MCSN Webinar- David Beard 2024.mp4

This is a recording of the inaugural Fall 2024 Midwest Canadian Studies Network (MCSN) webinar, "Communication, Writing Studies, and Rhetoric in Canada," delivered by David Beard, Professor of rhetoric, scientific, and technical communication, University of Minnesota Duluth, on Friday, September 13, 2024. 

Abstract: 

In this brief presentation, Dr. Beard will share his research on the history of rhetorical studies in Canada. 

• He begins with a contrastive analysis between the study of communication and writing studies in the United States and Canada. In the US, these disciplines spring from first-year writing and public speaking curricula, especially in land-grant universities. Absent these forces, communication circled the historical and material study of media, descending from Harold Innis to Marshall McLuhan to the Toronto School; writing studies circled genre studies, born from the study of writing in professional contexts.
• Then, he looks to the uniquely Canadian strand of rhetorical studies, developed free of curricular pressures, uniting literary critics, musicologists, American-trained historians of rhetoric, working in French and in English, circling the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric.

The presentation ends with an invitation to join RhetCanada and other scholarly societies at the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Speaker Biography: 

David Beard is Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He has published in journals like the International Journal of Listening, Archival Science, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Southern Journal of Communication, and Enculturation, among other venues. With Heather Graves, he co-edited The Rhetoric of Oil (Routledge). With John Heppen, he has published several articles and book chapters about professional wrestling.