Ryan Skinnell

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About Ryan Skinnell
Ryan Skinnell is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University.
For more information, go to: www.RyanSkinnell.com
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Blog postWeekDateTopics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines1Aug. 24Introduction to the course / Literacy narrative(s)
Read: Alexie, Superman and I
Skinnell, Reading as an Act of Insubordination
Sommers, I Stand Here Writing
Optional: Explore DALN (https://www.thedaln.org/#/home)2Aug. 31Parameters of the Task at Hand
Read: Ball and Loewe*
Chapter: “America is Facing a Literacy Crisis” (Babb)
Chapter: “First-Year Compo9 months ago Read more -
Blog postWeek
Date
Topics, Readings, Assignments, Deadlines
1Aug. 24Introduction to the course / Literacy narrative(s)
Read: Sherman Alexie
Nancy Sommers2Aug. 31The Parameters of the Task at Hand
Read: Ball and Loewe*
Chapter: “America is Facing a Literacy Crisis” (Jacob Babb)
Chapter: “First-Year Composition Prepares Students for Academic Writing” (Tyler Branson)
Chapter: “You Can Learn to Write in General” (Elizabet9 months ago Read more -
Blog postIn 1958, Dr. Franz Jetzinger published Hitler’s Youth, a scathing repudiation of the Führer’s adulatory backstory as advanced in Mein Kampf and August Kubizek’s The Young Hitler I Knew.
Jetzinger had been a bitter opponent of the Nazis since before Hitler became Chancellor and annexed Austria. During Hitler’s reign, Jetzinger lost multiple jobs because of his anti-Nazi allegiances, he was arrested multiple times, and he was interrogated by the Gestapo, who were looking for Hitler11 months ago Read more -
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Blog postLast week, I finished co-facilitating the 2021 Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute seminar, “Rhetoric in Dark Times.” It was a career goal I never really expected to reach, and it was everything I hoped it would be.
But the experience also got me thinking anew about the somewhat vexed transition points in academic careers that we (by which I mean me, but I’m projecting here) are rarely good at managing.
One aspect of the seminar was that I met with participants to tal12 months ago Read more -
Blog postLast year, when I went up for tenure, I had a hard time quantifying my teaching and administrative work — which at San José State University get collected together under the heading, “Academic Assignment.” I thought I kept pretty detailed records, but my tenure portfolio called the lie to that assumption. Not because I couldn’t … Continue reading Academic Assignment by the Numbers →1 year ago Read more
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Blog postJamal Khashoggi is dead. The journalist was murdered on October 2, 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The available evidence suggests with increasing certainty that it was plotted and carried out by members of Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman’s, coterie of advisors and confidantes. The scandal over Khashoggi’s murder has only grown over the past two weeks, with new and grisly details emerging almost daily.
Saudi officials’ misdirection, quibbling, and outright lying about K1 year ago Read more -
Blog postIn the past week and a half, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has been credibly accused of attempted rape and other acts of sexual assault. One consequence is that public conversation about his confirmation has changed dramatically. But it’s important not to lose sight of arguments about Kavanaugh’s confirmation that were in play before the allegations came to light because they continue to shape how we assess his qualifications.
In the post-sexual-assault-accusation rush to atta1 year ago Read more -
Blog postDoctor Jill Biden wrote and defended a doctoral dissertation in 2007—the crowning achievement of an advanced educational process that entitles a person to the professional title, “Doctor.” Hence, her title. On December 11, 2020, noted literary arbiter and cultural critic, mister Joseph Epstein, declared Biden’s professional distinction “fraudulent, not to say a touch comic” in … Continue reading The Revolting Logic of Joseph Epstein’s “Unpromising Title” →1 year ago Read more
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Blog postAt the beginning of September, Facebook announced that they suspended five accounts affiliated with “Peace Data,” a news website launched by Russia’s social media propaganda wing, the Internet Research Agency. The IRA, of course, was instrumental in the Russian disinformation campaigns in the run-up to the 2016 election. This year, they even hired unwitting American freelance journalists to write for Peace Data.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, acknowledged2 years ago Read more -
Blog postIn 1953, famed political philosopher and Jewish-German exile, Leo Strauss, coined a term to describe a trope that he increasingly saw circulating in public discourse: reductio ad Hilterum. Reductio ad Hitlerum is a fallacy used in arguments to discredit anything that can be associated with or compared to Hitler. Hitler liked dogs? Then liking dogs … Continue reading No, You’re Hitler!: A History and a Proposal →2 years ago Read more
Titles By Ryan Skinnell
Based on extensive archival research conducted at six American universities and using the specific cases of institutional mission, regional accreditation, and federal funding, this study demonstrates that administrators and faculty have introduced, reformed, maintained, threatened, or eliminated composition as part of negotiations related to nondisciplinary institutional exigencies. Viewing composition from this perspective, author Ryan Skinnell raises new questions about why composition exists in the university, how it exists, and how teachers and scholars might productively reconceive first-year composition in light of its institutional functions.
