Call for Proposals

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization

Special Issue on “Human Rights” (scheduled for publication: September 2013)

Editors: David Alan Sapp, Gerald J. Savage, and Kyle Mattson

Proposals (up to 500 words) for article manuscripts due: June 1, 2012

Full manuscripts (5000 words, APA style) due: November 1, 2012

Professional communication in business, industry, government, and other organizations often impacts human rights. This neglected dynamic concerns countries the U.N. terms “medium‐ and low‐human development” and other places where national and cultural borders meet. Few studies have investigated how communication may advance or limit these rights. The editors of this special

issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization seek to address this gap in the disciplinary literature, inviting proposals for articles on “Human Rights in Professional Communication.” Practitioners and academics are encouraged to submit work for consideration.

We welcome proposals for scholarly articles that link human rights to professional communication in various ways, including but not limited to the following:

• Case studies of human rights work in global, domestic, or other g/local contexts

• Analyses of organizational practices that tend to advance or limit human rights

• Human rights challenges that require new or continued communication research

• Historical perspectives on human rights amidst natural disaster or other wide‐scale tragedy

• Analyses of communication practices and outcomes amidst momentous social change

• Studies of intercultural issues that resist easy answers to human rights advocacy

• Studies contrasting organizational discourse and human rights in contexts where communal

and individualist tendencies compete

• Theoretical articulations of human rights awareness (e.g., rights of women; intellectual

versus socio‐cultural properties and knowledge; legal aspects, access to technologies)

Review criteria can be found on the journal’s website at (rpcg.org).

Special Issue Editors

David Alan Sapp, Fairfield University, dsapp@fairfield.edu

Gerald J. Savage, Illinois State University (emeritus), gjsavag@ilstu.edu

Kyle Mattson, University of Central Arkansas, kmattson@uca.edu

The editors encourage dialogue regarding potential project ideas in advance of deadlines. Proposals should be sent as email attachments to David Sapp, lead editor of the special issue.