Full abstracts are available for each of the paper sessions at the 2026 Symposium in Portland, Oregon.
The following abstracts are for Panel 1: On History, Memory, and Methods from 9:00-10:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 21.
To navigate back to the main program, click here.
“Anachronism as Rhetorical Method” — Dr. Robert Elliot Mills (Colgate University)
Abstract: Anachronism is frequently cast as the ultimate sin of historical inquiry. The epistemological assumptions behind attitudes that history should be represented “as it was” are well known and shape how we approach rhetorical history. Without dismissing that tradition, this paper asks what it would mean—rhetorically, ethically, and methodologically—to engage in anachronistic thought intentionally? And what might be gained by doing so? The paper begins by exploring anachronism as a tropological operation before turning to the ethical stakes of marked anachronism as a mode of address—speaking-with rather than speaking-for historical subjects. The paper concludes by developing a Benjaminian conceptualization of anachronism that encourages dialectical exchange not only between past and present, but between the archive and theory.
“Writing to Forget: Rhetorical Memory, Trauma, and Disability” — Amy Vidali (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Abstract: While Francis Yates and Mary Carruthers are widely cited in work on rhetorical memory, and there is rhetorical work on collective memory and forgetting (Phillips; Pruchnic and Lacey; Vivian), conceptions of memory, rhetoric, and writing scarcely draw on our actual experiences with memory (or much of the research), which regularly remind us that memory is neither dependable, liberatory, nor transparent. In this talk, I suggest that we rearticulate/reconsider rhetorical remembering through the lens of disabled memory, which urges attention to traumatic memory and the persistence of forgetting. I start by reinterpreting rhetorical memory’s oft-repeated origin story: the story of Simonides of Ceos and the collapse of the banquet hall. While famously shared by Cicero and Quintilian, I consider nine retellings of this story, arguing that surprisingly little is made of the gory setting or the impossibility of proving Simonides identifications are correct. These are significant oversights, as we now know that negative experiences inscribe more deeply in memory, and that trauma sharply influences how and what we remember (and forget). In disabling rhetorical memory, I question writing’s assumed role in helping us remember, and I argue that we must shift from the current emphasis in rhetorical memory scholarship, which emphasizes analyzing rhetorical “sites” of memory, to rhetorical memory as theory and method, which allows us to more radically revise rhetorical notions of remembering and forgetting.
“Deep Time and the Elaboration of History: Rhetoric, Myth, and the Imaginal of the Past” — Jeremy Cox (University of Texas at Permian Basin)
Abstract: I propose to investigate the myth of prehistory in the development of rhetorical theory. “Prehistory” here refers to the narrative elaboration of a liminal moment between ahistorical “timelessness” and the emergence of historical time. These narratives imagine the immediate aftermath of some presumed moment of origin in which humanity, newly emergent in the world, must find its footing as a species. Scenes of an imagined prehistory have appeared in rhetorical texts since antiquity, and work to ground presuppositions about the role of rhetoric in human affairs. As such, I argue that prehistory serves a crucial mythic function in rhetorical theory. Analyzing the myth of prehistory helps to foreground the rhetorical construction of historical subjectivity, and the role of both time and timelessness as organizing principals for the elaboration of historical narrative. Looking at a selection of artifacts, ranging from ancient Greek rhetorical texts to foundational works of twentieth and twenty-first century rhetorical scholarship, I explore prehistory as a medium through which we imagine ourselves as historical subjects.
“Defect and Reflection: Disability Rhetoric and the Nyāya Tradition in Rhetorical History” — Dev Kumar Bose (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Abstract: Histories of rhetoric have long privileged Greco-Roman frameworks, often overlooking parallel traditions that theorize cognition, perception, and error in equally rhetorical ways. This paper brings disability rhetoric into conversation with ancient Indian rhetoric—specifically the Nyāya school—to argue for a more globally inclusive historiography of rhetorical theory. Jay Dolmage’s concept of metis, which challenges normate logics through embodied cunning, finds a compelling counterpart in Anuvyavasāya, a Nyāya concept describing reflective, self-examining cognition. If metis exposes rationality’s limits, Anuvyavasāya turns attention inward, treating error and limitation not as failures to correct but as productive grounds for inquiry and ethical awareness. Through this framework, “defect” becomes a rhetorical category that foregrounds epistemic humility, situational judgment, and the interdependence of body and mind. In contrast to contemporary “writing and wellbeing” initiatives that often frame cognitive difference as an individual deficit to manage, this paper advances Anuvyavasāya as a model of rhetorical care grounded in reflective reasoning rather than therapeutic correction. Drawing on Akṣapāda Gautama’s Nyāya Sūtras and Gangeśa’s Tattvacintāmaṇi, alongside disability theorists such as Dolmage and Alison Kafer, I show how Nyāyika reasoning anticipates what disability studies now calls epistemic care: a relational, iterative mode of attention that resists pathologizing difference. By tracing this intersection, the project expands rhetorical history’s archive beyond Western genealogies and reframes disability rhetoric through ancient South Asian models of contingent, reflective, and social cognition—positioning Anuvyavasāya as both method and ethic for engaging interpretive limitation as insight.