theory

In the last five years or so, rhetoric and composition scholarship has offered work that brings digital media and bodies to the forefront to shape pedagogical praxis, illuminate cultural practices, and extend composition studies (into writing studies). Yet, much of this scholarship remains focused on the rhetorical construction of embodiment, as indicated by several recent journal special issues: Perspectives and Definitions of Digital Rhetoric (Enculturation 23 2016), Wearable Rhetorics: Bodies, Cities, Collectives (Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46.3 2016), Embodied and Affective Rhetorics (Present Tense 6.1 2016), Embodied Sound (Kairos 21.1 2016), and Sexing Colorlines: Black Sexualities, Popular Culture, and Cultural Production (Poroi 7.2 2011).

Rhizomes aims to promote a reflection on the intersection between handicraft, design and art productions in insular spaces, in the context of globalization and increasing transnational mobility. Attention will also be given to new mainland cultural constellations resulting from these artistic migrations.

In The Program Era and “On The Period Formerly Known as Contemporary,” Mark McGurl and Amy Hungerford have offered compelling narratives for periodizing and framing the post-45 literary field. But despite Hungerford’s acknowledgment that global watershed events are difficult to perceive, it it simultaneously difficult not to think that, in the past two years, “everything has changed.” In fact, as cataloged by the Post45 group, over ¾ of the proposals for the recent Princeton conference “The Contemporary” involved “post-” as a concept. If these shifts are real, then an important new question emerges: In what ways has the post-2016 moment changed, revised, or even departed from these previously guiding understandings of post-45?

The Essay’s Boundaries.

Appraising the Evolution of the Essay Genre.

edited by Federico BERTONI, Simona CARRETTA, Nicolò RUBBI