Main Introduction Background The Alliance of Rhetoric Societies (ARS) is an “organization of organizations”—a non-Internet based world-wide web for rhetoricians. Long overdue, ARS crosses disciplinary lines and areas of interest to put rhetoricians in touch with one another. Because of their less than traditional workspaces and research directions, rhetoricians with technology interests will benefit from the collegiality that ARS can enable, perhaps in different ways from the traditional English or Speech Communications department-based rhetoricians. This interview is intended to introduce the Kairos community to ARS—and ARS to us. Andrea Lunsford: “Readers of Kairos, that is scholars and teachers who are especially interested in the relationship of new technologies to rhetoric and writing, will be interested in re-thinking the history of rhetoric and writing—since, after all, these are very old technologies on which the newer ones are building today.” Michael Leff: “Because of the peculiar history of rhetoric in American higher education, rhetoricians have not only been marginalized but also scattered.” The following is an interview with Professors Andrea Lunsford and Michael Leff, both key players in the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies (ARS), which had its first working meeting in Evanston, Illinois from September 11 – 14, 2003. Professor Lunsford, who is committed to encouraging the study and practice of responsible rhetoric, was on the organizing committee for ARS and served as Co-Chair (the conference was co-sponsored by Northwestern and Stanford Universities). Professor Leff, has been elected to succeed the first ARS Chair of the Board, Professor Jerry Hauser. The interview itself occurred over the course of two weeks. First, Professors Lunsford and Leff responded by email to questions about ARS in general. The email format had the purpose of giving the participants time to consider what they wanted to say to readers of Kairos. Then, Beth Hewett hosted a synchronous chat via instant messaging, which enabled us to talk about such issues as the role ARS might play in developing rhetoric centers and how a broader understanding of European and other rhetorical traditions is important to all rhetoricians. Biographical Information Andrea Lunsford, Professor of English and Director, Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, has designed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in writing history and theory, rhetoric, literacy studies, and intellectual property. Currently also a member of the Bread Loaf School of English faculty, Professor Lunsford earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Florida, and she completed her Ph.D. in English at The Ohio State University. Professor Lunsford’s interests include rhetorical theory, gender and rhetoric, collaboration, cultures of writing, style, and technologies of writing. She has written or coauthored fourteen books, including Everything’s an Argument; The Everyday Writer; Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse; Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing; and Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the History of Rhetoric, as well as numerous chapters and articles. Her most recent book is The St. Martin’s Handbook, 5th edition. Forthcoming works include Exploring Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies. Professor Lunsford also co-authored one of the first feature articles in Kairos: What Matters Who Writes? What Matters Who Responds? Issues of Ownership in the Writing Classroom (with Rebecca Rickly, Michael Salvo, and Susan West). Michael Leff is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Memphis. He studies, teaches, and researches the history of rhetoric, rhetorical criticism, and argumentation. Professor Leff has published widely in these areas and has won numerous awards for his scholarship, including the Douglas Ehninger Award for career achievements in rhetorical studies and the distinguished research award from the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSR). In 2001, he was elected as a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association. He is chair-elect of the Alliance of Rhetoric Society's Board of Directors. He has published more than fifty articles and book chapters, and his papers have appeared in such journals as Argumentation, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, and Rhetorica. His most recent book, co-authored with Robert Terrill and James Andrews, is Reading Rhetorical Texts: An Introduction to Criticism. He is currently working on a book-length study of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Beth Hewett is co-editor of the CoverWeb for Kairos. Currently, she is finishing a book—Orienting Writing Instructors for Online Contexts: Principles and Processes—with Christa Ehmann. She also is working on several book chapters and a major research project into how students use online instruction to revise their writing. Beth Hewett’s Experience at ARS From September 11 – 14, 2003, scholars from various societies, countries, and disciplinary backgrounds gathered in Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University. Evanston presented balmy, if a bit breezy, weather and a lovely small town atmosphere for the academics who attended the first Conference of the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies, or ARS. Each participant had submitted a brief position paper on one of the four primary issues under scrutiny: 1. How ought we to understand the concept of rhetorical agency? 2. Do we have a “rhetorical tradition”? Are we better advised to think of traditions rather than a single tradition? If we do recognize a tradition or several traditions, how do we identify and characterize it (or them)? 3. What should be the institutional and social goals for academic rhetoric in the twenty-first century? How can rhetoric best contribute to the social, political, and cultural environment that extends beyond the University? 4. What does it mean to teach rhetoric? What does it mean to teach composition and performance seriously? What is the relationship between rhetoric and composition? Should they be distinguished? These position statements are available online at http://www.comm.umn.edu/ARS/. At the conference, we learned more about ARS and the purposes of the gathering. This was a working conference. The ARS leaders had a willing and captive audience who were divided into eleven working groups, each focused on one of the four sets of questions listed above. We chatted and mingled at the opening reception on Thursday night. Then, we attended a panel discussion to hear the goals for our work and to air our visions for the weekend and for ARS more generally. We spent the next three days alternating our time between the plenary sessions and work group meetings. Wisely, the conference leaders fed us well and at the conference hotel—no wandering off that could take us from our self-assigned tasks! The work groups focused on the meat of the questions to which we had allied ourselves through our position statements. We read each other’s position statements as background context and then got to work. In my working group, our leader David Zarefsky posed a few initial questions to prime the pump and then we pondered issues generated by the discussion. For example, in this group—responding to the issue of and social goals for academic rhetoric in the twenty-first century—we talked about four common themes: • How do we make our research and teaching more robust in their own rights? • How do we address matters of disciplinary organization? • How do we strengthen the position of rhetoric within the academy? • How do we enhance rhetoric’s visibility in and contribution to society? Then, guided by David over the next three days, we worked with each of those themes—sometimes keeping issues separate and sometimes, by necessity, blurring boundaries of the topic under discussion. Our group derived its special character (as did the other working groups) from the disciplinary mix where some participants were allied with the speech communications discipline and others with rhetoric or rhetoric/composition. Beyond disciplinarity, however, we cohered as a group in part because of a European rhetorician who informed us of his country’s valuation of rhetoric and the ways that academic and public rhetoric developed because of that valuation. Towards the end of the weekend, we put together an action plan for David to share at the final conference session—a time for all groups to report to the conference body. When I left, having been worked hard and fed well, I felt sated. I strongly believe that I had just attended an amazing union of powerful, thoughtful minds focused on steering rhetoric into this new century—guiding rhetoric as a practice, profession, discipline, and vocation. Top Main