Setting aside visual politics for a moment, I want to share some of the ideas I presented at the recent Midwest Winter Workshop in Iowa City. The MWW is a fantastic, grad student-organized event held at rotating Big 10 campuses each year. This year I was asked to join Jeff Bennett and John Lucaites on a panel about publishing. Given that I review a fair number of manuscripts, I decided to talk about issues I frequently encounter as a reviewer, and how I try to help authors address them.

Manuscript Reviewing:

I begin with the assumption that the job of a journal article—at least the ones I am more likely to be asked to review—is to make a clear argument about a concept or theoretical framework, a case study of discourse, or both; situate it in light of past and current concerns of the field; and give the reader a reason to care and be interested. The essay should offer some clearly-articulated combination of conceptual, historical, critical, or methodological “news.”

Here are 5 structural problems I typically find in manuscripts I review. I should note that I frame each of these problems in terms of what “the essay” does, not what the author intended, or knows, or thought s/he said. All I have is the essay and what it offers me.

Problem 1: The essay doesn’t know what it wants to argue, or isn’t aware of its own argument. I often read essays—and sometimes write them, too—where the real argument doesn’t get laid out until the conclusion. The author makes a vague claim in the intro about “what the essay is about,” but the essay in fact turns out not to be about that thing, or turns out to be about a different or more interesting thing laid out most clearly in the conclusion. Sometimes an author works with an essay so much in the transition from seminar paper to conference paper to journal submission that there are many thesis statements. This leads to lack of clarity and focus. In cases like this I try to identify ways for the author to isolate a clear argument and support it.

Problem 2: The essay’s argument is clearly stated, but is not controversial or does not offer conceptual, historical, methodological, or critical “news.” Example: I recently reviewed an essay whose conclusion—its reason for being—was a claim that no one in the field would dispute. Often in such essays, there’s actually a more nuanced, interesting argument buried in the study itself, but the essay itself does not foreground it. In cases like this I try to help the author pull out the more interesting implications of the study, rather than making claims about things that no one actually disputes.

Problem 3: The essay exhibits a disconnect between the “theory section” and the “case study.” Often I encounter a really fantastic review of the literature related to a concept or theoretical body of work. Then, the essay offers a really smart case study. But the two seem entirely unrelated to one another, so much so that the case study could stand on its own without any of the theoretical section to set it up. Here, I offer the author suggestions on how to weave the two together better, or how to ditch one or the other to focus on just one thing (either the interesting theoretical point being explored, or the fascinating case study presented).

Problem 4: The essay reviews related scholarship only partly, or not at all, or unfairly. As a very kind editor once told me about the first draft of one of my first published essays, “You aren’t slaying dragons here. Your work doesn’t have to slaughter everything that came before, it just has to contribute to the conversation.” Sometimes, in order to carve out a position for our ideas, we overclaim; usually that overclaiming is related to the way we review the work of others. I frequently encounter folks who might cite related scholarship, but they don’t actually struggle with it. That is, I see essays that don’t synthesize the state of argument on a particular concept or topic. Instead, they might offer a laundry list that “so-and-so and so-and-so wrote about X but nobody is doing the exact same super important thing that I am doing so this earlier work is not useful at all.” When I encounter essays like these, I try to encourage the author to go back to sources ignored, or cited but not engaged, and fit their ideas into that conversation. Sometimes I find pretty good literature reviews and engagement with related scholarship is in the essay, but it’s hanging out in the endnotes rather than foregrounded in the essay. Here I encourage the scholar that it’s important to have that stuff up front and visible, even if that feels risky. Finally, tone matters, too. Even scholars with whom you categorically disagree are not monsters with three heads; they are your colleagues—colleagues who, in fact, might be invited to review the very manuscript you have submitted that excoriates them. Don’t shy away from disagreement and direct engagement, but don’t vilify.

Problem 5: The essay does not do enough to explain what’s at stake. Why does this study matter? For theoretical work, what practical problems of rhetoric (or other theoretical problems in rhetoric) does the study help us solve or address? For historical work, what does this study tell us about the time period, or rhetorical practices over time? If I don’t study this period, why is the work still important? For critical work, why does this case study matter? And, why should I be interested even if I don’t study the specific kind of rhetoric you study, or the specific case you’re interested in? Overall, I like to frame the “what’s at stake” question in terms of four questions, ones I mentioned above: What’s the conceptual/theoretical news? What’s the critical news? What’s the historical news? What’s the methodological news? Not all essays need to answer all of these questions, but I try to help authors answer at least a couple of them well.

General Advice for Moving to Manuscript Submission:

• Pick 5 essays you really admire and would love to have written, and study them not for content but for structure: How is the argument built? How is the relevant literature reviewed? How do the theory section and case study work together?

• Remember that a seminar paper is not a conference paper. And a conference paper is not a journal article. I often get great seminar papers that *might eventually* become good journal essays, but each step is actually its own moment. Revise for each stage.

• Share manuscripts you’re prepping for publication with a writing group, your advisor, senior students who have published already – BEFORE you send it out to a journal. (If you don’t already have a writing group of peers in your department or in the field, start one. It might be the single best thing you do as a graduate student.)

• Have at least 2 outlets in mind. A lot of what I review doesn’t end up in that specific journal, but some of it does get published elsewhere. But, be sure you revise before simply sending things out again – nothing frustrates a ms. reviewer like being asked to review a manuscript you already reviewed for another journal and realizing the author hasn’t done a thing to respond to the earlier feedback.