The book considers the rhetorical, political, organizational, institutional, and promotional options conceding composition opened up for institutions of higher education and considers what the first-year course and the discipline might look like with composition’s transience reimagined not as a barrier but as a consummate institutional value.
Guns hold a complex place in American culture. Over 30,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, and guns are intimately connected to issues of public health, as is evident whenever a mass shooting occurs. But guns also play an important role in many Americans’ lives that is not reducible to violence and death—as tools, sporting equipment, and identity markers. They are also central to debates about constitutional rights, as seen in ongoing discussions about the Second Amendment, and they are a continuous source of legislative concern, as apparent in annual ratings of gun-supporting legislators.
Even as guns are wrapped up with other crucial areas of concern, they are also fundamentally a rhetorical concern. Guns and gun violence occupy a unique rhetorical space in the United States, one characterized by silent majorities, like most gun owners; vocal minorities, like the firearm industry and gun lobby; and a stalemate that fails to stem the flood of the dead. How Americans talk, deliberate, and fight about guns is vital to how guns are marketed, used, and regulated. A better understanding of the rhetorics of guns and gun violence can help Americans make better arguments about them in the world. However, where guns are concerned, rhetorical studies is not terribly different from American culture more generally. Guns are ever-present and exercise powerful effects, but they are commonly talked about in oblique, unsystematic ways.
Rhetoric and Guns advances more direct, systematic engagement in the field and beyond by analyzing rhetoric about guns, guns in rhetoric, and guns as rhetoric, particularly as they relate to specific instances of guns in culture. The authors attempt to understand rhetoric’s relationship to guns by analyzing rhetoric about guns and how they function in and as rhetoric related to specific instances—in media coverage, political speech, marketing, and advertising. Original chapters from scholars in rhetorical studies, communication, education, and related fields elucidate how rhetoric is used to maintain and challenge the deadly status quo of gun violence in the United States and extend rhetoricians’ sustained interest in the fields’ relationships to violence, brutality, and atrocity.
Contributors: Ira J. Allen, Brian Ballentine, Matthew Boedy, Peter Buck, Lisa Corrigan, Rosa Eberly, Kendall Gerdes, Ian E. J. Hill, Nathalie Kuriowa-Lewis, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Craig Rood, Bradley Serber, Catherine R. Squires, Scott Gage
For Crowley, theory is a basic building block of rhetoric “produced by and within specific times and locations as a means of opening other ways of believing or acting.” Doing theory, in this sense, is the practice of surveying the common sense of the community (doxa) and discovering the available means of persuasion (invention). The ultimate goal of doing theory is not to prescribe certain actions but to ascertain what options exist for rhetors to see the world differently, to discover new possibilities for thought and action, and thereby to effect change in the world.
The scholarship collected in Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies takes Crowley’s notion of theory as an invitation to develop new avenues for believing and acting. By reinventing the understanding of theory and its role in the field, this collection makes an important contribution to scholarship in rhetorical studies and writing studies. It will be valuable to scholars, teachers, and students interested in diverse theoretical directions in rhetoric and writing studies as well as in race, gender, and disability theories, religious rhetorics, digital rhetoric, and the history of rhetoric.
Publication supported in part by the Texas Tech University Humanities Center.
Contributors: Jason Barrett-Fox, Geoffrey Clegg, Kirsti Cole, Joshua Daniel-Wariya, Diane Davis, Rebecca Disrud, Bre Garrett, Catherine C. Gouge, Debra Hawhee, Matthew Heard, Joshua C. Hilst, David G. Holmes, Bruce Horner, William B. Lalicker, Jennifer Lin LeMesurier, James C. McDonald, Timothy Oleksiak, Dawn Penich-Thacker, J. Blake Scott, Victor J. Vitanza, Susan Wyche