A rhetorical exploration of an underexamined side of climate change—the ongoing research into and development of geoengineering strategies
 
Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis: A Geologic Rhetoric exposes the deeply worrying state of discourse over geoengineering—the intentional manipulation of the earth’s climate as means to halt or reverse global warming. These climate-altering projects, which range from cloud-whitening to carbon dioxide removal and from stratospheric aerosol injection to enhanced weathering, are all technological solutions to more complex geosocial problems.

Geoengineering represents one of the most alarming forms of deliberative discourse in the twenty-first century. Yet geoengineering could easily generate as much harm as the environmental traumas it seeks to cure. Complicating these deliberations is the scarcity of public discussion. Most deliberations transpire within policy groups, behind the closed doors of climate-oriented startups, between subject-matter experts at scientific conferences, or in the disciplinary jargon of research journals. Further, much of this conversation occurs primarily in the West.

Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder makes clear how the deliberative rhetorical strategies coming from geoengineering advocates have been largely deceptive, hegemonic, deterministic, and exploitative. In this volume, he investigates how geoengineering proponents marshal geologic actors into their arguments—and how current discourse could lead to a greater exploitation of the earth in the future.

Pflugfelder’s goal is to understand the structure, content, purpose, and effect of these discourses, raise the alarm about their deliberative directions, and help us rethink our approach to the climate. In highlighting both the inherent problems of the discourses and the ways geologic rhetoric can be made productive, he attempts to give “the geologic” a place at the table to better understand the roles that all earth systems continue to play in our lives, now and for years to come.
 

Sojourning in Disciplinary Cultures describes a multiyear project to develop a writing curriculum within the College of Engineering that satisfied the cultural needs of both compositionists and engineers at a large R1 university. Employing intercultural communication theory and an approach to interdisciplinary collaboration that involved all parties, cross-disciplinary colleagues were able to develop useful descriptions of the process of integrating writing with engineering; overcoming conflicts and misunderstandings about the nature of writing, gender bias, hard science versus soft science tensions; and many other challenges.
 
This volume represents the collective experiences and insights of writing consultants involved in the large-scale curriculum reform of the entire College of Engineering; they collaborated closely with faculty members of the various departments and taught writing to engineering students in engineering classrooms. Collaborators developed syllabi that incorporated writing into their courses in meaningful ways, designed lessons to teach various aspects of writing, created assignments that integrated engineering and writing theory and concepts, and worked one-on-one with students to provide revision feedback. Though interactions were sometimes tense, the two groups––writing and engineering––developed a “third culture” that generally placed students at the center of learning.
 
Sojourning in Disciplinary Cultures provides a guide to successful collaborations with STEM faculty that will be of interest to WPAs, instructors, and a range of both composition scholars and practitioners seeking to understand more about the role of writing and communication in STEM disciplines.
 
Contributors:
Linn K. Bekins, Sarah A. Bell, Mara K. Berkland, Doug Downs, April A. Kedrowicz, Sarah Read, Julie L. Taylor, Sundy Watanabe