CFP: Rhetoric and/as Academic Leadership  Leadership in academia is by nature a fraught enterprise for which few faculty find themselves adequately trained. Such work is made even more difficult in our current climate due to the shifting socioeconomic conditions of higher education that ask more of leaders while at the same time providing fewer material and structural resources to help them lead. As a result, many faculty are more reticent than ever to seek out or accept leadership positions, especially at the highly visible executive levels such as university presidencies, where political or personal failure comes at a high price. While on-the-ground training and support for all levels of academic leadership remains critical to keeping local leadership pipelines intact, it is equally important to analyze how we talk about the work of academic leadership itself, both informally and formally. Competing rhetorics in both academic and non-academic discourse circles quickly become the foundations of practice, both positive and negative, crystalizing where and whether new leaders will emerge, and with what motivations.   This edited collection will focus on the rhetorical constructions of academic leadership and the influences of various rhetorics on how and why faculty choose (or not) to lead. It will also discuss the rhetorical frameworks that leaders abide by themselves, both personally and professionally, in order to withstand challenges and create change in higher education. Contributors will provide insight into how such rhetorics shape the public’s perceptions of higher education and its leaders, and how in turn this affects relationships between various academic and non-academic communities.Contributions in the form of 4,000-7,000 word chapters are sought from faculty and staff administrators at all levels of leadership (directors, chairs/heads, deans, provosts, presidents), as well as those in leadership roles within other academic structures (e.g., faculty senate) and early career faculty and graduate students who are also doing work in or on leadership. Approaches are welcome from scholars of rhetoric, writing, communication, or other allied fields, and may be historical, practice-based, theoretical (e.g., rhetoric’s place within or against formal or informal leadership emergence theory, transactional/transformative theory, concepts of servant leadership), or empirical in nature, including case studies, so long as they are grounded in rhetoric’s relevance and application to current academic leadership choices and/or practices. Perspectives from contributors across institutional types and geographies are also invited, as this volume seeks to represent a diverse range of viewpoints and strategies that are reflective of different groups working in higher education today.   Questions this collection aims to address include:   --How does the rhetoric surrounding academic administration (especially that pitting faculty against deans, provosts, presidents) influence faculty to take leadership positions, including but not limited to faculty working in rhetorical studies themselves?--How do negative rhetorics about administration influence the non-academic public in their interactions with academia and its leaders?--What rhetorical strategies do faculty have for promoting best leadership practices within or across fields?--What organizational leadership theories are conversant or in conflict with contemporary rhetorics of power and/or authority in the academy, or in the academy’s interactions with the current US political climate?--How is succession planning positively and negatively affected by rhetorical formations of leadership and leaders?--What do rhetorics of leadership do to promote or stifle under-represented leaders and their work on campuses (including women, persons of color, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized populations)?--How do we socialize graduate students and junior faculty into positivist rhetorics of leadership in academia?--What historical or archival examples of academic leaders and leadership might serve as good models for thinking through rhetoric as leadership?--Where and how are empirical studies of successful academic leaders being conducted today, and what can we learn from them?   The University of South Carolina Press has expressed interest in this collection. Please send all inquiries and abstracts to Dr. Kelly Ritter, Chair and Professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology. Email: Kelly.ritter@gatech.edu.   Timeline:October 1, 2025: 500 word chapter proposals due December 1, 2025: Acceptances sent May 1, 2026: Draft Chapters due January 1, 2027: Final (Revised) Chapters due