This volume takes concepts familiar to foreign policy scholars and reimagines their usefulness in a global era. The essays in this collection feature unique methodological and theoretical contributions to rhetorical scholarship. The field of rhetorical studies often assumes a US-centric approach that elevates American chief executives as the sole doers and makers of foreign policy discourse. This work points to a more comprehensive, global perspective of foreign policy discourse and offers key concepts, case studies, and approaches. It also examines who enacts discourse, where it happens, and how it influences relationships in/between local, national, transnational, and global spheres.
Among the cases researched in this collection are foreign policy rhetoric from Cold War foreign policy in Latin America, the rhetoric of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war messages, and the development challenges of the Ford Foundation and the Kenya Women Finance Trust, among many others.

Allison M. Prasch is associate professor of rhetoric, politics, and culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on the intersections of rhetorical theory and history, US presidential rhetoric, foreign policy, and space/place.

Sara L. McKinnon is professor of rhetoric, politics, and culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, director of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program, and cochair of the Human Rights Program. Her research is the areas of migration, legal studies, and gender and sexuality studies.