Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition

Best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, Bruno Latour has inspired scholarship across many disciplines. In the past few years, the fields of rhetoric and composition have witnessed an explosion of interest in Latour’s work. Editors Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers have assembled leading and emerging scholars in order to focus the debate on what Latour means for the study of persuasion and written communication.

Essays in this volume discern, rearticulate, and occasionally critique rhetoric and composition’s growing interest in Latour. These contributions include work on topics such as agency, argument, rhetorical history, pedagogy, and technology, among others. Contributors explain key terms, identify implications of Latour’s work for rhetoric and composition, and explore how his theories might inform writing pedagogies and be used to build research methodologies.

Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition shows how Latour’s groundbreaking theories on technology, agency, and networks might be taken up, enriched, and extended to challenge scholars in rhetorical studies (both English and communications), composition, and writing studies to rethink some of the field’s most basic assumptions.  It is set to become the standard introduction that will appeal not only to those scholars already interested in Latour but also those approaching Latour for the first time.

Paul Lynch is an associate professor of English at Saint Louis University and author of After Pedagogy: The Experience of Teaching.

Nathaniel Rivers is an assistant professor of English at Saint Louis University and coeditor of Equipment for Living: The Literary Reviews of Kenneth Burke.

Contributors include Scot Barnett, Casey Boyle, Collin Gifford Brooke, James J. Brown Jr., Marilyn Cooper, S. Scott Graham, Laurie Gries, Mark Hannah, Carl G. Herndl, Jenell Johnson, Kristen Moore, Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, Joshua D. Prenosil, Sarah Read, Jeff Rice, Thomas Rickert, Marc C. Santos, Michele Simmons, Clay Spinuzzi, Patricia Sullivan, Jeremy Tirrell, Meredith W. Zoetewey