Schedule and Presentation Information
ARC 2026 Schedule
Thursday, June 4, 2026
All Times Eastern Daylight Time
8:00-8:15: Welcome
Planning Committee: Stephen Carradini, Roxanne Aftanas, Jacob Rawlins, Kathryn Northcut, Sara Parks
8:15-9:30 Session 1: Quick Hits (10 minutes each + 5 each direct discussion + 15 group discussion)
Valeria Fabj: Teaching in the Era of AI: Challenges and Opportunities
Molly MacLachlan: Public Perceptions: Stepmom & Bio Mom Identity
Monisha Biswas: Teacher Rhetoric and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy: Some Personal Reflections and Comparisons
Kristen LeFevers: Incorporating a Multimodal Pedagogy to Facilitate Application of Ethos in First-Year Composition
9:30-9:45 Break
9:45-11:15 Session 2: Traditional (20 minutes each + 30 minutes group discussion)
Jacob D. Rawlins and Michael Barrett: The Poetics of Music and the Music of Poetics (or Cicero and Orpheus Walk into a Bar)
Sara Doan: Mapping the Facts: Stasis Theory in 21st Century Medical Cartography
Valeria Fabj: Remembering the Past, Forging the Future: The Role of UDI in Modern Day Italian Politics
11:15-12:15 Session 3: Works in Progress (30 minutes each - including discussion of each)
Roxanne Aftanas: Rhetoric is Cool Again: Building a Scalable Civil Discourse Program
James M. Dubinsky and Bruce Pencek: The Rhetoric of Disciplinarity: Building an Academic Field in Real Time
12:15-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Session 4: Write to Publish (20 min each - authors can choose how long to talk and how much feedback to get within the 20 minutes)
Sara B. Parks: When the future isn't welcome: Resistance as a rhetorical resource
Monica Reyes: Clothing as Affective Rhetoric toward Migrant Social Mobility
Shane C. Crombie: Not So Dark. Recovering High Medieval Rhetorical Thought in a Post-Truth Age
2:00-3:30 Session 5: Traditional (20 minutes each + 30 minutes group discussion)
Cynthia Pope: Pedagogical Chatbots: Transforming an R1 Technical Writing Course
Kristy Crawley: Literacy Brokers: Interrogating AI as a Literacy Sponsor
Dirk Remley: The Murder Mystery Fundraiser: Entertaining Interactive Multimodal Rhetoric
3:30 - 3:45 Break
3:45 - 4:45 Session 6: Panel (Panelists will decide their own time management)
Lauren N. Maher, David Ornelas, Rich Rice, and Ronald B. Cole: Writing Grants, Building Care: Enacting Rhetoric in Nonprofit Funding Work
Thurs
4:45-5:00 Day 1 Wrap-Up
Jacob Rawlins: A few minutes at the end of each day to draw connections among all that we've learned and discussed.
Friday, June 5, 2026
8:00-9:30 Session 7: Traditional (20 minute presentations + 30 minutes for discussion)
Joseph Sharp: Accountability as Rhetorical Definition: A Case Study of Subgroup Performance in the Alabama Accountability Act
Margaret J. Bates and Deanna N. McConnell: Where’s Our Happily-Ever-After? Patterns of Toxic Rhetoric in Online Literature Communities and How to Fight Back
Trent Michael Kays: Digital Erasure: Rhetorical Destruction and the Weaponization of Queer Language
9:30-10:30 Session 8: Write to Publish (20 min each - authors can choose how long to talk and how much feedback to get within the 20 minutes)
Caden Holbrook: An Explosion of Discourse: Troll Culture, Oklahoma, and Academic Freedom
Safi Ullah: Political Discourse of a Facebook Meme about University Teachers during the July Uprising in 2024: A Silversteinian Reading
Krista A. Grant: Fanfiction and Terms of Service: How Terms of Service for Two Major Fanfiction Platforms Intersect with Messy Copyright Laws in a Digital Age
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:15 Session 9: Works in Progress (30 minutes each - including discussion of each)
Christina Davidson: Literal Mandates from Figurative Language: An Analysis of Collaborative Metaphors within Corporate Memorandums
James M. Dubinsky and Bruce Pencek: Veterans Studies as a Discipline: Assumptions and Presuppositions
Dexter Williams and Jodi Schneider: Emotional Argumentation in Second Look
12:15-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30 Session 10: Traditional (20 minute presentations + 30 minutes for discussion)
Laura Vernon: On the Front Lines: Using Rhetoric to Build Climate Resilient Communities
Tom Duncanson: Realism in Green Citizen Diplomacy: The Rhetorician in the Room Brings Forward the Text
Stephen Carradini: Local Man Tries To Help People With AI, But People Hate It: More at 10
2:30-2:45 Break
2:45-3:45 Session 11: Write to Publish (20 min each - authors can choose how long to talk and how much feedback to get within the 20 minutes)
Kathryn M. Northcut: But what do the employees think about it? Social media insights into work/life at Epic viewed through an applied rhetoric lens
Lauren N. Maher: A Rhetorical Analysis of Budget Narratives in Nonprofit Proposals
Jamie Littlefield: Staging a Genre Chain Disruption: An Analysis of 5 Rhetorical Strategies for Intervening in Urban Technical Communication Ecologies
3:45-4:15 Day 2 Wrap-Up
Jacob Rawlins: A few minutes at the end of each day to draw connections among all that we've learned and discussed.
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Works in Progress - 5 presentations
(30 minutes each - including discussion of each)
Not a presentation or a workshop, Works in Progress sessions are a time to get feedback on how to finish a project that seems stuck or how to start working on a promising idea that seems overwhelming.
Quick Hits: Rhetoric in Practice - 4 presentations
(10 minutes each + 5 each direct discussion + 15 group discussion)
A lightning round of sorts in which participants review or critique applications of rhetoric in their work, communities, or society at large. Quick hits will be followed by open discussion sessions.
Write-to-Publish Track - 9 presentations
(20 min each to present - authors can choose how long to talk and how much feedback to get within the 20 minutes)
The Write-to-Publish track offers a pathway from conference presentation to peer-reviewed publication in POROI. This track integrates conference vetting with the journal's peer review process. See Write-to-Publish CFP for more information.
Traditional - 13 presentations
(20 minutes each + 30 minutes group discussion)
You know what we are talking about. Strict time limits, but these presentations will be followed by an extended open discussion after each set of three traditional presentations.