Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences.
Thomas Stephen Szasz was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning 'the right, critical, or opportune moment'. In modern Greek, kairos also means 'weather' or 'time'.
Charles Albert "Dutch" Ruppersberger III is an American lawyer and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 2nd congressional district since 2003. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as an assistant state attorney of Maryland from 1972 to 1980, a Baltimore County councilman from 1985 to 1994, and Baltimore County Executive from 1994 until 2002. He was the ranking member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2011 to 2015.
Robert Leroy Ehrlich Jr. is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 60th Governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. A Republican, Ehrlich represented Maryland's 10th legislative district in the House of Delegates from 1987 to 1995 and Maryland's 2nd Congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson is an American professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded FactCheck.org, and she is an author, most recently of Cyberwar, in which she argues that Russia very likely helped Donald J. Trump become the U.S. President in 2016.
Robert Laurent Caret is an American academic and the former chancellor of the University System of Maryland. He became chancellor on July 1, 2015. Caret, a native of New England, became chancellor of the University System of Maryland after completing presidencies at San Jose State University, Towson University and the University of Massachusetts.
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell is an American academic specializing in rhetorical criticism at the University of Minnesota.
Robert Lee Scott was an American scholar influential in the study of rhetorical theory, criticism of public address, debate, and communication research and practice. He was professor emeritus in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of five books, numerous articles in speech, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric journals, and contributed many book chapters. His article "On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic", is considered one of the most important academic articles written in rhetorical studies in the past century.
John Louis Lucaites is an American academic. He is a professor emeritus of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University. In 2012, Lucaites was appointed as associate dean for arts and humanities and undergraduate education at Indiana University. His research concerns the general relationship between rhetoric and social theory, and seeks to contribute in particular to the critique and reconstruction of liberalism in contemporary social, political, and cultural practices in the United States.
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar is a Professor in Rhetoric and Public Culture and the Director of Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University. He is also Executive Director of the Center for Transcultural Studies, an independent scholarly research network concerned with global issues based in Chicago and New York. Gaonkar was closely associated with the influential journal Public Culture from the early 1990s, serving in various editorial capacities: associate editor (1992-2000), executive editor (2000-2009), and editor (2009-2011).
The rhetorical situation is an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. A rhetorical situation arises from a given context or exigence. An article by Lloyd Bitzer introduced the model of the rhetorical situation in 1968, which was later challenged and modified by Richard E. Vatz (1973) and Scott Consigny (1974). More recent scholarship has further redefined the model to include more expansive views of rhetorical operations and ecologies.
Modern rhetoric has gone through many changes since the age of ancient Rome and Greece to fit the societal demands of the time. Kenneth Burke, who is largely credited for defining the notion of modern rhetoric, described modern rhetoric as
"rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
Jeffrey Alfred Schaler is a psychologist, author, editor, retired professor of justice, law, and society at American University, and former member of the psychology faculty at Johns Hopkins University. He is a prominent critic of psychiatric claims and practices, especially of treatment without consent. Schaler opposes the medicalization of addiction. He has had a private practice in existential therapy since the 1970s.
Karen A. Foss is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of communication. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and the reconceptualization of communication theories and constructs.
Sonja K. Foss is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of communication. Her research and teaching interests are in contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and visual rhetoric.
Michael Hyde is an American linguist, currently a University Distinguished Professor at Wake Forest University. He received a Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013 from the National Communication Association, and in 2019 he won the Association's Communication Ethics Top Book Award for his 2018 book The Interruption that We Are: The Health of the Lived Body, Narrative, and Public Moral Argument.
Celeste Michelle Condit is an American professor and scholar of rhetorical criticism. Her work focuses on the rhetoric of racism, biology, the human genome, and feminism. In 2018, the Public Address Conference described Condit as "a pioneer in understanding and improving public communication about genetics." She currently holds the role of Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia.
Kent Alan Ono is an American academic, author, and educator. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah and was Chair of the department from 2012 to 2017. He was the President of the National Communication Association from 2020 to 2021.
