Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
2020 Rhetoric Society of America Pre-Conference
Portland, OR – 21 May 2020
Call for Papers
Boundary Work
The theme of ARSTM@RSA 2020, “Boundary Work,” invites rhetoricians of science, technology, and medicine to explore and reflect on practices of demarcation, coordination, and calibration. Although boundary work has commonly been leveraged to describe the rhetorical practices of demarcation and separation (Gieryn, 1983; Keränen, 2005; Miller, 2005, Derkatch, 2012), rhetorical scholars have also taken an interest in practices that foster understanding, calibration, or coordination across boundaries (Ceccarelli, 2001; Wilson & Herndl, 2007; Graham & Herndl 2013).
The 2020 bi-annual meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America is an opportune moment to re-visit the implications of boundary-work in ARSTM. With rapidly proliferating scholarly perspectives that often span across multiple departmental homes, Rhetorical Studies is itself deeply implicated in the formation and recalcitrance of boundaries. Lynch and Kinsella (2013), for instance, demarcate the meaningful differences between Media Studies and Rhetorical Studies’ treatments of technology. Moreover, diverging operative definitions of rhetoric are themselves boundaries that delimit the types of knowledge that can be produced and the perspectives that can be heard (Taylor, 1996).
When positioned in relationship to the radical openness of the conference theme, hospitality, this preconference asks attendees to consider what is at stake when scientific, technological, and medical boundaries are defined, maintained, traversed, and destabilized. We invite individual papers and panel discussions that advance our understanding of boundaries as they relate to our research practices, theory building, methodological development, scholarly production, and engagement with various publics. Beyond disciplinary anxieties, we also invite productive cases exploring—better still, illustrating—the role of boundaries in a range of rhetorical practices, their epistemological underpinnings, and their explanatory power in furthering RSTM research and productive relationships with the crucial stakeholders of our research.
We welcome abstracts and panel proposals that address questions including, but not limited to the following:
- What is distinctive and shared among (rhetoric of) science, technology, medicine and other related areas (environment, engineering, economics)?
- What are the roles of boundaries in the constitution and reformation of expertise in science, technology, and medicine?
- How does method function as/in boundary work, e.g. empirical vs rhetorical vs qualitative; textual vs discursive vs material?
- How do boundaries in science, technology, and medicine function to (de)legitimize voices on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sex, class, and ability?
- What is at stake in boundary work among constituencies, e.g. patient and provider, scientist and regulator, humanist and scientist, ecologist and geologist, researcher and practitioner?
- How might ARSTM scholars approach disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, engaged, or applied inquiry?
- Related to the 2019 NCA Preconference: How do boundaries in science, technology, and medicine implicate the need for translation?
Submissions may be in the form of individual abstracts or panel proposals of four participants. We also welcome proposals for non-traditional panels such as roundtables, interactive sessions, etc. Each abstract should detail in 300 words or less (not including references) how the project will contribute to an understanding of rhetoric and boundary work. Panel proposals should also include a 100-word rationale for the panel along with the individual abstracts (300 words each) and must include presenters from multiple institutions, and, ideally, crossing fields of rhetorical studies, from English to Communication and beyond. Please do not include any identifying information in the abstracts or panel proposals (identify as “speaker 1,” 2, etc.).
Submissions should be sent as an attachment to Dr. Molly Kessler at kesslerm@umn.edu by 11:59pm CST on August 30th, 2019. Please use “ARSTM RSA 2020 Preconference Submission” as your email subject, and provide preferred contact information in the email. Any questions about this CFP and the ARSTM preconference at RSA may be addressed to Dr. Daniel Card, dcard@umn.edu, Dr. Molly Kessler, kesslerm@umn.edu, or Dr. Emily Winderman, ewinderm@umn.edu.
References
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 781-795.
Ceccarelli, L. (2001). Shaping science with rhetoric: The cases of Dobzhansky, Schrodinger, and Wilson. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derkatch, C. (2008). Method as argument: Boundary work in evidence‐based medicine. Social Epistemology, 22(4), 371-388.
Derkatch, C. (2012). Demarcating medicine’s boundaries: Constituting and categorizing in the journals of the American Medical Association. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21(3), 210-229.
Graham, S. S., & Herndl, C. (2013). Multiple ontologies in pain management: Toward a postplural rhetoric of science. Technical Communication Quarterly, 22(2), 103-125.
Keränen, L. (2005). Mapping misconduct: Demarcating legitimate science from “fraud” in the B-06 lumpectomy controversy. Argumentation and Advocacy, 42(2), 94-113.
Lynch, J. A., & Kinsella, W. J. (2013). The rhetoric of technology as a rhetorical technology. Poroi, 9(1), 13.
Miller, C. R. (2005). Risk, controversy, and rhetoric: Response to Goodnight. Argumentation and Advocacy, 42(1), 34-37.
Wilson, G., & Herndl, C. G. (2007). Boundary objects as rhetorical exigence: Knowledge mapping and interdisciplinary cooperation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(2), 129-154.
Scott, J. B. (2016). Boundary work and the construction of scientific authority in the vaccines-autism controversy. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 46(1), 59-82.
Taylor, C. A. (1996). Defining science: A rhetoric of demarcation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.