Landmark Lecture Series

23rd Landmark Lecture (Spring 2025)

Rhetoric@Work

Kendall Leon, Chico State
Alumni panel: undergraduate alumni Erik Acosta and John Berry, and graduate alumni Abe Alvarez and CiCi Hendricks

The event aims for attendees to gain insight into the various pathways, ethical issues, and challenges that writing and communication professionals face in today’s global and diverse workforce.  

22nd Landmark Lecture (Spring 2023)

Violence, Precarity, and Doing Rhetoric Otherwise in the Borderlands

Sonia Arellano, University of Central Florida, and Kenneth Walker, University of Texas at San Antonio

Focusing on the US/Mexico border, particularly in Arizona, Arellano will discuss how state-sanctioned violence results in migrant deaths that can never really be quantified or fully known. Arellano questions how we study the lives of those who leave behind no written record, and how we deem lives worth grieving. Considering rhetorical projects that contribute to the larger immigration debate, Arellano will discuss how we can further consider the violence of borders worldwide.

Telling stories across his community-engaged and transdisciplinary research in borderlands rhetorical ecologies, Walker will discuss how transnational rhetorical praxis grapples with the violence and precarity of nation-states while pointing to alternative practices of belonging informed by border-crossing human and nonhuman kin. Moving from community, scholarly, and student examples of geolocated narratives, borderlands storymaps, and restor(y)ing migratory birds across South Texas and Greater Mexico, Walker will discuss the value of transnational and transdisciplinary rhetorical ecologies for interventions into regenerative futures that foster multiple worlds. 

21st Landmark Lecture (Spring 2022)

Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy

April Baker-Bell, Michigan State University

In this talk, April Baker-Bell will discuss how anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy get normalized in teacher attitudes, curriculum and instruction, pedagogical approaches, disciplinary discourses, and research, and she will discuss the impact these decisions have on Black students’ language education and their linguistic, racial, and intellectual identities. Baker-Bell will introduce a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically places Black Language at the center to critically interrogate white linguistic hegemony and anti-Black linguistic racism.

A workshop for RWS faculty was also held: From Theory to Praxis: Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy + Writing

In this workshop, participants will have an opportunity to engage in more intimate conversations about Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and how they can implement Antiracist Language Pedagogies in their respective courses. Participants will also have opportunities to ask specific questions about their teaching philosophies of language, language policies, curriculum, practices, syllabi, writing assignments, etc. Baker-Bell will share sample syllabi, assignments, and activities.

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20th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2021)

Designing and Sustaining Writing Programs for and with Multilingual Students

Laura Gonzales, University of Florida

In this workshop, Gonzales will argue that multilingual students have important strengths and experiences that should be centralized in the development of writing programs. Positioning translation as a rhetorical technology that multilingual writers practice every day, Gonzales will suggest that language diversity should be a central component of writing curricula design across areas of specialization, including first-year composition and professional writing. Language diversity is an asset that should inform writing education, particularly as students prepare to work as effective communicators in contemporary academic, business, and community contexts. This hands-on workshop will include possibilities for instructors to consider how they might incorporate language diversity issues and activities into their courses.

19th Landmark Lecture (Fall 2020)

Teaching Online Writing Courses

Scott Warnock, Drexel University

In this workshop, Professor Warnock will work with attendees to develop specific aspects of teaching online writing courses (OWCs). We will discuss “migrating” your best teaching self online. Then we will focus on creating robust, conversational, asynchronous writing environments that complement remote, synchronous course modalities. We will also look at managing instructor time in OWCs and “studenting”—the student perspective in such courses.

18th Landmark Lecture (Fall 2019)

Are We There Yet? Models for Open-Access Publishing and Open Education Resources in Writing Studies

Charles Bazerman, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University

Some have called it a publishing crisis. Others have called it an opportunity for scholars to regain control of their intellectual work. Almost everyone recognizes that higher education, and writing studies in particular, faces a set of challenges that are both interrelated and resistant to easy resolution: high costs for journal subscriptions and database access, financial pressures on university presses and academic publishers, changes in the kinds of instructional materials used in our courses, and the recognition of the need to reduce the cost of attending college. The speakers in this year’s Rhetoric and Writing Studies Landmark Lecture will explore the factors that have given rise to these challenges and consider how open-access publishing and the development of open educational resources are allowing us to address the challenges we face as scholars and educators.

17th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2019)

Multimodal Composing: Writing/Designing Futures

Kristin Arola, Michigan State University

In this workshop, Professor Arola will briefly outline the goals, potentials, and pitfalls of a multimodal pedagogy. She will share some of the ways that assigning and assessing multimodal projects, specifically through the lens of a slow composition rooted in an American Indian epistemology, can help to meet the outcomes of writing courses. Participants will try their hand at a low-stakes multimodal assignment and will engage in discussing assessment practices for multimodal work.

16th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2018)

Techne and Care for the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine

Jordynn Jack, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Blake Scott, University of Central Florida

15th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2017)

Encountering Visual Phenomena: A Conversation

Ekaterina Haskins, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Christa Olson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Pictures and images seem to hold a lot of power. People tear down statues of discredited leaders, deface political signs, and circulate photographs of atrocities. Iconoclasm goes beyond smashing idols, becoming a general desire to control images and their effects. Much early scholarship on visual rhetoric started from that wide-spread assumption of powerful pictures. It “read” visual images, interpreted their possible meanings, and ascribed them significant persuasive effect. In their discussion, Professors Haskins and Olson move in a different direction—beyond pictures themselves—to track how we encounter visual phenomena, what they actually do, and why we experience them as powerful. Along the way, they will talk about citizenship, commemoration, protest, and social change as thoroughly visual and thoroughly rhetorical matters. 

