1st Edition
Into the Gateway Project on Power, Place and Publics
This book advances the trend toward field methods in rhetorical scholarship by collecting distinct chapters based on the same object of study – the University of Nevada, Reno’s Masterplan that extends the University into the adjacent community. Exploring the perennial problem of university-community relations from the perspective of multiple publics, this book provides thick description of a local issue that resonates with communities across the country. The fieldwork for each chapter was conducted in groups during a single, week-long site visit that asked scholars to study the asymmetrical traction among different communities to organize, publicize, and advocate positions around a proposed redevelopment project. Surveying the results of this professional experiment – the Project on Power, Place, and Publics – each chapter offers a theoretical intervention into the same material site, illustrates diverse place-based field methods, and models the scholarly results of work that mixes slow, deliberate, and thoughtful analysis with the fast pace and spontaneous demands of participatory research.
This volume is unique for a number of reasons: it is the only study to concretely illustrate the compatibility of field methods with a wide range of theoretical perspectives; it attests to the possibility of deeply collaborative research as teams of researchers engaged multiple local partners to produce these chapters; and, it challenges the pervasive intellectual terrain that pits one theory against another by showing how diverse scholarly approaches can bolster one another.
With a new introduction, afterword, and post-script material from authors, the other chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Review of Communication.
1. Enacting rhetorical field methods in a place-based project
Catherine Chaput, Lynda Olman and Amy Pason
2. The unbuilt city of Reno
John M. Ackerman
3. “No(t) camping”: engaging intersections of housing, transportation, and environmental justice through critical praxis
Bridie McGreavy, Scott Kelley, Jason Ludden, Daniel Card, Elisa Cogbill-Seiders, Ian Derk, Constance Gordon, Kaitlyn Haynal, Kassia Krzus-Shaw, Melissa M. Parks, Ashleigh Petts, Derek G. Ross and Kenneth Walker
4. Community-engaged rhetoric
David Coogan
5. Unearthing deep roots: tapping rhetoric’s generative power to improve community and urban development projects
Derek G. Handley, Victoria Gallagher, Danielle DeVasto, Mridula Mascarenhas and Rhana A. Gittens
6. Precarious economies: capitalism’s creative destruction in the age of neoliberal campus planning
Phillip Goodwin, Rubén Casas, Ralph Cintrón, Joshua Stanley Hanan, Leslie L. Rossman and Nick J. Sciullo
7. The biggest little ways toward access: thinking with disability in site-specific rhetorical work
Amy Vidali
8. (Re)designing Innovation Alley: fostering civic living and learning through visual rhetoric and urban design
Laurie Gries, Blake Watson, Jason P. Kalin, Jaqui Pratt and Desiree Dighton
9. Rhetorical cartographic story maps as public work
Jennifer A. Malkowski and Christina M. Klenke
10. Afterword – Engaging the university as institutional public actor: employing field methods to map market publicity in a networked public sphere
Robert Asen
Biography
Catherine Chaput is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. Her research focuses on the intersecting relations among rhetoric, political economy, and affect. She has written two monographs, edited a collection, and guest edited four journal issues. In addition, she has published dozens of articles and book chapters.
Amy Pason is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. Her research focuses on social movement and counterpublics rhetoric, First Amendment issues related to protest, and academic labor. She is co-editor of What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics.
