This pre-Qin dynasty recluse produced what is considered the earliest Chinese treatise devoted entirely to the art of persuasion. Called Guiguzi after its author, the text provides an indigenous rhetorical theory and key persuasive strategies, some of which are still used by those involved in decision making and negotiations in China today. In "Guiguzi," China's First Treatise on Rhetoric, Hui Wu and C. Jan Swearingen present a new critical translation of this foundational work, which has great historical significance for the study of Chinese rhetoric and communication and yet is little known to Western readers.

When Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle were discussing and defining rhetoric in ancient Greece, many students in China, including Sun Bin, a descendent of Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War, were learning the techniques of persuasion from Guiguzi, “the Master of the Ghost Valley.” This pre–Qin dynasty recluse provided the basis for what is considered the earliest Chinese treatise devoted entirely to the art of persuasion. Called Guiguzi after its author, this translation of the received text provides an indigenous rhetorical theory and key persuasive strategies, some of which are still used by those involved in decision making and negotiations in China today. In “Guiguzi,” China’s First Treatise on Rhetoric, Hui Wu and C. Jan Swearingen present a new critical translation of this foundational work, which has great historical significance for the study of Chinese rhetoric and communication and yet is little known to Western readers. Wu’s translation includes footnotes that incorporate both past and present scholarly commentary, and is accompanied by a prefatory introduction that situates Guiguzi in the sociopolitical and cultural realities of ancient China, and a glossary of rhetorical terms used in the treatise. Swearingen presents a comparative study suggesting the similarities and differences between emerging Greek and Chinese rhetorics during the same period, including the cultural contexts of warring states and emergent empires that surrounded each. “Guiguzi,” China’s First Treatise on Rhetoric combines a new translation of a historically significant text with scholarly analysis and critical apparatus that will contribute to the emerging global understanding of Chinese rhetoric and communication.

Xing Lu examines language, art, persuasion, and argumentation in ancient China and offers a detailed and authentic account of ancient Chinese rhetorical theories and practices within the society's philosophical, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. She focuses on the works of five schools of thought and ten well-known Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Han Feizi to the the Later Mohists. Lu identifies seven key Chinese terms pertaining to speech, language, persuasion, and argumentation as they appeared in these original texts, selecting ming bian as the linchpin for the Chinese conceptual term of rhetorical studies. Lu compares Chinese rhetorical perspectives with those of the ancient Greeks, illustrating that the Greeks and the Chinese shared a view of rhetoric as an ethical enterprise and of speech as a rational and psychological activity. The two traditions differed, however, in their rhetorical education, sense of rationality, perceptions of the role of language, approach to the treatment and study of rhetoric, and expression of emotions. Lu also links ancient Chinese rhetorical perspectives with contemporary Chinese interpersonal and political communication behavior and offers suggestions for a multicultural rhetoric that recognizes both culturally specific and transcultural elements of human communication.

Available in English for the first time, Once Iron Girls: Essays on Gender by Post-Mao Chinese Literary Women brings together twenty-five essays by seven critically acclaimed writers, whose fiction and poetry have become classics in modern Chinese literature. Poetic, metaphoric, and sometimes playful and satiric, the essays discuss the material reality wherein Chinese women live and function. Reflecting on their experiences under Mao and in post-Maoist China, these essays vividly demonstrate that, despite equality of the sexes being the official position and women working equally demanding jobs as men, women are still considered servile to their male counterparts. Taken together, the collection shows Chinese women struggling for identity by discussing the issues that are important in their lives. Unlike Western feminists, they do not want to be seen as different from their male counterparts. Nor do they want to fall into Chinese terminology of being the same as men. Rather, these essays show that women want to be seen first and foremost as human and then as female. By showcasing the politics and poetics of Chinese women's essays to an English audience, Hui Wu's translations uncover the philosophy and purpose behind the literature of a unique generation of Chinese women, whose life experience finds no parallel in China and certainly not in the West.

This ambitious book looks into the reasons for the exceptional durability of the Chinese empire, which lasted for more than two millennia (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Yuri Pines identifies the roots of the empire's longevity in the activities of thinkers of the Warring States period (453-221 B.C.E.), who, in their search for solutions to an ongoing political crisis, developed ideals, values, and perceptions that would become essential for the future imperial polity. In marked distinction to similar empires worldwide, the Chinese empire was envisioned and to a certain extent "preplanned" long before it came into being. As a result, it was not only a military and administrative construct, but also an intellectual one. Pines makes the argument that it was precisely its ideological appeal that allowed the survival and regeneration of the empire after repeated periods of turmoil. Envisioning Eternal Empire presents a panoptic survey of philosophical and social conflicts in Warring States political culture. By examining the extant corpus of preimperial literature, including transmitted texts and manuscripts uncovered at archaeological sites, Pines locates the common ideas of competing thinkers that underlie their ideological controversies. This bold approach allows him to transcend the once fashionable perspective of competing "schools of thought" and show that beneath the immense pluralism of Warring States thought one may identify common ideological choices that eventually shaped traditional Chinese political culture

In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, François Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese strategies work in several domains (the battlefield, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien’s brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, A Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West.

Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America collects essays reflecting on the history of the Rhetoric Society of America and the organization’s 18th Biennial Conference theme, “Reinventing Rhetoric: Celebrating the Past, Building the Future,” on the occasion of the Society’s 50th anniversary. The opening section, “Looking Back: RSA at Fifty” describes the establishment of the organization and includes remembrances from some of the founders. These historical essays consider the transdisciplinary nature of RSA scholarship and pedagogy and offer critical reviews of trends in some of its subfields. The essays in the second section, “Reinventing the Field: Looking Forward,” focus on the future of scholarship and pedagogy in the field, from reinventing scholarship on major figures such as Vico, Burke, and Toulmin, to reconsidering future work on rhetoric and democracy, rhetoric and religion, and rhetoric from both sides of the Atlantic. The authors in the last section, “Rhetorical Interventions,” offer critical interventions on contemporary issues, including food justice, fat studies, indigenous protest, biopolitics, Chinese feminism, and anti-establishment ethos. Together, the essays in Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship offer a Janus-faced portrait of a discipline on the occasion of its golden anniversary: a loving and critical remembrance as well as a robust exploration of possible futures. Contributors include Kristian Bjørkdahl, David Blakesley, Leah Ceccarelli, Catherine Chaput, Rachel Chapman Daugherty, Richard Leo Enos, Joseph Good, Heidi Hamilton, Michelle Iten, Jacob W. Justice, Zornitsa Keremidchieva, Jens E. Kjeldsen, Abby Knoblauch, Laura Leavitt, Andrea A. Lunsford, Paul Lynch, Carolyn R. Miller, James J. Murphy, Shelley Sizemore, Ryan Skinnell, David Stock, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Victor J. Vitanza, Ron Von Burg, Scott Welsh, Ben Wetherbee, Elizabethada A. Wright, Hui Wu, Richard E. Young, and David Zarefsky.