Twenty Years of Community Building: Reflections on/and Rhetorical Ecologies
Abstract
This article is an experimental collaboration that blends qualitative data, archival research, and rhetorical theory with autoethnographic writing. Utilizing Jenny Edbauer’s (2005) conceptualization of rhetorical ecologies, we engage strategic contemplation and critical imagination (Royster and Kirsch 2012) to explore Reflections’ past, present, and future rhetorical landscapes. We designed, distributed, coded, and analyzed a fifteen-item questionnaire to discover the journal’s readership demographics, its archival contents, and its reverberating effects/affects on issues of public rhetoric, civic writing, service learning, and community literacy. We identified four themes—inclusivity, advocacy, pedagogy, and discovery—as the most salient features of Reflections’ twenty-year legacy. Amplifying our participants’ voices, we discuss the ways in which these four themes work to cultivate an affirming space of theoretical inquiry and ethical intervention—a networked community of mutual reciprocity that continues to transform the field of rhetorical studies today. Altogether, this article offers unique insight into Reflections’ rhetorical ecology, including its professional legacy and the ways in which the journal has innovated the genre of writing scholarship.
- Journal
- Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
- Published
- 2020-04-01
- DOI
- 10.59236/rjv20i1pp193-212
- CompPile
- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
- Topics
-
modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory writing pedagogy service learning collaborative writing archival research literacy studies public rhetoric community literacy
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References (6) · 1 in this index
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Edbauer (2005)Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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Eodice (2016)The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching and Writing in Higher Education
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Lindlof (2019)Qualitative Communication Research Methods 4 th
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Royster (2000)Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women
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Royster (2012)Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies
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Syverson (1999)The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition
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