging rhetorical scholars, designed with the specific goal of attending to Settler Colonialism’s ideological, material, and unconscious formations. 

Participants should expect to complete some assigned readings ahead of time and to submit a (2pp) statement about what they are already researching. During the session, we aim to discuss how the frameworks introduced during the workshop might be enlisted to revise or approach these topics. Position papers should also include a statement of participants’ goals for the workshop (e.g., creating a syllabus, conference paper, journal submission/revision, white papers/public facing, advocacy). The workshop will be divided between lecture and break-out groups/discussions. During break-out discussions, participants will also have the option to work individually or in a group (i.e., they may choose to be either self-directed or collaborate with others working on similar projects.)

Whereas Rhetorical Studies conventionally emphasizes the rhetorical situation/ecology as a general contextual framework for persuasion, representation, and power, we would advance arguments for understanding rhetoric’s persisting habitus as a Settler Situation, a set of recurring/repeating historical contexts appealing to topoi of jingoistic conquest, extraction economies, and racial purity. We offer the following framing questions: (1) How do we read and measure settler-colonial narratives/events? What is the archive of settler colonialism? If the archive is secret, what tools or techniques do rhetoricians have available to read it? (2) How does the Settler Situation redefine the conventional boundaries of the rhetorical text? What aspects of rhetoric’s conventional focus on public address and representation are retained by this framework and which are transformed by it? (3) How do (psychoanalytic/assemblage-based) theories of affect account for the combined psychological and material injury created by contemporary nationalist discourses? (4) How do present-but-unarticulated or unacknowledged affects produce recurring patterns of historical trauma? What can rhetorical studies contribute to the understanding of these historical patterns? 

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The 2023 Benson-Campbell Dissertation (Prospectus) Research Award

(Updated 4/3/25)

Hi all,

If you are seeking the Call for Nominations for 2024-25 or later, I recommend consulting the most recent COMMnotes announcement (see 2025 announcement here), which is more likely to be updated with accurate and up-to-date information. NCA has consolidated awards calls and now requires them to be posted through its own system, so the Google docs that we have used to issue this and other calls are likely to be out of date.

Thanks so much!

Atilla