Description: Rhetorical Animals explores what the study of communication and persuasion would look like if it included the voices of all persuasive species, from the microscopic gut bacteria to the charismatic megafauna we know so well.
Brief description: Ellen W. Gorsevski is associate professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University.
Review Quotes: "In the excellent collection Rhetorical Animals, Bjørkdahl and Parrish have collected a range of robust investigations on the persuasive capacities of animals. These chapters expand existing conversations on ethics, rhetorics, and materiality, while pointing to new directions for exploring intra-animal persuasions, human-animal relationships, and the biotic bases for persuasion. Further, the scholars assembled here trouble longstanding assumptions about what rhetoric is, how it functions, and who has access to it, all while being critical and personal in equal measure." --Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, Oregon State University