by Carey Spence

How I Started

I first started working as the Professional Writing & Rhetoric major’s social media intern in September. In order to become acclimated to the role, my initial work included familiarizing myself with the website, CUPID blog, and the social media. Because Professional Writing and Rhetoric just recently became its own major separate from the English major, I needed to understand all that this switch entailed. After acclimating myself with the tone and overall brand the major embodies, I then needed to make a plan for the content I wanted to create and share. After meetings with Dr. Li and Dr. Pope-Ruark, as well as communicating with the previous intern, I had a plan in place to effectively communicate as the Professional Writing intern.

What I Did

My overarching plan for the Professional Writing and Rhetoric department’s social media was to focus on engagement. While there was already content on both the Twitter and Instagram accounts, engagement was not very high. However, after meeting with Dr. Pope-Ruark, we decided that the main focus should be on the Twitter account. With this in mind, my research for content was strategically informed. I wanted to share information that was useful to my audience, with the goal of getting more engagement on tweets — retweets, comments, and likes — and moreover, expanding the account’s reach.

One of the ways I focused on engagement with the Twitter account was by tweeting at different departments. The purpose of this was to establish relationships with these other departments so that they would retweet the content I was pushing. I emphasized the Professional Writing and Rhetoric program as a major that supplements other majors such as business majors and liberal arts majors.

In this regard, I also placed a lot of emphasis on the benefits of the program. Many Elon students have never even heard of Professional Writing and Rhetoric, and therefore don’t know much about the program. I tweeted articles about the importance of writing and communication skills and snippets from the website that promote this program as applicable to all career paths. Everyone needs to learn how to effectively communicate, so why not become an expert?

For the overarching theme of engagement, one of the ideas for content I had was to reach out to alumni in order to get testimonials for both Instagram and Twitter, as well as for the CUPID blog. While it’s nice for me to say that the Professional Writing and Rhetoric program is beneficial to any career, it means a lot more to hear it from people who are actually in the workforce, putting these skills to use. Including testimonials from alumni builds the program’s overall ethos.

My Advice

My main advice for future interns, both in this position specifically and for interns in general, is to come into any task with a specific plan. Coming up with content for the social media could have been a daunting task, but when I planned out how I wanted to approach the week, or even just that specific day, it was easier for me to think back on my goal (increasing engagement) and make decisions strategically.

Another piece of advice when it comes to social media specifically is to remember the social aspect. If I wanted other people and accounts to interact and engage with the content I was producing, I had to be willing to do that myself. Just liking photos on Instagram from other accounts went a long way in increasing engagement. I also found that retweeting other departments’ tweets made them more likely to retweet mine. In fact, just liking other accounts’ tweets led to an alumni sending me content that she thought my audience would want to see, making my job easier. Thinking strategically and building relationships are my two key pieces of advice when communicating.

Carey Spence is the 2018-2019 social media intern for Professional Writing & Rhetoric. Carey is double majoring in English Literature and Strategic Communications, with a minor in Professional Writing.

One of the most important rhetorical decisions every scholar makes when conducting research is the methodology. Within the literature field, every scholar must choose which critical lens he/she believes will reveal the most about a text. Every text can be analyzed with a multitude of critical lens; to strengthen and streamline your argument, you should typically choose one, two at most. However, in some instances, the critical lens you use contributes to the credibility of your argument—for example, analyzing Homer’s Iliad using postmodern criticism is typically not advisable. The importance of this decision became clear to me during my undergraduate research process.

Since Guy Ritche’s adaptation with Robert Downey Jr. in 2009, Sherlock Holmes has seen a recent surge in fame and popularity. He was similarly popular when Arthur Conan Doyle published the first two collections of short stories between 1890 and 1892. Back then—and, arguably, today—Holmes was considered a model of masculinity to Conan Doyle’s audience of middle-class men, largely because of his intense observational and analytical capabilities. This idealization of him initially made sense when I first read the first 24 short stories. However, upon reading a biographical piece about Conan Doyle that argued the author himself was considered a champion of the dominant masculine ideal, I began to question how masculine Holmes really was—after all, Holmes is vastly different from Conan Doyle in many capacities.

