Category: Issue 3

Volume 9.3: Persistence

Showcasing the many intersections of public rhetoric, current controversies, and effective pedagogy, the authors in this issue of Present Tense bring to light some remarkable instances of persuasive techniques and offer nuanced critiques of those moments in less than 2,500 words.

Book Review: Vaccine Rhetorics, by Heidi Yoston Lawrence

Written prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Heidi Yoston Lawrence introduces her monograph, Vaccine Rhetorics, with a . . . candid and vulnerable personal story about refusing the rotavirus vaccine booster for her son. She then goes on to make an astoundingly prescient claim: “Even the most ardent supporter of vaccination might one day be faced

Healthcare Communication as a Social Justice Issue: Strategies for Technical Communicators to Intervene

This makes me wonder, isn’t the whole point of having easy access to healthcare to enable human beings to live a better life, irrespective of their race, religion, gender, nationality, class, or economic status? Isn’t healthcare a basic human right provided even to the minority ethnic populations, like myself, so that we can live a

Removing Agency and Perpetuating Violence: Rape Culture in University Student Handbooks

With Miller and Iverson’s findings, not only are handbooks at the center of college students’ ideologies, but they are also texts that uphold the power of those in charge—those who have a vested interest in underreporting and dismissing allegations of sexual violence. Thus, as the field has already set forth: language around sexual violence matters
css.php