Just Rhetoric: A Selection of Essays from the 21st Biennial Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America brings together twenty-three innovative essays that reflect the intellectual energy and urgency of the 2024 RSA conference. Edited by Stephanie Jones, Gwendolyn D. Pough, and Erin J. Rand, the volume takes up the conference theme-Just Rhetoric-as both a provocation and a call to action.
What does it mean to call something "just rhetoric"? This collection resists the phrase's dismissiveness and instead reclaims rhetoric as a vital tool for engaging the most pressing issues of our time. Across three thematic sections-rhetorical theory and praxis, media and technology, and movements and communities-contributors demonstrate how rhetorical study illuminates and intervenes in questions of justice, equity, and collective life.
The essays traverse global traditions and contemporary contexts, examining African and Islamic rhetorical histories, disability and accessibility, climate change, digital activism, archival recovery, and community-based movements. Contributors attend to the rhetorical dimensions of Black Lives Matter, environmental justice, Indigenous and decolonial practices, and LGBTQ+ advocacy, while also exploring classrooms, writing centers, and digital spaces as sites of rhetorical action.
Taken together, these essays present rhetoric as more than critique: it is a creative, analytical, and ethical practice capable of shaping publics, challenging injustice, and imagining new futures. Just Rhetoric offers readers a curated snapshot of current work in the field-work that insists rhetoric has never been "just" anything, but is instead central to how we understand, contest, and remake the world.
Contributors include Maha Baddar, James P. Beasley, Mavis Boatemaa Beckson, Abby Breyer, Lindy E. Briggette, Caylie Cox, Quinn Dannies, Heidi L. Eichbauer, J. Moisés García-Rentería, Kiera Gilbert, Byron Hawk, Cody Hunter, Rency Luan, Shiva Mainaly, Keith D. Miller, Lindsey Novak, Jeff Pruchnic, Jessica L. Ridgeway, Marc C. Santos, Susan A. Sci, Nancy Small, Stacey K. Sowards, Emily Stones, and S. J. Williamson.
Dr. Stephanie Jones is Assistant Professor of English in Digital Rhetoric at the University of Oregon. Her most recent publication is "Dangerous Moves: On Reclaiming Video Gaming through Black Feminist Rhetoric and Remix" featured in Rhetorica Rising: Feminist Rhetorical Methods for Social Change (University of South Carolina Press). Gwendolyn D. Pough is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Dean's Professor of the Humanities, and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at Syracuse University. She has published numerous essays, articles, and creative works including the groundbreaking Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere. She is a past Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the current President of Rhetoric Society of America. Erin J. Rand is Associate Professor in Communication and Rhetorical Studies and affiliated with LGBTQ Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of Minor Troubles: Racial Figurations of Youth Sexuality and Childhood's Queerness (Ohio State University Press, 2025) and Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance (University of Alabama Press, 2014).
