Welcome to Issue 15.2 of Xchanges!

We are publishing this latest annual undergraduate issue during strange times, when the Xchanges editorial and review teams have continued to dedicate our time and energy to showcasing the best of new and upcoming scholars’ work in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies. Like for many of you, our fellow academics and professionals, seeing our dedication through during the past few months has felt like we have needed to go through a range of emotional and intellectual acrobatics.

The Covid-19 pandemic has created uncertainty in our research, our teaching, and our service, including the very work that many individuals have contributed to the publication of this issue. Meanwhile, as part of larger global political upheavals, the leadup to the US general elections and various fallout incidents mired in rhetorics of difference, hate, and violence have affected our personal lives and our very institutions, including that of academia and education. And so we may sit, some of us feeling irrelevant, perhaps even paralyzed, and ponder: What is the point of doing this work? Why be curious about things, research, write, vet and be vetted for acceptances and rejections, when it feels like our world is crumbling down around us? I hear and see this frustration in our academic communities. And where I keep landing is this: We may not know what the immediate or long-term holds for intellectual inquiry. But whatever form it takes, the one certainty I have is that we have many minds eager to jump in and continue our work. Why keep doing what we do in times of uncertainty? Here are six very good reasons.

With the sociopolitical backdrop of the pandemic and global unrest, Lucero Truszkowski (Eastern Connecticut State University) nuances the definitions and scopes of human rights in modern civilization through the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through another rhetorical-historical recuperation, Anna Delony (Oklahoma City University) investigates the accuracy and thus validity of exclusively white accounts of Apache hero Mangas Coloradas’s death.  Likewise, Samantha Gowdey (Rhode Island College) conducts a rhetorical analysis of how gay historical icon Harvey Milk’s speeches enabled him to reach the heights of political success as a member of a marginalized group. Then, in two studies of contemporary media, Anthony Lerner (University of Massachusetts--Amherst) conducts a quantitative study of Asian representation and portrayal on the streaming service Netflix, while Tobias I. Paul (University of Illinois—Urbana/Champaign) examines the digital lifecycles of interactive narratives on the open-source platform Twine. Finally, Allegro Wang (University of Minnesota) triangulates the carceral state with rhetoric and temporality to conceptualize how abolitionist pedagogies are able to contribute to resistance against oppressive forces.

It is clear to us that these undergraduate scholars are driven by the social exigencies in this moment to commit to their various projects. We are inspired by their work, and we hope you will let them inspire you to keep doing yours as well.

~ Al Harahap, Co-Managing Editor