The conjoining of the terms “rhetoric” and “history” suggests at least three related but distinct areas of study. One, the history of rhetoric, focuses on rhetorical theory and practice during particular periods of time; entries on various aspects of this area abound. Two others are the focus here: rhetorical processes in history and the rhetoric
A primary focus of urban anthropology and the archaeology of complex societies is the history of the concept of a city. Scholars generally cite the first city as emerging in 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. Discussions of the city have emerged in anthropological literature in association with that considered urban, both as process and spatial locus.
The word “communication” is descended from the Latin noun communicatio, which meant a sharing or imparting. From the root communis (common, public), it has no relation to terms such as union or unity, but rather is linked to the Latin munus (duty, gift), and thus has relatives in such terms as common, immune, mad, mean
Introduction Given the central role that health insurance plays in the American healthcare systems, it is remarkable how short a time it has been with us. Many Americans alive today were born before modern health insurance became available in the United States around 1930. Although brief, the history of health insurance in the United States
The field of speech emerged out of changing teaching practices in US higher education in the early twentieth century. Between 1880 and 1920, many of the academic fields in the US formed associations and university departments. University education, with the rise of the research university and the land-grant schools, was becoming accessible to a larger
Fasting is certainly not a new concept, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume early mankind fasted out of necessity due to a scarcity of food. Fasting on purpose has been practiced for centuries by many cultures for religious and healing purposes. Great thinkers such as Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Plato recommended fasting for mental clarity
The international history of communication and media studies has yet to be written. To this point, most histories have been national, with the bulk of attention devoted to North America and western Europe. These emphases are not unwarranted, for the field established itself first on either side of the North Atlantic, was disseminated outward from
Communication and media studies matured into an integrated discipline in the years following 1968. Research and education became centralized in independent schools of communication, while at the same time drawing from related disciplines to improve methodology and explore new paradigms. By the early 1960s, communication studies began to move out of departments of sociology, psychology
Anthropology, the study of humanity seen from the perspective of social and cultural diversity, was established as an academic discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. At the time, broad, evolutionist perspectives were predominant, but would be eclipsed in the early twentieth century by the cultural relativism introduced by Franz Boas and the fieldwork revolution championed by
Media history as a concept in its own right possesses a relatively recent lineage. In the early decades of the twentieth century, when references to “the media” – newspapers, magazines, cinema, radio, and the like – were entering popular parlance, university academics tended to be rather skeptical about whether these institutions were important enough to