Citational Network Graph: Rhetoric and Composition

Jonathan has done some more technosorcery, producing this time a citational network graph of rhetoric and composition: specifically, the journals College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Rhetoric Review. JAC wasn't included because it wasn't in the Web of Science database, and College English might go in later; it has so much work in literary studies that we decided to omit it for now.

Much of this is as one would expect. For example, clusters show us that Kenneth Bruffee, John Trimbur, Greg Myers, and Joseph Harris are cited together. They all wrote about collaborative learning at a particular time.

What I find most interesting about this graph, though, is its more-or-less objective illustration of margins and center. I can't even drag Mina Shaughnessy's Errors and Expectations out of the center. Same with Susan Miller's Textual Carnivals, just about everything by James Berlin but especially Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900 - 1985. Patricia Bizzell “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing.” Maxine Hairston "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing." Peter Elbow Writing Without Teachers. These seem to be cited more than, and linked to more varied types of conversations than, any other works of scholarship in rhetoric and composition.

The margins are very interesting too. I find it kind of sad that Paul Kei Matsuda, Min-Zhan Lu, Bruce Horner, and Suresh Canagarajah are in their own diamond shape, so far outside the network that I didn't even have to drag. An island, Jonathan called it. Shows how little engagement our field has with multilingual writers.

Right next to that island is another little one about authorship and intellectual property. Not too far from that, another one in lavender about community engagement and public writing: Ellen Cushman, Christian Weisser, Bruce Herzberg, Susan Wells. Above that, an island that's almost all Kenneth Burke. Above that, in orange, an island about genre with Carolyn Miller, Carol Berkenkotter, John Swales, Charles Bazerman.

I'll certainly be sending this to our graduate students who are preparing for comprehensive exams; I imagine it will be immensely helpful to them. I wish I'd had this back then! Anything you notice that interests you or that is remarkable that I didn't pick up on? (I'm sure that one's a yes.)

Edited! This version has College English as well.

And THIS version has a slider that lets you limit the number of points that show up on the graph.