14th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2016)

Demagoguery, Deliberation, and Democratic Hope

Patricia Roberts-Miller, University of Texas at Austin, and James Crosswhite, University of Oregon

The Landmark Lecture in Rhetoric series invites prominent scholars in Rhetoric and Writing Studies to discuss current research and pedagogy in our field. This year's speakers will offer a provocative discussion about pathologies of deliberation and critical perspectives on demagoguery, while probing questions regarding the role of rhetoric as a discipline in public discourse.  

13th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2015)

Whitewashing, Flattening, and the (Im)Possibility of Collectivity

Jonathan Alexander, University of California, Irvine; Jacqueline Rhodes, California State University, San Bernardino; and David Wallace, California State University, Long Beach

Nearly 20 years ago Lynn Worsham identified the most “pressing task for feminism’s third wave” as forging “a collective subject capable of making mass movement—if not a sisterhood, exactly, then surely an alliance that does not protect us from our differences but finds in difference, disagreement, and even despair occasions to hear one another’s words” (1998, 329). 

In this session our panelists use queer theory and their own narrative writing to explore the possibility or impossibility of creating the collective subject that Worsham envisions.  They take seriously Worsham’s claim “that there is no need to eradicate difference to find solidarity” (329) by exploring such important challenges to creating collectivity as whitewashing and flattening.  

12th Landmark Lecture (Fall 2013)

The Writing Major: Making Connections

Barry Maid, Arizona State University

The rise of social media seems to have created a culture where “being connected” or “having a network” has become an important goal for individuals. The reality is that networking or connecting has always been important – whether for individuals or academic programs. While the almost ephemeral nature many tend to associate with the use of social media may have an effect of diluting the importance of connection, in most instances we still tend to connect with those we feel we have some kind of shared values – whether that feeling is real or just perceived.

Writing majors have the potential to help both students and academic programs make connections. While writing programs deliver a core function at all universities, they are often perceived as merely being “service units.” A strong major, however, helps writing programs change their image into being a connected and respected member of the academic community. Likewise, a strong writing major has connections to the external community. An effective writing major not only helps its students achieve the academic goals of the major, but also uses its external partners to help connect individual students with people and networks outside the university. In fact, a truly successful writing major will create a cycle of success where alumni reach out to current students. Those students then graduate, move on to careers, and then reach back to the program to 

Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/embed/k-mj236sPho.

11th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2013)

Writing Departments and the Major: Past, Present, and Future

Susan McLeod, University of California, Santa Barbara

Susan McLeod will trace the history of departments of writing as they separated from English departments to form their own units. She will also discuss the development of the writing major & outline the work that she sees necessary to ensure that the majors developed in these new departments are consistent & coherent.

Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZtxchDM_UZA.

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10th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2012)

Assessing Adaptive Transfer in Community-Based Writing

Michael-John DePalma, Baylor University

This empirical study discusses the implications of using Michael-John DePalma and Jeffrey M. Ringer’s framework of adaptive transfer to assess students’ learning in community-based writing projects. Drawing from a series of interview-based case studies of students enrolled in my Technical and Professional Writing courses at Baylor University, this chapter describes how students both apply and reshape learned writing knowledge in order to negotiate new and unfamiliar community-based writing tasks. By assessing the kinds of transfer that students describe as they move between the activity systems of the classroom, their community sites, and beyond, this project provides the kind of empirical data on student learning that is currently lacking in community-based writing research. Moreover, it offers a rich framework for assessing how students adapt writing knowledge and experience to fit unfamiliar community-based writing tasks. By offering a framework and method for assessing the transfer of writing knowledge in community-based writing courses, this study contributes in significant ways to extant discussions of learning transfer in community-based writing scholarship.

9th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2011)

Vocero of the Revolution: Francisco Olazábal and The Rhetoric of Mexican Religious Nationalism

René de los Santos, DePaul University

8th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2010)

Free-Floating Literacies, Then and Now

Shirley Wilson Logan, University of Maryland

7th Landmark Lecture(Spring 2009)

Rhetorical Uses of Critical Frames: Theory/ies in the Writing Class

Jeanne Gunner, Chapman University, and Douglas Sweet, Chapman University

6th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2008)

Prepositions and Placentas: The Cultural Resources of Rhetorical Encounter in Colonial Mexico

Susan Romano, University of New Mexico 

5th Landmark Lecture - Spring 2007

Internationalization and Writing Curricula

Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Syracuse University

4th Landmark Lecture (Spring 2006)

Ratios: Transparencies/Opacities-- A Critical Inquiry into Democracy and Democratic Rhetorics

Ralph Cintron, University of Illinois, Chicago

3rd Landmark Lecture (Fall 2005)

The Pursuit of Rhetorical Virtue

John Gage, University of Oregon

2nd Landmark Lecture (Fall 2004)

The Future of Rhetorical Studies

Charles Bazerman, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine

1st Landmark Lecture (Fall 2003)

Libanius's Antioch: Rhetorical Constructions Of The Greek (Cosmo) Polis Under Empire

Susan Jarratt, University of California, Irvine

Inventing Democracy: The South African Experience

Philippe Salazar, University of Cape Town

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