Lauren Mitchell Passes Exams

Congratulations to third-year RCID doctoral candidate and S3S vice president, Lauren Mitchell for passing her comprehensive/qualifying exams!  On Tuesday, March 13, in the beautiful new Lee Hall addition, Lauren delivered her "4th Exam" multi-modal presentation of her project, titled "TRANSITIONING URBANISMS: the fringing benefits of rhetoric in architecture."


Lauren's study draws on a provocative mixture of elements, including her architectural background, rhetorical theories of electrate invention, and her time in Myrtle Beach, SC.  Through her dissertation, Lauren will defend the claim for architecture that, "without balancing our emphasis on design as making form as well as making forms of knowledge, the field will progressively make less and less impact in public environments." 

"Similarly," Lauren contends, "without learning to speak to a wider audience, making engagements with fields that are already steeped in practices of making and designing objects, rhetoric scholars will continually miss out on productive bodily engagements capable of accelerating the expansion of the field.  It is specifically on the topic of invention within both rhetoric and architecture where the two can begin to enfold each other in mutually productive ways."


To see photos of Lauren's exam presentation, visit the RCID News Blog.

Carolina Rhetoric Conference a Success!

In February, S3S successfully hosted the Carolina Rhetoric Conference, inviting graduate students interested in rhetoric from across the Carolinas to participate in two days of  networking and idea sharing.  The conference included a wide variety of rich panel presentations, professionalization workshops, a keynote/webinar presentation, and a digital showcase.

READ MORE at the Clemson Grad School News Site: HERE.

S3S wants to thank all of the supporters, including the Rhetoric Society of America, Clemson Graduate School, Graduate Student Government, Dean's Office in the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities, The Campbell Chair of Technical Communication, Parlor Press, the Hendrix Student Center, and the many faculty, friends, and students of RCID.

The 2013 Carolina Rhetoric Conference will be hosted by the graduate students at North Carolina State University.

RCID Research in the News

Rock Hill, SC's newspaper The Herald is running full spread features as part of their promotion for the traveling Peanuts Naturally exhibit coming to the York County Museum. As part of their first feature, Herald editor Paul Osmundson recently spoke with RCID PhD candidate Stephen Lind about his dissertation research on the Peanuts franchise. Read the full interview HERE.

Jimmy Butts passes "strange" Exams

Third-year RCID doctoral candidate Jimmy Butts passed his comprehensive/qualifying exams this past Leap Day, finishing with his multi-modal/oral presentation (fourth exam) titled: "Seven Strange Attractors: How to Repent! and Be Unbaptized!"

Jimmy's dissertation topic explores how Victor Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization functions rhetorically across different forms of composition and media. The ethics underlying his writing works against the flood of totalizing immersive media when they elicit only automatic or anesthetized responses from their contemporary audiences.

The project hopes to complicate expectations of standardization by seeing both potential and problems in normative and unusual compositions. He will work through seven forms of inventional strategies for strangeness including figural shifts in media, time traveling, replacement, addition & subtraction, negation, glossolalia, and exponentiation.

During a short reception in Clemson's Class of 1941 Studio, those in attendance were invited  to "strange" the familiarity of stones, followed by Jimmy's aesthetically moving multi-modal performance.

Congratulations, Jimmy, from S3S!

Steve Holmes Passes Exams!

S3S's 2010-2011 Vice President and now RCID doctoral candidate Steve Holmes passed his comprehensive/qualifying exams, back in December.  

On December 9, Steve presented his multimodal portion of the exams, titled, "Electrate Invention in the Parliament of Things," having completed his written exams in his areas of specialization: object-oriented rheorics, Heuretics/Euretics, and Tool-Being.

Steve's dissertation explores realism and materialism in relationship over the history of rhetorical theory. By tracing the disappearance of realism and the onset epistemic, social constructivist, semiotic, and poststructuralist paradigms in the 20th century, Steve explores how rhetoric came to prominence under these anti-realist theories of materiality, a situation best epitomized by Jacques Derrida's description of materiality as "matter without substance" (e.g. without a reality independent of linguistic construction).  

Steve's dissertation foregrounds the work of new movements in affective and feminist theories of materiality and the broader movement of speculative realism in the work of Graham Harman, Bruno Latour, Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant, Jane Bennett, Vickie Kirby and Karen Barad as a way to talk again about the reality of nature and the nonhuman. The dissertation then considers how realism can inform theories and pedagogies related to rhetorical invention in digital and networked ecologies, drawing specific attention to the work of hardware and software studies and new media artists who foreground the materiality of media ecologies. Drawing on Gregory Ulmer's scholarship, he intends to create additional multimodal components that will bear witness to new idioms of the ways in which we have always dwelled with the nonhuman element.

A hearty, albeit belated, congratulations to (ABD) RCID doctoral candidate Steve Holmes from S3S!

Publications - Check them out!

Welcome to 2012! As we begin the new year/semester, we want to make note of some great articles and reviews from our current S3S members!

Check out these works published over the past semester:

Colton, Jared. Review of Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations, by Diane Davis. Rhetoric Review 31.1 (2012): 88-92.

Fancher, Patricia, Carl Whithaus, and Andrew Mara. Review of Marshall

McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland. Enculturation 12 (2011).

Lind, Stephen J. Review of American Puppet Modernism, by John Bell. Text and Performance Quarterly 31.4 (2011): 455-456.

And watch for these articles coming in 2012:

Byrum, Kristie. “How (and Why) to Create A Corporate Social Responsibility Platform.” A Guide to Best Practices in Corporate Social Responsiblity & Green PR. Vol. 4. by PR News. Access Intelligence, 2012.

Holmes, Steven. (Provisional title) “Would Socrates Approve this Message? From Social Realism to Rhetorical 'Allegorithms' as Gaming Activism in Markus Persson's Minecraft.” Games of Words. Ed. Zachary Waggoner. Macmillan, 2012.

Holmes, Steve. “Wither Ecocriticsm in the Era of Hyperobjects?” Review of Ecology Without Nature and The Ecological Thought, by Timothy Morton. Journal of Ecocriticism (2012).

Lind, Stephen J. “Un-defining Man: The Case for Symbolic Animal Communication.” Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication: Internatural Communication. Ed. Emily Plec. Routledge, 2012.

Lind, Stephen J. “Teaching Digital Oratory: Public Speaking 2.0.” Communication Teacher 26 (2012).

McFarlane, Nicole. “Digital Memory and Narrative through 'African American Rhetoric[s] 2.0'” Review of Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric by Vorris Nunley and Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age by Adam Banks. Enculturation (2012).

Well done, all!

Annual Holiday Party!

Many thanks to the Collamati family for hosting another wonderful annual holiday party! 4th-year RCID candidate Anthony Collamati (pictured) and his wife Keri hosted the party at their home, complete with the annual secret-recipe meatballs, Chipmunk music from the record player, and the always-exciting gift swap. The gift swap this year featured several Gorgias Society mugs, a breadmaker, a highly-coveted ream of paper, and a lovely box of fresh beets. S3S extends a warm Thank You to all the RCID faculty, students, and friends for another great semester --- see you in 2012!