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How do we date the intellectual revival of rhetoric that has unfolded over the last century-plus? What were its early theoretical contours? This essay answers those questions by turning to the contemporaneous reinventions of rhetoric undertaken by Charles Sanders Peirce and Friedrich Nietzsche that began in the mid-1860s. I discuss their work comparatively, throwing new light on each by historicizing them in relation to dual strands of modernism linked with scientific knowing and artistic making. In the process, I bring out physiological and naturalistic dimensions of their expansive theories of rhetoric, showing how they were anchored by sensing bodies interacting with evolving worlds.

This essay throws genealogical light upon contemporary theoretical practice by charting the relatively short history of rhetorical theory as a consequential sign in Anglophone discourse. It advances a historical sociology of knowledge inflected by feminist and postcolonial studies to trace the invention, institutionalization, and changing meanings of rhetorical theory from the late nineteenth century to the present. In the process, it illuminates three structuring patterns: (1) the valorization of European civilization that accompanied U.S. settler colonialism and its manifestation in universities where rhetorical theory materially grounded itself; (2) the gendered production of knowledge within academic institutions, particularly through the masculinization of the postwar university and its shaping of communities of inquiry invested in rhetorical theory; and (3) the power of relevance as a metonym for intellectual, political, and educational initiatives that, beginning in the late 1960s, enlarged rhetorical theory's community of inquiry and range of meanings.

Mass communication was one of the central signs through which communication research constituted itself in the post-World War II era. An American term, it indexed and communicatively advanced the problematization of media that took shape from the 1920s onward. Recently, scholars have debated the term’s continued relevance, typically without awareness of its history or international contexts of use. To provide needed background and enrich efforts to globalize the field, we offer a transnational history of mass communication, illuminating the sociological, cultural, and geopolitical dynamics of its emergence, dissemination, and reception. Mapping locations of its adoption, adaption, and rejection across world regions, we offer a methodology and a historical narrative to shed light on the early globalization of the field and lines of power and resistance that shaped it. We show how the term carries a residue of postwar American hegemony, and argue for greater reflexive awareness of our vocabularies of inquiry.

Richard McKeon (1900–1985) was a towering intellectual figure whose vast corpus of work is, outside a handful of essays, little read today. In the context of this volume, McKeon is noteworthy as someone who developed theories of both rhetoric and communication—explicitly so named—within a framework that his student Douglas Mitchell describes as “Pragmatism in a new key.” My overall aim in the essay is to draw together and extend the small but important body of commentary on McKeon’s “new key” of pragmatism and his theories of both rhetoric and communication. I will show how they constitute a problem-oriented, pragmatist rhetorical philosophy for a historically evolving, pluralistic world marked by traditional and emergent communication practices and media technologies. In so doing, I intend to draw readers’ attention to the fuller range of McKeon’s writings on rhetoric and communication and offer overarching characterizations that make them more available than they have been to this point.

In early June 2013, a group of rhetoric and composition scholars gathered in Lawrence, Kansas, to take part in a comparative rhetoric seminar, part of the 2013 Rhetoric Society of America Summer In...

Since the 1960s, invention theory has reinvented itself. This essay aims to map and advance that process. It provides a window into the recent intellectual history of rhetorical studies and advocates continued development of sociologically informed rhetorical theories open to culture, materiality, and post-humanist understandings. I argue that invention theory has productively organized itself around two sets of dialectical tensions but remains constrained by two longstanding prejudices. The productive tensions revolve around (a) breaking with and affirming inherited rhetorical traditions and (b) conceiving invention as emplaced or dispersed. The prejudices consist of a continued logophilia and normative privileging of creativity and newness. I map the dialectics and prejudices across modern, premodern, and postmodern orientations. I then provide a revised definition and heuristic framework revolving around a concept, inventional media, which aims to capture invention’s simultaneous emplacement and disper...

This article revisits James Aune's sociological framework for rhetoric in his important but overlooked “Modernity as a Rhetorical Problem.” I situate Aune's essay within the history of sociological...

A story can be told about all the ways that rhetoric's twentieth-century revival has been powered by ideas and studies of culture. Readers of this journal are most likely to know the chapter that b...

