The 2025 RhetCanada Conference

RhetCanada (The Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric) invites registrations and submissions for our 2025 conference. It begins online on May 31st, then moves to an in-person conference on June 4th to 6th at George Brown College in Toronto, in conjunction with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

If interested in joining us, please start with Registration, even if you aren't sure about presenting. If you intend to submit a proposal, you can later do so under Submission (deadline January 30th). Registering early helps us plan better, and you need to register before you submit.

Why RhetCanada?
Defying the norms of many academic conferences that split attendees into fractured audiences and ever-changing rooms, RhetCanada offers an engaged, persisting, diverse, and friendly plenary audience for your rhetorical scholarship. Please see our main website, past conferences, and journal (Rhetor) to get a sense of our association.

We invite submissions aligned with our traditional scope of research. We also encourage you to consider our conference theme this year--The Rhetorical First-Aid Kit--alongside the broader Congress theme of Reframing Togetherness.

A "first-aid kit" brings to mind a multifarious collection of items for use in times of need, perhaps indispensable bandages that allow us to soldier on, or perhaps mere "band-aid solutions" of a superficial or temporary sort. In either case, the art of rhetoric has long been imagined in ways that resonate with the both the kit (a great collection of techniques, a panoply of devices, a multifarious art, a compete outfit worn by Dame Rhetorica) and with the medical or therapeutic context--notably, the drug-like effects of logos on the soul.

First-aid kits exist because we anticipate emergencies; today various crises vie for our attention and resources. Thus our call also asks: how might rhetoric anticipate, or respond, to emergency? And what rhetorical tools or notions should we have on hand in case of emergency? Perhaps your rhetorical first-aid kit will serve the broader Congress imperative to "bridg[e] different ways of learning and producing knowledge in order to rethink our roles and responsibilities in these times of climate and humanitarian disasters, ever-evolving technologies, social isolation, dislocation, and increasing polarization."

Please register early, if you can; before submitting, and review the pages under "Details and Guidelines." Also see the emerging FAQ below.