Full Description
Inviting Understanding: A Portrait of Invitational Rhetoric is an authoritative reference work designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the theory of invitational rhetoric, developed twenty-five years ago by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin. This theory challenges the conventional conception of rhetoric as persuasion and defines rhetoric as an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination. Rather than celebrating argumentation, division, and winning, invitational rhetoric encourages rhetors to listen across differences, to engage in dialogue, and to try to understand positions different from their own.
Organized into the three categories of foundations, extensions, and applications, Inviting Understanding is a compilation of published articles and new essays that explore and expand the theory. The book provides readers with access to a wide range of resources about this revolutionary theory in areas such as community organizing, social justice activism, social media, film, graffiti, institutional and team decision making, communication and composition pedagogy, and interview protocols.
Current cultural, social, and political divisions in the United States and across the world suggest that the principles and practices of invitational rhetoric are sorely needed, and a volume that demonstrates its application in various contexts may inspire readers to put it into practice in the contexts in which they work and live.
Contents
Part I. Foundations
1 The Womanization of Rhetoric
Sally Miller Gearhart
2 Proposal for a Feminist Rhetoric
Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
3 Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric
Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
4 Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move toward Civility
Jennifer E. Bone, Cindy L. Griffin, and T. M. Linda Scholz
5 The Metatheoretical Foundations of Invitational Rhetoric: Axiological, Epistemological, and Ontological Explorations
Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
Part II. Extensions
6 Fusing Horizons: Standpoint Hermeneutics and Invitational Rhetoric
Kathleen J. Ryan and Elizabeth J. Natalle
7 Telling the Story, Hearing the Story: Narrative Co-Construction and Crisis Research
Karen Taylor, Rita Durant, and David Boje
8 Planting Seeds of Change: Ella Baker's Radical Rhetoric
Marilyn DeLaure Bordwell
9 Rhetorics of Invitation and Refusal in Terry Tempest Williams's The Open Space of Democracy
Jill Swiencicki
10 Invention for the Invitational Rhetor: Allen Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra"
Stephen M. Llano
11 Challenges to the Enactment of Invitational Rhetoric in the Age of Mobile Communication Technologies
Sonja K. Foss and Jeanine Warisse Turner
Part III. Applications
12 Love as a Strategy for Community and Social Justice Organizing: Invitational Rhetoric in Murfreesboro Loves
Roberta Chevrette and Joshua Hendricks
13 Practicing Invitational Rhetoric: East Central Ministries' Approach to Community Development
Sarah De Los Santos Upton
14 Discussions on Kneeling During the National Anthem: An Analysis of High School Football Players Employing Invitational Rhetoric
Kristen A. Hungerford
15 An Invitation to Rhetoric: A Generative Dialogue on Performance, Possibility, and Feminist Potentialities in Invitational Rhetoric
Bryant Keith Alexander and Michele Hammers
16 Understanding Affectively: Beyond the Hills as Cinematic Invitational Rhetoric
Alina Haliliuc
17 Participatory Graffiti as Invitational Rhetoric: The Case of O Machismo
Benjamin R. Bates
18 Invitational Rhetoric as a Springboard to Using Dialogue across the Curriculum
Patricia Hawk and Rachel Pokora
19 Creating an Invitational Classroom Environment: Lessons Lived and Learned
Donna Marie Nudd
20 Disrupting Disruption: Invitational Pedagogy as a Response to Student Resistance
A. Abby Knoblauch
21 An Invitation to Reason: The Process of Discovery Essay
Kathleen M. Hunzer
22 Considering the Alternative in Composition Pedagogy: Teaching Invitational Rhetoric with Lynda Barry's What It Is
Susan Kirtley
Part IV. Expanding the Invitation
23 The Theory of Invitational Rhetoric: Anticipating Future Scholarship
Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
24 Compendium of Publications Related to Invitational Rhetoric
Sonja K. Foss, Cindy L. Griffin, and Andrew Gilmore