This paper blends historical retrieval, feminist political intervention, and an effort to think about our fields from the perspective of assemblage theory in an attempt to remember the founding mothers of the fields of communication and media studies. Entwined humanistic and posthumanistic impulses create space for voices, labors, bodies, and other material things that deserve our attention. At the narrative and moral core of the story is a group of remarkable yet unsung women who, from the late 1930s through the early 1950s, helped to invent practices, produce research, shape thinking, and establish social relationships that laid foundations for media and communication study in the United States and the world. These women are the figures we call the founding mothers of our field. Focusing on the Paul Lazarsfeld-led Office of Radio Research (ORR) and the Bureau of Applied Social Research (the Bureau) from 1937 to 1949, we attend to four representative women—Herta Herzog, Hazel Gaudet, Thelma Ehrlich Ander...

This work presents and defines three meanings of communication taking into account some of the traditions of thought that founded our field of study. These three conceptions are: communication as an architectonic art; communication as a social force; and communication as the encounter with truth. These three conceptions are considered with regard to several traditions of thought conceptualized in Craig’s (1999) constitutive metamodel of communication theory (rhetorical, sociopsychological, critical and phenomenological). Furthermore, the discussion expands the traditions of thought, adding American pragmatism (Craig’s proposal would be included in it), and a new tradition that highlights the element of undecidability in communication, partly as an extension of phenomenology and partly with its own historical roots in Badiou’s philosophy of the event.

Published in Agron. J. 103:1645–1654 (2011) Posted online 14 Sep 2011 doi:10.2134/agronj2011.0131 Available freely online through the author-supported open access option. Copyright © 2011 by the American Society of Agronomy, 5585 Guilford Road, Madison, WI 53711. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. T first use of hops—with the tender shoots and young leaves used as a salad (Burgess, 1964)—was described in the fi rst century A.D. in Pliny’s Natural History. Th e earliest records of hop cultivation date back to the 8th century, when French and German monks grew hops, presumably for their medicinal value (Burgess, 1964). Hops have a long history of use for medicinal purposes, and they have most oft en been used as a mild sedative due to their anti-anxiety properties. It was not until the 12th century that hops became widely used as a preservative and clarifying component in the beer-brewing process (Burgess, 1964). Hop cultivation and brewing have been an important part of American culture since the fi rst colonists arrived. By the mid1600s, widespread cultivation of hops was becoming commonplace, with farms up to 18 ha in size. Hop production had spread from New York to Wisconsin, and fi nally to the Washington Territory and California by the late 1800s (Steiner, 1973). Th e Humulus genus is made up of dioecious (rarely monoecious), perennial, short-day fl owering plants of the family Cannabaceae and is indigenous to northern temperate climates (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009; Small, 1978). Th e Humulus genus has three distinct species: H. japonicas Siebold & Zucc., H. yunnanensis Hu, and H. lupulus L. Humulus japonicas is an annual species native to China, Japan, and Taiwan and is cultivated primarily for its ornamental value. It has been introduced to Europe and North America and is now considered a semi-invasive species in some areas of the eastern United States (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). Humulus yunnanensis is a relatively unknown species thought to have originated at high elevations in the Yunnan province of southern China (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). Humulus yunnanensis is not widely cultivated, and, according to Small (1978), is oft en confused with H. lupulus, while other, more recent sources report that it is a rare species (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). Humulus yunnanensis is not found in the USDA’s national plant germplasm system (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). Humulus lupulus, widely known as the common hop plant, is the species that possesses marketable traits used for brewing. It consists of a number of taxonomic varieties: H. lupulus var. neomexicanus A. Nelson & Cockerell adapted to western cordilleran conditions; H. lupulus var. cordifolius (Miguel) Maximowicz distributed in eastern Asia, most notably Japan; H. lupulus var. pubescens E. Small of the Midwestern United States; H. lupulus var. lupuloides E. Small of eastern and central North America; and H. lupulus var. lupulus, which originated in Europe but has spread to Asia, Africa, and eastern North America and is the taxonomic variety responsible for retaining most of the favorable brewing characteristics (Hampton et al., 2001; Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). One other taxonomic variety, H. lupulus var. fengxianensis J.Q. Fu, has also been described (Peredo et al., 2009). Overlapping and introgression is evident for some varieties (Mahaff ee and Pethybridge, 2009). Th ough wild hops cannot be used directly for brewing due to ABSTRACT Hop cones grown on the female plant of the perennial crop (Humulus lupulus L.) are an integral component of the brewing process and provide fl avor, bitterness, aroma, and antimicrobial properties to beer. Demand for organically grown hops from consumers via the brewing industry is on the rise; however, due to high N requirements and severe disease, weed, and arthropod pressures, hops are an extremely diffi cult crop to grow organically. Currently, the majority of the world’s organic hops are grown in New Zealand, while other countries, including China, are beginning to increase organic hop production. Land under organic hop production in Washington State, where 75% of the hops in the United States are grown, increased from 1.6 ha to more than 26 ha from 2004 to 2010, and other hop-producing states demonstrate a similar trend. Removing hops from the USDA Organic Exemption list in January 2013 is expected to greatly increase organic hop demand and will require corresponding increases in organic hop hectarage. Current challenges, including weed management, fertility and irrigation management, insect and disease pressures, and novel practices that address these issues will be presented. Here, we discuss current and future research that will potentially impact organic hop production in the United States.

