The Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) is an interdisciplinary institute for research and public engagement housed at the UI’s Obermann Center. Its mission is to explore how scholarship and professional discourses are conducted through argument, how paradigms of knowledge are sensitive to social-political contexts, and how the presentation of scholarly and professional findings involves the recognition and negotiation of audiences.
POROI started the year by hosting a visit from the Yes Men. The group of prankster activists held a workshop for students asking how the UI campus could be more environmentally sustainable. How can we transition the campus power plant away from coal? How could we renegotiate contracts with beverage companies to cut dependence on plastic bottles?
Also in 2015, POROI launched a new web site for its online journal and hosted two of its acclaimed rhetoric seminars, featuring Deirdre Egan, Assistant Director of the UI’s Writing Center, and visiting author and artist Lisa Jane Persky (left), who was in Iowa City as part of the Mission Creek Festival.
In 2016–17, POROI will launch a new series, “Faculty Matters,” to document the contributions of faculty members to universities and public life. POROI Director Naomi Greyser will teach “Writing for Learned Journals” in Fall 2016.
