Getting Personal
A Conference on Feminism, Rhetoric, & The Personal

As researchers and Educators of Rhetoric, Composition, and related studies, we invite you to join us at the intersection of our respective fields and feminist rhetoric. As such, we welcome a gathering of colleagues to share experiences engaging in and with the first-annual Getting Personal conference. To honor our feminist foundation, we will gather in the city that hosted the first (American) feminist conference, Chicago, Illinois, on May 6-7, 2022. 

 

As we gather, we think of the following call to action from Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa E. Kirsch: 

“We must learn to ask new and different questions and to find more and better ways to listen to the multidimensional voices that are speaking from within and across many of the lines that might divide us as language users— by social and political hierarchies, geography, material circumstances, ideologies, time and space, and the like" (486). 

- Royster, Jacqueline Jones, and Gesa E. Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices : New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fsu/detail.action?docID=1354446. Created from fsu on 2021-11-10 23:16:48

 

It has been a decade since Royster and Kirsch called us to action, to ask new questions, and to listen better. To do this, we must engage in Getting Personal with ourselves, our colleagues, and in the work we do. But what does it mean to engage in the Personal? According to Kirsch & Ritchie (1995), it means we must validate our lived experiences – our stories – as sources of new knowledge (3). The impact of which changes the questions we allow ourselves to ask and the methodologies we value and support across disciplines. Villanueva (2001) argues that it is essential for us to accept the Personal in our academic discourses because it adds pathos – to complete a rhetorical triangle that includes both cognition and affect. Villanueva says, “the personal done well is sensorial and intellectual, complete, knowledge know throughout the mind and body, even if vicariously” (573). 

- Villanueva, Victor, and Kristin L. Arola. Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 2011. Print. pp. 3, 573.

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With this understanding of The Personal and its significance in the various rhetorics we engage in, we are seeking proposals for presentations that reflect on the last decade of progress (or the lack of), that offer new ways of asking and answering research questions, that make knowledge or share perspectives through shared experiences and stories, that inform through invitational conversations, that are situated at the many intersections between the fields of Rhetoric and Composition and feminist pedagogy, and/or that challenge the Imperialist, Western, Traditional, and masculine components of the scholarship that we engage in. 

 

We encourage proposals for posters, paper presentations, themed group panels, interactive workshops, roundtable discussions, and storytelling/talking circles. To submit your proposal, you will need to have the names, institutional affiliations, positions, and contact information for each presenter, a title for your presentation, an abstract/proposal plan (no more than 150 words), and a contextualizing statement (250-word max) that tells us how you see your presentation as a good fit for the theme Getting Personal. You will also need to decide if you would like to present in person, remotely (in real time), or asynchronously (via a pre-recorded presentation). 

 

We ask that you submit your proposals on or before 5:00 pm (ET) on Saturday, January 1, 2022, through the following link: https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Nz0zjTlKUhmkGW (links to external site). For assistance, or for any other questions, please email us at gettingpersonalconference@gmail.com.