This edition of the Writing Instructor offers a representative sample of the proceedings of the Carolina Rhetoric Conference, the academic rigor, and dynamic community of rhetoric programs in the Carolinas. While the State of Texas is often considered the rhetoric and composition research epicenter, the combined states of North and South Carolina prove a formidable match. Duke University, University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina Greensboro, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wake Forest University, the University of South Carolina, the College of Charleston, Eastern Carolina University, and Clemson University are all among the institutions of undergraduate and graduate students included in this conference. Typically, the conference transfers year by year to the RSA chapters of North Carolina State, the University of South Carolina, and Clemson University.
This 2018 conference, chaired by April O’Brien, featured some 50 papers over a two day period on the Campus of Clemson University. The 2018 conference theme emerged from the discourses of counter publics, which offered attendees the chance to add to that discourse, qualifying, contextualizing and challenging it in parts and whole, each presentation reshaping our understanding of how we define and what constitutes “counter publics.”
As editors, we attended each of the sessions listening for theoretical depth, effective application, and original arguments. The associate editors collaborated, selecting the best work to be featured in the conference proceedings. Each author selected for publication in the conference proceedings also acted as an anonymous reviewer for others’ work outside their own institution. We believe the research papers published here represent the richness of Carolina Rhetorics in terms of institutional tradition, methods, and lines of research.
These proceedings are published in coordination with The Writing Instructor, Parlor Press, and the Campbell Chair of Technical Communication at Clemson University, Dr. David Blakesley.
Thank you for your readership,
—Eric James Stephens, Central Washington University
—Stephen Quigley, University of Pittsburgh
The guest editors are former RCID students at Clemson University
Photo by Sean Stratton on Unsplash.