I'm making a podcast! 21st Century Sophist is a rhetoric and writing podcast produced and featuring Jacob Richter, RCID PhD student at Clemson University. In our inaugural episode, we explore how teaching circles in university writing programs can empower collaborative leadership capabilities and improve writing instruction and student learning. Future episodes will feature interviews, discussions, … Continue reading *Podcast Alert*- Introducing 21st Century Sophist
The recent surge of interest in “machinic rhetorics” within rhetoric and communication fields has contributed to renewed attention being applied to algorithms as acting agents (or in Gregory Ulmer’s vocabulary, egents) within digital rhetorical ecologies. Largely fueled by increased focus on application and practice of buzzwords associated with new materialism, object-oriented ontology, … Continue reading The Algorithm’s HR Complaint
I had the opportunity over the weekend to present on an outstanding panel at the Northeast Modern Language Association's 2018 meeting in Pittsburgh, PA titled Building a Better University: Creating A Culture of Collaboration. My presentation, "Putting it in Writing: Teaching Circles and Institutional Return on Investment," tackles how scheduled, officially-sanctioned meetings between writing program stakeholders … Continue reading NeMLA 2018: “Putting it in Writing”
Students always benefit from more rhetorical analysis. This is a simple statement that our disciplinary identities, the connotations that automatically form in our brains as rhetoricians and writing teachers, perhaps might function to cloud. What I mean to say here is not that (or not only that) students benefit from more rhetorical analysis assignments being … Continue reading Re-Framing RetroActive Composition
“One class down. Two more to go.” I can’t put a number on how many times I’ve whispered sentences like these under my breath over the past two years. Typically, I’ll find myself in a coffeeshop somewhere or perhaps at my living room table, hunched over a stack of papers that I’ve … Continue reading On UnGrading the Composition Classroom
Teacher Roles in Student Protests: When Passivity Becomes Rhetorical Action It’s spring break for my students and I in upstate New York, which means lots of snow, cancelled flights, undrivable roads and plenty of cancelled plans. It means there’s plenty of time for grading (and for procrastinating), and there’s plenty of time … Continue reading Teacher Roles In Student Protests: When Passivity Becomes Rhetorical Action
Part I of this post can be found here (I'd recommend starting there for a theoretical background on the issues discussed in this project). The UnEssays composed by CPN-100-03 can be found here. The assignment prompt I assigned is located here. For concrete examples of the conclusions that can be drawn from this … Continue reading STAND UP!- THEORIZING THE ACTIVIST UNESSAY, PT. II
A great deal of research in rhetoric, communication and composition in recent decades has attempted to bridge classrooms in higher education with deeper considerations of civic purpose, social activism and training for capable citizenship. However, these pushes toward community literacy and classroom advocacy have yet to fully consider the impact social web … Continue reading Stand Up!- Theorizing the Activist UnEssay, Pt. I
With 2018 nigh upon us, it's time to look back at the best contributions from independent rhetoric and composition journals over the past year. I'm moving through the process of evaluating a number of essays for inclusion in a "Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals 2018" anthology, so my mind is already geared … Continue reading Best of Rhetoric and Composition 2018
Should first-year writing students choose their own essay topics? I’d like to take some time this morning to venture an interesting take on this question that has been turning around in my head for a few months now. Long a topic of boisterous debate within composition and rhetoric, the role of student … Continue reading Should Students Choose Their Own Writing Topics?: A Mindful Approach
Jacob Richter 