This volume brings together three areas of scholarship and practice: rhetoric, material life, and ecology. The chapters build a multi-layered understanding of material life by gathering scholars from varied theoretical and critical traditions around the common theme of ecology. Emphasizing relationality, connectedness and context, the ecological orientation we build informs both rhetorical theory and environmentalist interventions. Contributors offer practical-theoretical inquiries into several areas - rhetoric's cosmologies, the trophe, bioregional rhetoric's, nuclear colonialism, and more - collectively forging new avenues of communication among scholars in environmental communication, communication studies, and rhetoric and composition. This book aims at inspiring and advancing ecological thinking, demonstrating its value for rhetoric and communication as well as for environmental thought and action.

Building upon a rich legacy, the new edition of The Rhetoric of Western Thought provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of rhetoric from its inception in the ancient world, to its present day expression in contemporary practice and scholarship. The 11th edition gives deliberate attention to the voices, bodies, and humans that are too often forgotten or silenced in the history of rhetoric.For example, women's contributions to rhetoric in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages are interwoven into the history of rhetoric, rather than treated as an aside of afterthought which happens too often in retellings of the story of rhetoric. Featuring a fresh design and engaging layout, The Rhetoric of Western Thought: integrates new resources, including chapter objectives, overviews, and discussion questions throughout the book to help both students and instructors explore the history of rhetoric includes additional content, concepts, tools and perspectives on rhetoric throughout-including in-depth explanations of concepts (Rhetorical Toolbox), links to previous chapters (Looking Back), connections to future chapters (Looking Forward), and reflections on the politics of rhetorical history (We Should Note) pays deliberate attention to rhetoric in the contemporary world. It traces modernist conceptions of rhetoric to the contemporary world (Chapters 8–10) and explores issues of truth, new media, ideology, and materiality, all of which are essential to understanding rhetorical thought today (Chapters 11-14).