Dr. Ryan Skinnell

In memoriam…

Bill Hart-Davidson was an exemplar of brilliance, generosity, and care for others. His passing in April 2024 was an incalculable loss to countless individuals and communities.

I anticipate that these designs will eventually be available for purchase with the proceeds going to support initiatives established in BHD’s honor (such as this one).

Rhet It Be

Rhetoric is often connected to old, dead dudes. There are good reasons for those connections, since a lot of what we know about rhetoric came from their writings. But anyone who’s payed attention knows that many of rhetoric’s most effective practitioners are not old, dead dudes.

This sticker pays tribute to four of the 20th century’s most important human-rights activists, users of rhetoric par excellence—Shirley Chisholm, Rigoberta Menchú, Dolores Huerta, and Yuri Kochiyama.

Sharon Crowley

A practicable orientation to rhetoric, writing, and theory is a common thread that animated Sharon Crowley’s work as a teacher, scholar, mentor, and colleague over her forty-year career in rhetoric and composition across an impossibly diverse set of professional interests. Rhetorical invention—the art of surveying beliefs, values, and knowledges to discover available arguments—was at the core of her work on rhetoric.

Global Art

Rhêtorikê is an ancient Greek word for the arts of oratory and persuasion, but as it happens, the arts of oratory and persuasion preceded and exceeded the Greeks. They gave us a helpful term for global arts, employed in different ways to different ends in different places throughout the whole of human history.

Demosthenes

For millennia, Demosthenes was considered the greatest orator in the history of the world. Asked in his own time to name the three most important aspects of rhetoric, Big D reportedly responded, “Delivery, delivery, delivery.”

House of Rhetoric

All are welcome in the House of Rhetoric. The future is bright! It’s important to remember, however, that we’re also all responsible for keeping the house in (dis)order. [h/t to Leigh Elion for the idea.]

KB’s Definition of Humanity

Kenneth Burke was hecka problematic, but he also gave us some of the most influential concepts in modern rhetoric.

Defining Rhetoric

Defining rhetoric is one of the favorite activities of people who study, teach, and write about rhetoric. Which, if you know anything about rhetoric, makes a lot of sense. These stickers meet two central requirements—they’re fairly common definitions of rhetoric from some of rhetoric’s most prominent 20th century scholars AND they were stated succinctly enough to fit the format I’d defined for the designs.