A Lot is going on right now for me this September and it’s all rotating around the idea of the future of rhetoric.

Got a very interesting call for papers for the journal Informal Logic about a special issue on this topic.

Got an email from the President of the University about downsizing and the future of the school. It’s not rosy! There will be some examination of some efficiency of programs it seems.

I’ve also put in for a position somewhere new, and thinking about how that will look next year and beyond. Will this be a good idea?

I also feel my teaching is quite stale and needs to be upgraded for the future. Had a great lunch yesterday with someone interested in graduate work, but not sure what discipline. In thinking about what I could have them read to see if speech communication derived rhetoric is a good fit, everything I was thinking of is 40 plus years old.

The NCA journals don’t help either – they are full of old ideas, or ideas that are somewhat adjacent to the study of how words mean such as the construction of race and gender. Fascinating things to study, but it’s not the field (although some wish it were as it sounds so much cooler to be a “scholar of race” than a rhetorician).

I’m definitely wondering about the future of the university and professors in general too. What’s the point of bringing up big questions and cool readings if the end result is to just be a sideshow on the way to a cubicle job somewhere? I feel like I work in the entertainment division of a job training platform that is shifting to be more online and work from home.

What is the future of all this? I am definitely not going to figure this out on a Tuesday morning in October. Today I am going to work on essays and class, and then maybe this evening do some reading around for fun.