This volume brings together three areas of scholarship and practice: rhetoric, material life, and ecology.  The chapters build a multi-layered understanding of material life by gathering scholars from varied theoretical and critical traditions around the common theme of ecology. Emphasizing relationality, connectedness and context, the ecological orientation we build informs both rhetorical theory and environmentalist interventions.  Contributors offer practical-theoretical inquiries into several areas - rhetoric¿s cosmologies, the trophe, bioregional rhetoric¿s, nuclear colonialism, and more - collectively forging new avenues of communication among scholars in environmental communication, communication studies, and rhetoric and composition. This book aims at inspiring and advancing ecological thinking, demonstrating its value for rhetoric and communication as well as for environmental thought and action.

Demonstrates the value of rhetoric's multiple material turns for environmental thought and action

1.Rhetoric's Ecologies: Introduction to Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life; Justine Wells, Bridie McGreavy, Samantha Senda-Cook, & George F. McHendry, Jr..- Section I. Returning to Change.- 2. Trophic and Tropic Dynamics: An Ecological Perspective of Tropes; Diane Keeling & Jennifer Prairie.- 3. Towards Ecosophy in a Participating World: Rhetoric and Cosmology in Heidegger's Fourfold and Empedocles' Four Roots; Thomas Rickert.- Section II. Ecological Engagements.- 4. Intertidal Poetry: Making Our Way Through Change; Bridie McGreavy.- 5. Walking in the City: The Arrival of the Rhetorical Subject; John Ackerman.- 6. (Re)Arranging Regional Rhetorics; Joshua P. Ewalt.- Section III. Ethical Attunements.- 7. Better Footprints; Nathaniel Rivers.- 8. Making Worlds with Cyborg Fish; Caroline Gottschalk Druschke & Candice Rai.- 9. Embodying Resistance: A Rhetorical Ecology of The Full Cycle Supper; Samantha Senda-Cook & George F. McHendry, Jr..- Section IV. Justice and Care.- 10. The Most Nuclear-Bombed Place: Ecological Implications of the U.S. Nuclear Testing Program; Danielle Endres.- 11. Toward a Geopoetical Rhetoric: The "Transborder Immigrant Tool" and Material Tactics; Anthony Stagliano.- 12. Stabilizing Energies: Intersections between Energy Promotion Texts and Rhetorical Theory; Brian Cozen.