My research question then became: Can the man Watson termed “the world’s most perfect reasoning and observing machine” be considered an ideal masculine figure by Victorian standards?

Once I established this question, I then had many decisions to make, the first being: What method would lead to the most relevant answer? The answer initially seemed obvious—my paper was obviously going to be a gender criticism of Sherlock Holmes. However, I quickly realized this critical lens would the weaker method of defining the Victorian masculine ideal. For the stronger definition, I would need to analyze primary sources. A not-as-popular lens called new historicism became the best method; it seeks to analyze literature within its historical an/or cultural context by analyzing the work in conjunction with a relevant primary source from the time. Thus, my next decision became to choose the primary co-text.

Fortunately, I had an abundance of sources from which to choose. The fin de siècle period (“end of the century,” typically considered the 1880s to 1890s) in England was a time of gender instability, which was a big reason I was fascinated with the time period. For much of the century, gender roles were influenced by the ideal of separate spheres—women were defined by their role as wife/mother in the private sphere of the home while men shifted between their role as husband/father in the private sphere and as whatever their occupation was in the public sphere of society. By the end of the century, however, the first wave of feminism saw women publically move into the public sphere, the sphere that used to distinguish masculinity from femininity. As a result, men had to redefine the line that separated masculinity from femininity, and many advice columns and advice books aimed to help men do so. All I had to do was choose which one.

Although I checked out numerous dusty, old primary sources from various libraries around the country, my choice ultimately came from a quick skim of a secondary source: Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship. The book was immensely popular, and while it was published more than a decade after Conan Doyle’s first two collections (Baden-Powell published it in 1908), many of the qualities Baden-Powell championed in the book were militarized adaptations of qualities emphasized in many of the other primary sources I had read. Scouting for Boys became the main source I used to define ideal masculinity during the fin de siècle, but to compensate for the time gap I buttressed my definition with my analyses of other primary sources from within nineteenth century England.

Because I chose Scouting for Boys and new historicism, my argument is more of my own. If I has chosen gender criticism, my argument would be relying on other scholars’ definition of Victorians’ ideal masculinity, which would have made my argument even more susceptible to criticism.

It is important to be critical, and the critical lens you use is an central rhetorical decision: choose wisely, fellow readers!

Jamie Rice ’16, English Literature.

English is a magnificent language because it appears to lack gendered nouns. Unlike

French or Spanish, English speakers never have an awkward moment where they have to stop themselves and think, “Wait, is lamp female or male?” In that sense, English is gender neutral. But that does not mean that the issue of sexism in writing is not present. For example, a study published in 1996 asked readers to assess the quality of two essays in which the author’s gender is never specified. These students were interviewed and asked what gender the author was. Two thirds of the respondents offered a gender, and about half of their gender guesses were incorrect. In contrast to the neutrality in these papers, people feel like writing voices are gendered even if there is no actual evidence. They had a feeling, and the only reason these students even felt qualified to answer the question was because of said feeling.

In addition, despite the glowing gender neutrality of the English language, there are still people who use it in sexist ways. This is a problem to the extent that the purdue owl has an entire page of their website, typically utilized for guidelines revolving around citation and grammar, that tells readers how to avoid using stereotypes and gender bias in their writing. One example of an improper usage is “Although she was blonde, Mary was still intelligent.” The page goes to show numerous examples of words that appropriate to use in the place of “man.” My favorite part of the page is when they specify that instead of referring to someone as a “male nurse” or a “woman doctor,” these professions should be used without the gender modifier–I find the fact that anyone would write male or female in front of a word fascinating just because of how wordy it is.

Furthermore, even in my personal experience writing essays, I have encountered multiple instances where someone assumed the gender, typically as male, when citing for a scholarly article. It’s been such a problem that I have had professors explicitly state that they should never assume gender because most people cited a female scholar, with a stereotypically female name, as a male because they only memorized her last name and assumed she was a he. The gendered nature of English as a language becomes even more pronounced when we attempt to correct for this issue. For example, let’s write a sentence. We don’t know who started the fire, but he or she will be held responsible. Okay. Now imagine instead of writing that you wrote this. We don’t know who started the fire, but she or he will be held responsible. That is a very political change. That sentence reads like a subversion of patriarchal tendencies in language, rightly so, because of the switch. “He,” the normally preferenced pronoun, is demoted to second status. Overall, both of these configurations are problematic. Not only do they preference one gender over the other, they preference the gender binary, in general.

