Into the Gateway

<p>This book advances the trend toward field methods in rhetorical scholarship by collecting distinct chapters based on the same object of study – the University of Nevada Reno’s Masterplan that extends the University into the adjacent community. Exploring the perennial problem of university-community relations from the perspective of multiple publics this book provides thick description of a local issue that resonates with communities across the country. The fieldwork for each chapter was conducted in groups during a single week-long site visit that asked scholars to study the asymmetrical traction among different communities to organize publicize and advocate positions around a proposed redevelopment project. Surveying the results of this professional experiment – the Project on Power Place and Publics – each chapter offers a theoretical intervention into the same material site illustrates diverse place-based field methods and models the scholarly results of work that mixes slow deliberate and thoughtful analysis with the fast pace and spontaneous demands of participatory research. </p><p>This volume is unique for a number of reasons: it is the only study to concretely illustrate the compatibility of field methods with a wide range of theoretical perspectives; it attests to the possibility of deeply collaborative research as teams of researchers engaged multiple local partners to produce these chapters; and it challenges the pervasive intellectual terrain that pits one theory against another by showing how diverse scholarly approaches can bolster one another. </p><p>With a new introduction afterword and post-script material from authors the other chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of <i>Review of Communication.</i></p>