This essay documents one small but intense episode in the historic presidential election of 2008—the primary campaign waged in Hispanic South Texas between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Told from the perspectives of out-of-state volunteer and rhetorically trained participant-observer, it depicts rhetorical scenes on the ground, partly created by the author, and worked out through embodied, Anglo-Hispano interaction. Beyond documenting the campaign at its grassroots, the essay is also a performative criticism of the coproduced rhetorical dramas, an exercise in rhetorical hermeneutics, and a contribution to interpretive rhetorical theory. It introduces the concept of “Mercurian rhetoric” as a category for mobile border-crossers and translators, and uses it as an interpretive pathway for charting the Obama campaign and resistances to it on the ground. Building from Michael McGee and Thomas Benson, the essay links criticism, fieldwork, and rhetorical production, and makes a case for embodied, neo-sophisti...

Introduction: On the History of Communication Study-Peter Simonson and David W. Park New Theories * The Transnational Flow of Ideas and Histoire Croisee with Attention to the Cases of France and Germany--Maria Loblich, Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz * Gender, Work, and the History of Communication Research: Figures, Formations, and Flows--Karen Lee Ashcraft and Peter Simonson Transnational Organizations * Locating UNESCO in the Historical Study of Communication--Ira Wagman * The IAMCR Story: Communication and Media Research in a Global Perspective-Michael Meyen Europe * Practical Orientation as a Survival Strategy: The Development of Publizistikwissenschaft by Walter Hagemann-Thomas Wiedemann * Female Academics in Communication Science and the Post-War-Reconstruction Generation in Austria and Germany-Martina Thiele * Communication Studies on the Iberian Peninsula: A Comparative Analysis of the Field's Development in Portugal and Spain-Nelson Ribeiro * Early Nordic Media Research and the special case of Norway (1930 - 1965)--Tore Slaatta * UK Communication Study and the Challenges of Institutionalization-Phillip Lodge * The field of communication in Croatia: toward a comparative history of communication studies in Central and Eastern Europe--Zrinjka Perusko and Dina Vozab North America * Crossing the Borders: Herta Herzog's Work in Communication and Marketing Research--Elisabeth Klaus and Josef Seethaler * Charles Siepmann's Forgotten Legacy for Communication Research and Media Policy--Victor Pickard * The Toronto School: Cross-Border Encounters, Interdisciplinary Entanglements--Michael Darroch * International Vectors in Graduate Education in Communication--David W. Park and Meghan Grosse Latin America * Institutionalization and Internationalization of the Field of Communication Studies in Mexico and Latin America--Raul Fuentes Navarro * History of Communication Study in Brazil: The Institutionalization of an Interdisciplinary Field--Maria Immacolata Vassalo de Lopes and Richard Romancini Asia * Building the Nation-State: Journalism and Communication Studies in China--Hu Zhengrong, Ji Deqiang, and Zhang Lei * The "Great Uncle of Dissemination": Wilbur Schramm and Communication Study in China--Chunfeng Lin and John Nerone * A History of Rhetorical Studies and Practices in Modern Japan--Junya Morooka * Observations on Journalism and Communication Education in India--Pradip Thomas Africa and the Middle East * Trajectories of communication studies in Sub-Saharan Africa--Terje Skjerdal and Keyan Tomaselli * Communication Studies in the Arab World--Mohammad I. Ayish * The Story of the Communication Field in Israel: Nation Building, Personal Transfer, and Growth: Anat First and Hanna Adoni

Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and “public images” that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.

