On March 6, 2008, Jenny Edbauer Rice will be visiting the CWRL as part of the lab’s ongoing lecture series and in coordination with the Big XII Faculty Fellowship Program. Her work specializes in rhetorical theory, writing studies, and new media, and she will be presenting a talk entitled “Rhetoric and the Amateur” at 4 p.m. in the Texas Union’s African American Cultures Room (4.110).

According to Dr. Rice, embracing the role of technology’s mechanics is necessary for those who want to serve as rhetorical producers and teachers of production in the twenty-first century. Rather than separating their work from the materiality of production, rhetoricians have the opportunity to expand their own engagements with the modes of invention and means of circulation. Yet, she argues, rhetoric and writing professionals are likely to remain perpetual amateurs where specific technologies are concerned, due to the fact that the object of their professional interest is not in technology itself but in rhetorical production with those technologies. In her presentation, Dr. Rice will consider this scenario as both a problem and, paradoxically, an advantage.

Dr. Rice received her Ph.D. in English from The University of Texas at Austin in 2005. Her work has appeared in the Rhetoric Society Quarterly, JAC, College Composition and Communication, and Postmodern Culture. She is currently working on a book project titled Passages of Power: Public Rhetoric and the New Pathos which addresses rhetoric and cultural affect.