anti-racism » This Rhetorical Life

I just don’t understand why we have to talk about every mode of belonging as some kind
of citizenship. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m interested in people’s practices of
resistance. I’m interested in people’s practices of belonging. […] I’m interested in people’s practices of world-making. — Karma Chavez

I’m increasingly persuaded by those who argue citizenship is a toxic concept and a toxic term. When I do talk about folks who appeal to citizenship, I’m very aware of how often those appeals to citizenship are built on the constitutive exclusions of others, and that if we really want to mobilize a productive, an emancipatory sense of civic obligation and of civic duty, we’ve got to figure out a way to do it without buying into a privileging conception of citizenship. — Cate Palczewski

In Episode 29, we extend a conversation from the 2015 RSA Summer Institute Seminar on Rhetorics of Citizenship. Karrieann Soto and Kate Siegfried host the discussion with co-seminarians Karma Chavez and Cate Palczewski. The episode asks that we critically question rhetorics of citizenship in our scholarship and in daily life. For a full transcript, click here.

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I started the research really struggling to understand how seemingly good people could say such awful things, and that’s really what I wanted to understand. I think what I found is that people are not all one thing or another. They aren’t as awful as they seem in a particular moment. Our students are struggling I think to make sense of the world. –Jennifer Trainor

The image features The Rock at MSU, spray painted white with black handprints and bold text that reads #DONTSHOOT. There are green trees in the background a pale blue and pick sky at dusk. The text over the image reads, "(anti-)racism in the classroom: an interview with Jennifer Trainor"

The Rock at Michigan State University painted #DONTSHOOT (September 2014)

As educators, we ought to discuss issues of racism and structural inequality in our classes. How do we do this with students who are in the process of forming their identities, beliefs, and values? Episode 27 features an interview with Jennifer Seibel Trainor, author of Rethinking Racism: Emotion, Persuasion, and Literacy Education in an All-White High School. In this episode, Trainor addresses anti-racist pedagogies and how we can talk about racism productively with students in the classroom, particularly when students may feel defensive about these issues. Trainor argues that we need to read deeper into the racist comments students make in the classroom to try to understand why they’re saying what they’re saying. You can read a review of Trainor’s book in Composition Forum here: http://compositionforum.com/issue/19/rethinking-racism-review.php

To access a PDF of the full transcript of this episode, please click here: Episode 27 Transcript.

The songs sampled in this episode are “Biomythos” by Revolution Void and “From Stardust to Sentience” by High Places.

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There’s a certain set of conceits around academic freedom that limit its functionality and its practice, and those conceits often have to do with critiques of state power, critiques of colonization, critiques of structural violence. –Steven Salaita

I think using academic freedom as a way to open these more political conversations and more potentially more transformative conversations about Palestine and about labor, and allowing people to see the connections between these issues is really important. –Vincent Lloyd

Organizing around solidarity communities and connecting with allies and creating networks of solidarity in that way is so crucial. We cannot resist in isolation. –Carol Fadda-Conrey

Steven Salaita, Vincent Lloyd, and Carol Fadda-Conrey

How do the precarious conditions of academic labor affect the conversations that are possible in the academy? How does academic freedom protect—or fail to protect—academics from doing politicized work? How do questions of Palestine in particular affect our understandings of academic labor and academic freedom—and vice versa? In episode 26, Steven Salaita, who lost a tenured job offer after writing a series of tweets condemning Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” talks about the rhetorical commonplaces of civility in the academy, and the stakes of circulating critiques of state power on various media platforms. Assistant professor of religion Vincent Lloyd, and associate professor of English Carol Fadda-Conrey—who helped to organize a talk by Salaita on SU’s campus this fall—reflect on their academic trajectories and political work, offer suggestions for how young scholars can build networks of support, and remind us to realize the critical potential of our discipline.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 26

The music sampled in this podcast is akaUNO’s “Hidden Leaves,” and “Another Word” by The Left Curve.

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Can’t we find more creative ways to report these stories? The story of Michael Brown is so important, but we get trapped, I think, in this narrow narrative that we’ve been telling for a really long time. —Tessa Brown

Social media and mobile technology has particularly been important for people of color, for working class people, for immigrants, for LGBT people, people who belong to groups who have been traditionally marginalized in the media because they don’t have to not only wait for the media to tell their stories but they also don’t have to wait to have their stories be misconstrued, too, and have their stories misinterpreted. —Sherri Williams

These aren’t just flukes, these aren’t just accidents, these aren’t just deviations from an otherwise decent society. The whole society is bankrupt, its corrupt, its racist, its sexist, its homophobic, and ablist and because this is an entrenched deep issue it is going to have to be an entrenched long-term kind of movement to fight those kinds of things. —Nikeeta Slade

The image shows a screenshot of The Root's tweet featuring an image that went viral during Ferguson protests. The image features a black man with his back to the camera, hands in the air. Facing us are approximately 10 police officers in full riot gear, at least 4 of whom are actively pointing guns at the unarmed citizen.

Tweet from The Root, Aug. 12: “Days after #MikeBrown’s death, #Ferguson looks like a war zone (via @micnews): bit.ly/1orU2GF

Episode 24 focuses on media representations of Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of Mike Brown. As Ben notes in the introduction, This Rhetorical Life focuses on the practice, pedagogy, and public circulation of rhetoric. By focusing on Ferguson, we connect all three: how rhetoric circulates around Ferguson, how our public texts work to either create and sustain or to challenge and resist unjust systems, and how we as writing instructors can help students analyze and flip unjust systems. This episode features interviews with three Syracuse graduate students: Tessa Brown, Sherri Williams, and Nikeeta Slade.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 24

The music sampled in this podcast is “Strange Arithmetic” by The Coup, “Note Drop” by Broke For Free, “EMO Step Show” by The Custodian of Records, and “This is the End” By Springtide.

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The video provides details referenced in Carlos’s remarks over the next hour, the conditions of racism that John Carlos’s actions responded to, his childhood in Harlem, how he got involved with the Olympic Project for Human Rights, and other details about how the silent protest was developed and interpreted in its time.

The John Carlos Story (image via johncarlos68.com)

Episode 8 features a recording of Dr. John Carlos’s featured session at CCCC in Las Vegas this past March (read the description here). Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English from Texas A&M-Commerce, has been working closely with Carlos and introduces his keynote by identifying three themes that are relevant to our field: time, collective action, and reciprocity. In his address, Carlos offers insights into the 1968 Mexico City silent protest, his experiences facing racial prejudice, and the choices we all make as writers working for social justice.

To read a PDF of the full transcript, please download it here: Transcript for Episode 8.

The music sampled in this podcast includes Prefuse 73, J Dilla, Digable Planets, Curtis Mayfield, & Mos Def.

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