Reinventing the Rhetoric of Social Movements:
A Workshop at the 2005 RSA Biennial Institute
Kent State University, May 27-29, 2005

One of twelve concurrent workshops taking place during the Rhetoric Society of America's first Biennial Institute, "Reinventing the Rhetoric of Social Movements" entails a series of critical discussions on movement studies as an object of rhetorical inquiry.

While some contend that systematic research on collective activism waned in communication studies in the 1990s, important scholarly advances were made in sociology, political science, history, and related disciplines. Rhetoricians are ideally positioned to participate in this renaissance, to reinvent disciplinary approaches to movement studies in new and productive lines of inquiry.

Prospective research and discussion questions include but are not limited to: (1) How can we incorporate productively the work of other disciplines while retaining a strong sense of the explicitly rhetorical dimensions of social movements? (2) How does the advent of new media technologies, especially the Internet, reorient our work? (3) What challenges does the contemporary emphasis on identity politics pose to established models of rhetorical movements? (4) How can we expand productively the scope of our study beyond the conventional interest in liberal-leftist politics to include third-party, grassroots, and conservative movements? (5) What challenges are posed by globalization and trans-national developments? (6) How, if at all, should we re-define the meaning of social movements in light of these questions and ensuing dialogue? (7) Are there new and productive methods that must now be deployed for movement studies?

We will provide a brief list of readings to registered participants before the Institute, designed to guide discussions especially in the first and third sessions. Loosely, the topics of the five sessions are:

Session One: Retrospective on movement theory and criticism within the discipline.

Session Two: Presentations by a select number of workshop participants of current work in progress which will serve as the catalyst for discussion.

Session Three: A conversation on contemporary interdisciplinary approaches to the study of movements.

Session Four: A second session featuring participants's current work.

Session Five: A synthesis of earlier conversations to suggest directions for a reinvention of the rhetorical study of social movements.