Our friends at Enculturation have just published a special issue on Marshall MacLuhan.

Volume 2.1 continues our publication's trend of especially timely work. The articles of Volume 2.1 describe political and technological developments with ongoing consequences: a US public relation firm’s promotion of Gaddafi’s dictatorship; Arizona’s subjugation of immigrant bodies; epistemological production through social media.

"Nearly a century later, Bernays’s troubling defense of anti-democratic communication as a central component of democratic governance reverberates in a recent public relations campaign to 'enhance' Gadhafi's image."

"Senator Obama was faced with a complex problem: how to explain a longstanding friendship with a suddenly infamous figure? He had to do this, moreover, within the context of the most delicate issue of his campaign: race."

"In this article, I reframe recent public debates about emergent literacy practices by situating the movement of short-form to long-form writing work within the disciplinary milieu of Rhetoric and Composition."

"I ask what kind of citizen is invited to participate in the collective fantasy that is invoked in current immigration law. What kind of imaginary does such a fantasy produce and in what ways does it echo through public discourses?"

"Part scholarly monograph, part handbook, part rallying cry, Reframing Writing Assessment is an important addition to a spate of recent books on assessment that encourage teachers to take back our professional lives."

"Before we even got to the attendance policy, students were wrestling with an entire semester’s worth of work: they wanted to know how they could make a difference, how to get their voices heard."

The Present Tense staff would like to welcome the guest editors for our 2012 special issue on medical, gender, and body rhetorics.

We are recruiting submissions on medical, gender, and body rhetorics for publication in a 2012 special issue.

The Present Tense staff enjoyed meeting everyone, chatting about the journal, and hearing excellent presentations at all three conferences.

Issue 2 evinces an explicit commitment to analyzing the ethical contours of emerging rhetorics. The authors of Issue 2 analyze rhetorics and employ diverse theoretical frameworks in a variety of national and international contexts with a general eye toward the ethical implications of social, political, economic, and material structures.

"When the threat of war presents itself, raise the castle drawbridge; bar the fortress gates; circle the wagons. When the scale of warfare is global or hemispheric, seal the borders."

"Atlas’s majestic shrugging is the ultimate revenge fantasy for those who believe the government and all those who support market intervention have demonized the most useful, creative, and productive members of society."

"It occurred to us that people learning about our field may benefit from a better sense of where feminism lives in the hidden spaces of rhetoric and composition: in the practices and attitudes of those who constitute the field."