Robert Trapp

Sonja K. Foss

Karen A. Foss

Thorough in scope and highly accessible, this volume introduces the reader to the thinkers who have exerted a profound influence on contemporary rhetorical theory. The brief biographical sketches locate the theorists in time and place, showing how life experiences influenced perspectives on rhetorical thought. The concise explanations of complex concepts are clear and provide readers with a solid foundation for reading the major works of these scholars. The critical commentary is carefully chosen to place the theories within a broader rhetorical context. Each chapter ends with a complete bibliography of works by the theorists. Previous editions have been praised as indispensable; the Third Edition is equally essential.

Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric

Cindy L. Griffin

Inviting Understanding: A Portrait of Invitational Rhetoric is an authoritative reference work designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the theory of invitational rhetoric, developed twenty-five years ago by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin. This theory challenges the conventional conception of rhetoric as persuasion and defines rhetoric as an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination. Rather than celebrating argumentation, division, and winning, invitational rhetoric encourages rhetors to listen across differences, to engage in dialogue, and to try to understand positions different from their own. Organized into the three categories of foundations, extensions, and applications, Inviting Understanding is a compilation of published articles and new essays that explore and expand the theory. The book provides readers with access to a wide range of resources about this revolutionary theory in areas such as community organizing, social justice activism, social media, film, graffiti, institutional and team decision making, communication and composition pedagogy, and interview protocols. Current cultural, social, and political divisions in the United States and across the world suggest that the principles and practices of invitational rhetoric are sorely needed, and a volume that demonstrates its application in various contexts may inspire readers to put it into practice in the contexts in which they work and live.

A Portrait of Invitational Rhetoric

Inviting Understanding

Your dissertation is not a hurdle to jump or a battle to fight; as this handbook makes clear, your dissertation is the first of many destinations on the path of your professional career. Destination Dissertation guides you to the successful completion of your dissertation by framing the process as a stimulating and exciting trip—one that can be completed in fewer than nine months and by following twenty-nine specific steps. Sonja Foss and William Waters—your guides on this trip—explain concrete and efficient processes for completing the parts of the dissertation that tend to cause the most delays: conceptualizing a topic, developing a pre-proposal, writing a literature review, writing a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, and writing the last chapter. This guidebook is crafted for use by students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations, and incorporates a wealth of real-life examples from every step of the journey.

A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

Destination Dissertation

William Joseph Condon Waters

Dissertations aren't walls to scale or battles to fight; they are destinations along the path to a professional career. This friendly guide helps doctoral students develop and write their dissertations, using travel as a metaphor. This time-tested method comes from the authors' successful work at the Denver-based Scholars' Retreat. Following concrete and efficient steps for completing each part of the dissertation, it includes a wealth of examples from throughout the dissertation process, such as creating the dissertation proposal and coding data. Essential for all PhD candidates!

Over multiple editions, this transformative text has taught the lively art of rhetorical criticism to thousands of students at more than 300 colleges and universities. Insights from classroom use enrich each new edition. With an unparalleled talent for distilling sophisticated rhetorical concepts and processes, Sonja Foss highlights ten methods of doing rhetorical criticism—the systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and artifacts. Each chapter focuses on one method, its foundational theories, and the steps necessary to perform an analysis using that method. Foss provides instructions on how to write coherent, well-argued reports of analytical findings, which are then illustrated by sample essays. A chapter on feminist criticism features the disruption of conventional ideologies and practices. Storytelling in the digital world is a timely addition to the chapter on narrative criticism. Student essays now include analyses of the same artifact using multiple methods. A deep understanding of rhetorical criticism equips readers to become engaged and active participants in shaping the nature of the worlds in which we live.

Exploration and Practice, Fifth Edition

Rhetorical Criticism

Providing fully developed rhetorical theories from feminist perspectives, this book offers coherent, systematic overviews of complex, large bodies of work and ideas relevant to rhetoric and communication. The book presents theories developed from the work of nine feminist theorists, each from diverse standpoints demonstrating the diversity of both feminism and feminist rhetorical theories - Chris Kramarae, Bell Hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Mary Daly, Starhawk, Paula Gunn Allen, Trinh T Minh-ha, Sally Miller Gearhart and Sonia Johnson. The resulting theories differ substantially from traditional rhetorical theories, and will encourage scholars to rethink many traditional rhetorical constructs.

Feminist Rhetorical Theories

Alena Amato Ruggerio

Feminism in Practice uses feminism as a blueprint for exploring change strategies. It features twenty contemporary feminists from diverse arenas, including activists, comedians, musicians, politicians, poets, and showrunners. The women come to life through line drawings, brief biographies, extensive quotations, their definitions of feminism, and the change strategies they employ. Questions for reflection encourage readers to think through their own relationship to feminism and change. Chapter 1 defines feminism, raising issues with the typical definition of feminism as the effort to achieve equality between women and men. It concludes with a description of over twenty types of feminism. Chapter 2 describes the triggering events, happening places, and key ideas of the four waves of feminism. The opening chapters provide a comprehensive understanding of the diversity and complexity of feminist movement. The book is organized around five primary objectives that animate contemporary change efforts—proclaiming identity, naming a problem, enriching a system, changing a system, and creating an alternative system. Each objective is developed through theoretical assumptions and twelve change strategies that show it at work in feminist movement. Feminism in Practice also serves as a practical handbook that readers can use to experiment with the strategies and expand their toolkits for creating change in their lives and worlds. The authors are uniquely qualified to explore issues of feminism and change. Karen Foss and Sonja Foss are second wave feminists who have written extensively on alternative change strategies, feminist communication, and feminist theory. Alena Ruggerio brings to the project the standpoint of a third wave feminist at home in pop culture. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of rhetoric, feminism, and religious studies. To learn more about Feminism in Practice, listen to the authors’ October 2021 interview on The Jefferson Exchange.

Communication Strategies for Making Change

Feminism in Practice

Mary E. Domenico

Essential for anyone who seeks to understand the contemporary gender landscape, Gender Stories defines gender as the socially constructed meanings that are assigned to bodies. The book helps readers navigate issues of gender by introducing them to the ubiquitous gender binary, the problems with much of the research on gender differences, and the variety of gender stories in popular culture. At the heart of the book is a description of the process of becoming a gendered person through crafting and performing gender stories. Because each gender performance is unique, a virtually unlimited number of genders existsnot just two, as the gender binary would have us believe. The same multiplicity that characterizes the gender landscape characterizes the individual, who typically changes gender multiple times a day and across the lifespan. In Gender Stories, personal gender performances are framed within a philosophy of choice. Readers are encouraged to become more conscious of the choices they have in constructing their gender identities and to allow others the same choice by respecting their gender performances. Readers will easily find a place for themselves in the book, regardless of their views on gender, because one perspective on gender is not presented as the right one. Gender Stories affirms and legitimizes diverse perspectives as providing more comprehensive knowledge about gender for everyone.

Sonja K. Foss

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