RhetoricSociety.org
Title
Rhetoric Society of America
Description
Welcome to the Rhetoric Society of America homepage. RSA is a scholarly organization concerned with rhetoric as a subject of study and instruction -- and as a mode of human practice. RSA was founded in 1968 as a small and informal gathering of scholars from different disciplines and academic traditions interested in questions about the nature, function, and scope of rhetoric. They included teachers of public speaking, writing, criticism, philosophy, and linguistics. Their spirit of crossing disciplinary boundaries and their openness to the wide range of social and academic concerns remains RSA's primary defining characteristic. Today RSA is an organization of nearly 1,000 members. Our members still come from a wide range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences and include scholars of natural science and of law. RSA members are animated by questions of instructional innovation appropriate to the changing milieu in which our students will live their professional and civic lives; the relationship between how we communicate about civic issues and the quality of public decisions and public life; the role of cultural and social practices on freedom of expression and choice; the ways we constitute our bonds of affiliation and identity through social practices of discourse; the moral and spiritual constraints and opportunities embedded in language use; the differences between technical and non-technical argumentation and the dilemmas both pose for participation and decision-making in a democracy; the ways our verbal, visual, and media cultures constitute public memory and a sense of community. This incomplete list reflects the broad sense in which the Society understands rhetoric and the array of problems on which our work touches.
