Welcome to the Spring 2023 issue of Convergence/Rhetoric! This semester’s issue has been brought to you by Faculty Editors Dr. Brandy Dieterle, Professor Adele Richardson, Dr. Joel Bergholtz, and Professor Heather Vazquez. Thank you to our faculty editors, our readers, and the continued support of our faculty who play pivotal roles in the success of this journal.
In this issue, we have five fantastic pieces in total: one from Argumentative Writing, one from Cultural Rhetorics, and three from Writing and Rhetoric Foundations. We are delighted to see such a range of student work from across our classes published in this past fall and the current spring issue. Each piece draws heavily on elements that are personally important to the individual, ranging from hobbies and interests to personal values and lived experiences.
Rosalind Rohrbaugh takes an analytical approach to a short non-fiction piece Stephen King wrote in 1981 in her article, “Stephen King Is Right, We’re All a Little Nuts – And That’s Okay: A Response to Stephen King’s ‘Why We Crave Horror.’” This article not only interrogates King’s argument but also analyzes the rhetorical moves King makes in the writing of his piece, which makes an argument for why humans are fascinated by the horror genre.
In “Ponte las Pilas Mijo: A Story of Translanguaging Español and Inglés and the connection to Bilingual Latinos,” Bradley Aguilar narrates his experience as a bilingual Latino and the way he navigated language in his upbringing. The narrative is blended with cultural rhetorics scholarship on translanguaging to place the narrative in a larger, scholarly context for thinking about bilingual Latinos’ experiences in the US.
Haiku shares the story behind his tattoo in “The Vernacular Process of Haiku’s Moral Compass.” Drawing on David Barton and Mary Hamilton’s “Defining Vernacular Literacies,” Haiku makes an argument for how his tattoo, that he participated in designing, functions as a vernacular literacy and represents some of his personal values. The tattoo, he says, is his “moral compass.”
In some sense, Amanda Klimeck shares how she followed her own moral compass through volunteer work for the Adult Literacy League. In “Literacy and the Path to Citizenship in a Nation Divided,” she chronicles her experience of how she came to volunteer for A.L.L. and how she supported one woman in gaining U.S. citizenship.
Emma Drauer’s piece “Singing Between the Lines: The Significance of Graphics and Notes in Sheet Music” concludes this issue with a critical look at the way she annotates her sheet music for the choir she sings in. Drawing on Mike Rose’s consideration of “writing of a limited sort” (i.e., markings and inscriptions within workplace writing), these notes for herself play a pivotal role in her music literacy and her performance of the piece.
We are delighted to see these pieces published, and we hope you enjoy this issue as much as we have. Please submit to an upcoming issue, as we are currently accepting submissions for the next issue (Fall 2023) until August 28, 2023.