UW Simpson Center: Public Rhetorics and Permanent War 2006-07

Public Rhetorics Permanent War is a collective of humanities graduate students and faculty who share a scholarly interest in understanding and clarifying the production and role of public rhetorics during what increasingly appears to be a state of globalized permanent war.

This research cluster focuses its attention on the overlap and articulation of three particular sites transformed by globalization from which we believe public intellectual work can emerge, namely, humanistic scholarship, organic social activism, and artistic cultural production. Although the relationship between activist and academic work has often been fraught, our project seeks to bring the work of artists, performers, and scholars together in order to both enable and understand the linkages forged by intellectual and creative engagement with larger communities of global citizens.

Part of the impetus for PRPW is for us to inspire and develop a cohort of scholars invested in producing intellectual work that engages pressing political questions. Accordingly, not only will we pursue a small set of seminar-style readings over the course of the year, but we will periodically offer a venue for the presentation of works-in-progress by both interested faculty mentors and graduate students. From draft journal articles and conference papers to dissertation and book chapters, we are interested in cultivating a supportive community that might enable us to further hone our own critical scholarly practices.