Basically, even though it is very easy when looking at the differences between English and other romance languages to call the former gender-neutral, that is not the case in practice. And despite small victories like the acceptance of “‘they” as a singular pronoun to be used in the place of “he or she,” there is still a long way to go within culture itself before grammar and language will reflect what could become a society that promotes lived gender equality.

Carolyn Braganca ’15. 

To present at an undergraduate research conference is actually a very realistic opportunity for many Elon University students—one that is not very common at many other universities. This past weekend (Wednesday – Saturday) I attended the National Council for Undergraduate Research (NCUR), which was hosted at Eastern Washington University just outside Spokane, Washington. With more than 50 students presenting, Elon University was one of the most represented schools in attendance. I highly recommend anyone interested to apply to be one of those Elon students at next year’s conference (in the beautiful Asheville, North Carolina).

What better way to practice rhetorical strategies than to present at a conference?

For anyone interested at possibly presenting at a conference (be it NCUR or a professional conference), here are some rhetorical decisions to consider.

At a research conference, the major and obvious rhetorical decision you will have to make is how to present your research effectively and clearly. First, you have to consider what content to include in the presentation: how much background information is it safe to assume your audience will have? Depending on the conference, your audience may have a very solid foundation of knowledge, a relatively solid foundation, or even no foundation at all. At NCUR, for example, I attended presentations on topics of which I had only a wobbly idea. Likewise, I know I also presented my research on Sherlock Holmes to people whose only knowledge of Sherlock Holmes came from BBC’s Sherlock. Some conferences, however, may be biology conferences, at which it will be safe to assume your audience has a stable but broad understanding on basic biology.

In any scenario, you will likely have to present some background information, but you need to determine how much time in your presentation—remember, you will likely be given a small time slot—you want to devote to explain exposition.

Along with the oral aspect of your presentation, you need to consider the visual aspect of your presentation. Unless you are specifically told not to by the conference, always include a visual! People want to look at something, so give them something eye-catching but informational to absorb visually. When designing you PowerPoint, Prezi, poster, or whatever visual aid you decide to use, be sure to keep visual design and visual rhetoric in mind. Your research may be the coolest topic in the world, but if you present it using a PowerPoint presentation with a blank white background and default black words, your audience will likely not remember much about your research. Your visual should reflect your research in some way, so even if your audience does not pay much attention to the words you speak, they will remember the words you or ideas you wrote.

For more information on visual design, check out these websites to get you started: Web Style Guide, Visual Mess, and Usability.

Finally, an often not-fully-realized rhetorical decision you need to make at a conference is what to wear—you need to carefully consider how you present yourself. Most conferences have a business casual dress policy, but when presenting people often dress more business formal. Within those parameters, however, there are several choices you can make—particularly if you have the privilege of being a woman. Does the blue suit or the gray better represent you? The slimmer fitting pants or the looser ones? Do pants even suit you? Maybe you are more comfortable in a skirt? Heels or flats? Red or purple? Collared blouse or cardigan?

Standing in front of people with whom you are unfamiliar is often an uncomfortable experience, so counteract the discomfort of the situation with comfortable clothes. Yes, you should aim to look formal and nice, but if you feel more comfortable in your older black pants instead of your new gray pants, then wear your black pants! Or if you feel more confident in your flats than in your heels, then wear your flats! Remember: while looking formal is a priority, you can sacrifice degrees of formality for the sake of comfort and confidence. What you look like on the outside is an important rhetorical decision, but what is more important is how what’s on the outside affects the inside—if you are enthusiastic about your research and personable, and if that enthusiasm and personality shows in your presentation, that is what your audience will focus on and remember.

And for the love of all things good and beautiful in this world, don’t read from your paper!