Applied theory, praxis, and other scholarly hybrids offer important knowledge meant to support and benefit a variety of populations, in and beyond academe. This scholarship increasingly has been represented by interdisciplinary and cross-geographical partnerships. Still, such collaborative exercises in applied theory have tended to occur among certain disciplines more so than in others.

Increasingly, work is being done to address the absences, especially via collaboration between the digital humanities and the social sciences; Cultivating Spheres: Agriculture, Technical Communication, and the Publics accordingly is meant to show how certain topics can be intriguingly understood when positioned at these disciplinary intersections. Specifically, when agricultural topics are debated in public contexts, ways in which these topics are examined by the social sciences also can illuminate how best practices in mediated technical ag communication constitute the digital humanities in action.

The collection’s premise is demonstrated specifically via case studies of agricultural exigencies as they publicly, discursively evolve. Cultivating Spheres is motivated by technical communication’s handling of agricultural changes that even in the past five years have destabilized what once were conventional forms of expression regarding all things food.

This special collection is edited by Dr. Adrienne P. Lamberti, University of Northern Iowa, USA.

Photo by Tanner Boriack on Unsplash


Cultivating Spheres: Agriculture, Technical Communication, and the Publics

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Special Collections