CfP: After the Crisis: Make, Do, and Mend and/as Rhetoric of Science
We are seeking original contributions to an edited collection on how compounding political, environmental, health, and disciplinary crises have affected the theory and practice of the rhetorics of science (broadly conceived). Building on the recent RSQ Special Issue, “Rhetoric of Science in (Times of) Crisis,” this collection positions “crisis” as both an increasingly consequential keyword in and an exigence for rhetorical scholarship into the professional and public lives of science. Following critical studies of the term (Koselleck, Roitman, Masco, Cheng, et al.), we approach the designator “crisis” as both a description of periods marked by uncertainty and controversy as well as a powerful speech act that conjures forth particular judgments, evaluations, and responses.
Coming from the Greek krinô—meaning to separate, choose, or decide—the etymological history of crisis is one marked by kairotic attunement and decisive action. For instance, while everyday usage now often posits crisis as a “protracted and potentially persistent state of ailment and demise,” in Hippocratic medical thought, the term crisis captured the tipping point of a disease, the critical moment when life-and-death decisions were made (Roitman, 16). Regardless of its historical use, what has remained consistent is the fact that the concept of “crisis” is itself rhetorical insofar as it opens opportunities for reflecting on past ways of knowing, strategizing alternative ways of making meaning, and charting new horizons for coordinating collective action. What can we make or do? How can we heal and mend during and after a crisis?
Our collection aims to localize this multifaceted understanding of crisis to the domains of scientific rhetoric and the rhetoric of science. It asks how crises in scientific knowledge production inform and affect crises in public apprehensions of science. Consider, for example, how the crisis in factuality embodied in the term “alternative facts” in 2017 has widened and deepened in recent months. On one level, the crisis of “alternative facts” captures a public rhetorical situation that has had serious consequences for science, technology, and medicine insofar as it destabilizes public trust in dependable and credible information. Consequently, scientific institutions and scientists themselves have become the targets of increasingly vitriolic attacks. At another level, however, in undermining the public esteem of science, the rhetoric of “alternative facts” has also revealed a crisis in scientific knowledge production itself by drawing attention to compounding crises concerning the verifiability and replicability of scientific research (Fahnestock). This is just one example of the many ways in which “crisis” manufactures (Ceccarelli) and energizes “rhetorical controversies” that “dislocate and disorient” dominant discursive and material systems (Phillips, 494, emphasis in original).
Ultimately, we are interested in gathering essays that both continue and complicate the work begun in “The Rhetoric of Science in (Times of) Crisis” special issue. There, we focused on crises in the sciences as well as on the notion of a crisis in the rhetoric of science itself. The articles in this issue employed a rhetorical lens to address topics such as abortion (DeTora), reactionary COVID-19 movements (Mitchell), crises in theoretical physics (Keeling & Kishimoto), sustainability (Rademaekers), ecology (Sackey), and social media health influencers (Koerber & Al-Shawaf), among others. However, this issue was conceived and largely written before the current U.S. administration took power and proceeded with an unprecedented, systematic assault on science, medicine, public health, and the institutions that safeguard and sustain them.
Therefore, the collection we are now envisioning is prompted by emerging rhetorical exigencies and seeks work that not only historicizes, critiques, and analyzes our current moment but also envisions ways to (re)build the bonds connecting scientific, general, and political publics. We want to ask what it might mean to imagine new, more just futures for scientific rhetoric and the rhetoric of science, as well as how rhetoricians might collaborate with diverse stakeholders to cultivate more balanced, sober, informed, and intersectional views of science that work for—not against—local, national, and global interests.
To this end, we imagine a tripartite structure for our collection, with essays responding to one or more of the following themes as they connect with constructive visions and actions for the future. We are especially interested in work that considers the ebb and flow of phronesis, techne, and/or praxis during and after times of crisis:
- Make
- Do
- Mend
Authors are encouraged to take a creative approach to these themes in their contributions. Furthermore, given our desire to chart pathways for building coalitions among publics affected by science, we are especially interested in soliciting collaborative work, as well as theoretical and practical responses to contemporary scientific crises. Final chapters should range between 5,000–7,000 words (including references).
Bloomsbury Academic has expressed interest in this collection, so we anticipate a quick response time once we collect submissions and turn in our proposal. To stay on schedule, we ask that 300-word abstracts be sent no later than end-of-day on December 3, 2025. Please include your name(s), institutional affiliations, and emails for all authors in your submission. Let us know if you are interested but you would like an extension to this deadline.