The congregational crowd was a powerful mode of political communication in the nineteenth-century US until banished by the imposition of literate modes on popular electoral politics by Progressive reformers. We examine its major channels of expression, bodily mass communication and public sensationalism, within a framework of class-based struggle, observing that the practice of live bodily assembly created broad points of entry into political life, socialized the young, and successfully conveyed the importance of voting. A text-based normative model of the informed deliberative voter, we argue, offers too narrow a conception of participation compared to a more spaciously conceived democratic community.

This article claims that Paul of Tarsus is a significant figure in the history and theory of mass communication. Drawing on his letters to the Corinthians and other early groups of Christ-followers, I argue that Paul used eloquent mediated rhetoric to conceptualize local ritual practice in such a way that it could form the basis for widespread solidarity and mass community in a geographically expanding religious sect. This was a form of mass communication centered in dispersed bodily assemblies and radiating outward to encompass ever wider regions of a distended mass society. It hinged on the Body of Christ, which in Paul's letters became a space- and time-binding medium of mass communication that held together a dispersed society of the Christ-proclaiming faithful. Paul was essentially an early medium theorist, and I argue that his bifocal attention to local assembly and distant solidarity is instructive for both the study and social practices of mass communication today.

Building out from a case study of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), this essay offers a cultural account of popular social protest in the narrowcast era. Founded in 1980, PETA has grown into the world's largest and highest profile animal rights group. I trace the evolution of the group's public relations efforts and describe them via vocabularies of sound— as creating social noise and generating popular rhythms. Through the mid‐1980s, PETA made public noise primarily by orchestrating news‐based controversies, but by 1987 they were increasingly turning to narrowcast and broad circulation music and entertainment media as a way to spread the word to outsiders and ritually express the beliefs of the group. I argue that these cultures of entertainment and celebrity provided structured rhythms of affection that took the cause further than the more discordant sounds of news‐based controversy.

Series Editor's Foreword Robert T. Craig Introduction Peter Simonson, Janice Peck, Robert T. Craig, and John P. Jackson, Jr. 1. Field The History of Communication History. Peter Simonson, Janice Peck, Robert T. Craig, and John P. Jackson, Jr. Media. David Crowley and Paul Heyer Communication Research. Jefferson D. Pooley and David W. Park 2. Modes Audiences: Publics, Crowds, Mass. Richard Butsch Rhetoric in Cross-Cultural Perspectives. C. Jan Swearingen Conversation. Peter Burke Visual Communication. Michael Griffin Communication in Music. Christian Kaden 3. Media Print Culture. Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray Journalism. John Nerone Telecommunications. Gabriele Balbi Radio Broadcasting. Christopher H. Sterling Television. Andreas Fickers New Media. Benjamin Peters and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen 4. Society The City. Juraj Kittler Science Communication. Joan Leach Politics. Josef Seethaler Labor. Nathan Godfried War. Mette Mortensen Gender and Media: A Very Short Herstory. Karen Ross Race. Murali Balaji and Letrell D. Crittenden Organizing. Karen Lee Ashcraft and Pushkala Prasad 5. World Rhetoric in Latin America. Susan Romano 'Cultural Imperialism' Revisited: The Case of Broadcasting in Latin America, India, and China. John Sinclair Communication in Colonial and Post-Colonial Southern Africa. Donal P. McCracken and Ruth E. Teer-Tomaselli Islam, Mediation and Technology. Nabil Echchabi Jewish Media and Communication in the Modern Age. Gideon Kouts East Asian Communication Studies. Guo-Ming Chen, Akira Miyahara, and Min-Sun Kim Epilogue: The Futures of Communication. Lucien Sfez

This chapter revisits the history of the so-called “limited effects model” of mass communication, associated with Paul Lazarsfeld and Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research. It argues that the model was in part a rhetorical invention of its critics in the 1970s and 1980s, when critical and cultural approaches to media studies were gaining widespread traction and a new generation of objectivist social scientists were carving out alternatives to inherited understandings. Pivoting from that moment of invention, it returns to Columbia research of the 1940s and 1950s, traces the rise and alternate understandings of the model, and contextualizes it in relation to competing approaches to media at Columbia frequently occluded in collective memories of the field. Keywords: Limited Effects; Lazarsfeld; Two-Step Flow; Decatur Study; Personal Influence; Katz; Columbia School; Bureau of Applied Social Research