Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior – how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. Not only is the cultural model incomplete, but it tacitly endorses the fallacy of human exceptionalism. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. Being mindful of biological and cultural influences allows for a deeper view of rhetoric, one that is aware of the ubiquity of persuasive behavior in nature. Human and nonhuman animals, and even some plants, persuade to survive - to live, love, and cooperate. That this broad spectrum of rhetorical behavior exists in the animal world demonstrates how much we can learn from evolutionary biology. By incorporating scholarship on animal signaling into the study of rhetoric, the author explores how communication has evolved, and how numerous different species of animals employ similar persuasive tactics in order to overcome similar problems. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.

Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior – how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. Not only is the cultural model incomplete, but it tacitly endorses the fallacy of human exceptionalism. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. Being mindful of biological and cultural influences allows for a deeper view of rhetoric, one that is aware of the ubiquity of persuasive behavior in nature. Human and nonhuman animals, and even some plants, persuade to survive - to live, love, and cooperate. That this broad spectrum of rhetorical behavior exists in the animal world demonstrates how much we can learn from evolutionary biology. By incorporating scholarship on animal signaling into the study of rhetoric, the author explores how communication has evolved, and how numerous different species of animals employ similar persuasive tactics in order to overcome similar problems. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.

Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior - how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.

Disability Rhetoric is the first book to view rhetorical theory and history through the lens of disability studies. Traditionally, the body has been seen as, at best, a rhetorical distraction; at worst, those whose bodies do not conform to a narrow range of norms are disqualified from speaking. Yet, Dolmage argues that communication has always been obsessed with the meaning of the body and that bodily difference is always highly rhetorical. Following from this rewriting of rhetorical history, he outlines the development of a new theory, affirming the ideas that all communication is embodied, that the body plays a central role in all expression, and that greater attention to a range of bodies is therefore essential to a better understanding of rhetorical histories, theories, and possibilities.

From intertextuality to postmodern cultural studies, narratology to affect theory, poststructuralism to metamodernism, and postcolonialism to ecocriticism, humanities adaptation studies has engaged with a host of contemporary theories. Yet theorizing adaptation has been declared behind the theoretical times compared to other fields and charged with theoretical incorrectness by scholars from all theoretical camps. In this thorough and groundbreaking study, author Kamilla Elliott works to explain and redress the problem of theorizing adaptation. She offers the first cross-disciplinary history of theorizing adaptation in the humanities, extending back to the sixteenth century, revealing that until the late eighteenth century, adaptation was valued for its contributions to cultural progress, before its eventual — and ongoing — marginalization by humanities theories. The second half of the book offers ways to redress the troubled relationship between theorization and adaptation. Ultimately, Theorizing Adaptation proffers shared ground upon which adaptation scholars can debate productively across disciplinary, cultural, and theoretical borders.

The Sensory Modes of Animal Rhetorics: A Hoot in the Light presents the latest research in animal perception and cognition in the context of rhetorical theory. Alex C. Parrish explores the science of animal signaling that shows human and nonhuman animals share similar rhetorical strategies—such as communicating to manipulate or persuade—which suggests the vast impact sensory modalities have on communication in nature. The book demonstrates new ways of seeing humans and how we have separated ourselves from, and subjectified, the animal rhetor. This type of cross-species study allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing a deeper and more inclusive history of rhetoric than ever before.

Rhetorics Change/Rhetoric’s Change features selected essays, multimedia texts, and audio pieces from the 2016 Rhetoric Society of America biennial conference, which spotlighted the theme “Rhetoric and Change.” The pieces are broadly focused around eight different lines of thought: Aural Rhetorics; Rhetoric and Science; Embodiment; Digital Rhetorics; Languages and Publics; Apologia, Revolution, Reflection; and Intersectionality, Interdisciplinarity, and the Future of Feminist Rhetoric. Simultaneously familiar yet new, the value of this collection can be found in the range of its modes and voices.