For much of rhetoric’s history, circulation—the cultural and spatio-temporal flow of texts, ideas, and images through various networks, platforms, and structures—has been less of an explicit area of study and more of an “assumed phenomenon” (Gries, 2018, p. 3) running through the field. However, since the digital turn, our focus on computers, algorithms, and digital platforms that allow texts to accumulate momentum and meaning across time and space has contributed to renewed interest in circulation studies as an area of inquiry and framework.
In the introduction to Circulation, Writing, and Rhetoric, edited by Laurie Gries and Collin Brooke, Gries argues that circulation is an “emerging threshold concept” (Gries, 2018, p. 5) and that the work of what is now considered “circulation studies” has already 1) illuminated “writing’s dynamic movement and fluidity,” 2) produced new methods and methodologies for researching circulation, and 3) developed “theories of writing, rhetoric, and publics to account for discourse’s networked, distributed, and emergent aspects” (p. 14-15).
While many early studies focused on the pedagogical implications of circulation in the writing classroom (Trimbur, 2000; Yancey, 2004; DeVoss & Porter, 2006), scholars also began to examine how circulation functions on social media platforms (Carlson, 2019; Edwards, 2018; Glotfelter, 2019; Gallagher, 2020), how texts and ideas circulate via citations to form disciplines (Phillips et al. 1993; Mueller 2012; Goggin, 2000; Lerner & Oddis, 2017; Palmeri & McCorkle, 2017), and how circulation influences the creation, distribution, remediation of images (Gries, 2015; Greenwalt & McVey, 2022). Often overlapping with cultural studies, scholars have also developed critical analyses of the role that circulation plays in the development of key cultural phenomena, including economic systems (Chaput, 2010), racist ideologies (Gries & Bratta, 2019), and civic engagement (Bradshaw, 2018). While circulation studies has made massive strides in the past few decades, it still has an exciting amount of room for growth.
As Graduate Fellows with the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative and the editors of this collection, we (Marie, Alex, and Robert) are interested in learning more about the past, current state, and potential futures of digital circulation studies. If you’re interested in contributing to one of the many conversations happening around digital rhetoric and circulation studies, we invite you to submit a proposal for this blog carnival.
What is a Blog Carnival?
The Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative features blog posts from scholars, teachers, and practitioners from across the field of writing studies in Blog Carnivals. Blog Carnivals allow contributors to share diverse insights and perspectives from their scholarly work as teachers and researchers on a theme or topic, engaging the field in a more public setting than a journal or conference. We hope that this Blog Carnival functions as an opportunity for scholars to offer their perspectives to others in the field who engage with circulation in their research, teaching, and praxis, and allow for the circulation (and recirculation) of ideas. You can view the prior Blog Carnivals here.
This Blog Carnival focuses on the theme of digital circulation studies. We use the following questions to explore this theme:
- How do digital technologies influence how writing is circulated? And how do technologies/platforms contribute to circulation exhaustion?
- How do algorithms impact the ways in which writing reaches and impacts certain audiences?
- What methods and/or theories can we use to better research and understand how texts, images, and ideas circulate digitally? How are existing methods and/or theories complicated by the spatio-temporal complexity of digital circulation?
- How does digital circulation shape political, economic, social, and environmental structures, practices and policies–and vice versa? And how does it affect the material lives of those affected by such structures, practices, and policies?
- How can digital circulation inform our understanding of academic labor, administration, and assessment?
- What does circulation offer our teaching practice as digital platforms like social media change and iterate? What implications does this have for how we integrate technology and digital platforms into our classrooms?
- What do emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, mean for circulation studies in research and teaching?
Timeline:
150-Word Proposal Due: February 26th, 2025
Acceptance Notices Sent: March 12th, 2025
Full Blog Entries Due: April 4th, 2025
Publication Date: April 30th, 2025
If you’re interested in contributing to this blog carnival, please submit your contact information and 150-word proposal to this Google form (link) by February 26th, 2025.
The complete blog post should be between 750-1000 words, or a short, multimodal equivalent.
Contact
If you have any questions or if you have a submission in mind but need more guidance, please do not hesitate to reach out to the editors, Marie Pruitt (virginia.pruitt@louisville.edu), Alex Mashny (mashnyal@msu.edu), and Robert Beck (beck163@purdue.edu).
References:
Bradshaw, J. L. (2018). Slow Circulation: The Ethics of Speed and Rhetorical Persistence. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 48(5), 479–498. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2018.1455987
Carlson, E. B. (2019). Please Sign Here (And Share It To Your Facebook and Twitter Feeds): Online Petitions and Inventing for Circulation. Computers and Composition, 52, 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.01.003
Chaput, C. (2010). Rhetorical Circulation in Late Capitalism: Neoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective Energy. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 43(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.43.1.0001
DeVoss, D. N., & Porter, J. E. (2006). Why Napster matters to writing: Filesharing as a new ethic of digital delivery. Computers and Composition, 23(2), 178–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2006.02.001
Edwards, D. W. (2018). Circulation Gatekeepers: Unbundling the Platform Politics of YouTube’s Content ID. Computers and Composition, 47, 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2017.12.001
Gallagher, J. R. (2020). Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing (1st edition). Utah State University Press.
Glotfelter, A. (2019). Algorithmic Circulation: How Content Creators Navigate the Effects of Algorithms on Their Work. Computers and Composition, 54, 102521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.102521
Goggin, M. D. (2000). Authoring a Discipline: Scholarly Journals and the Post-World War II Emergence of Rhetoric and Composition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Greenwalt, D. A., & McVey, J. A. (2022). Get Gritty with it: Memetic icons and the visual ethos of antifascism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 19(2), 158–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2022.2066145
Gries, L., & Bratta, P. (2019). The Racial Politics of Circulation: Trumpicons and White Supremacist Doxai. Rhetoric Review, 38(4), 417–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2019.1655306
Gries, L. E. (2015). Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics. Utah State University Press.
Gries, L. E. (2018). Introduction. In L. E. Gries & C. G. Brooke (Eds.), Circulation, writing, and rhetoric (pp. 3–24). Utah State University Press.
Lerner, N., & Oddis, K. (2017). The Social Lives of Citations: How and Why “Writing Center Journal” Authors Cite Sources. The Writing Center Journal, 36(2), 235–262.
Mueller, D. (2012). Grasping Rhetoric and Composition by Its Long Tail: What Graphs Can Tell Us about the Field’s Changing Shape. College Composition and Communication, 64(1), 195–223.
Palmeri, J., & McCorkle, B. (2017). A Distant View of English Journal, 1912-2012. 22.2. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/22.2/topoi/palmeri-mccorkle/methodology.html
Phillips, D. B., Greenberg, R., & Gibson, S. (1993). College Composition and Communication: Chronicling a Discipline’s Genesis. College Composition and Communication, 44(4), 443–465. https://doi.org/10.2307/358381
Trimbur, J. (2000). Composition and the Circulation of Writing. College Composition & Communication, 52(2), 188–219. https://doi.org/10.58680/ccc20001415Yancey, K. B. (2004). Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key. College Composition and Communication, 56(2), 297–328.
