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Covid and . . . How To Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic (Michigan State UP, 2023. Edited by Emily Winderman, Allison L. Rowland and Jennifer Malkowski) is among the first edited collections to consider how rhetoric shapes Covid’s disease trajectory. Arguing that the circulation of any virus must be understood in tandem with the public communication accompanying it, this collection converses with interdisciplinary stakeholders also committed to the project of social wellness during pandemic times. With inventive ways of thinking about structural inequities in health, these essays showcase the forces that pandemic rhetoric exerts across health conditions, politics, and histories of social injustice.

Contributions include:

"Introduction: An Agenda for Pandemic Rhetoric," Allison L. Rowland, Emily Winderman, and Jen Malkowski

Part One: Pre-existing and Chronic

"Covid and Racialized Myths: Pre-existing Conditions and the Invisible Traces of White Supremacy," Raquel M. Robvais

"Covid and Environmental Atmospheres: Pulmonary Publics and Our Shared Air," Sara DiCaglio

"Covid and Science Denialism: The Rhetorical Foundations of US Anti-Masking Discourse," Kurt Zemlicka

"Covid and Vaccine Hesitancy: Tracing the Tuskegee-Covid Straw Man Fallacy as a History Presently Unfolding," Veronica Joyner and Heidi Y. Lawrence

Part Two: Essential and Disposable

"Covid and Essential Workers: Medical Crises and the Rhetorical Strategies of Disposability," Marina Levina

"Covid and Being a Doctor: Physicians' Published Narratives as Crisis Archive," Molly Margaret Kessler, Michael Aylward, and Bernard Trappey

***"Covid and Fatphobia: How Rhetorics of Disposability Render Fat Bodies Unworthy of Care and Life," Hailey Nicole Otis***

"Covid and Intersex: In/Essential Medical Management," Celeste E. Orr

Part Three: Remedy and Resistance

"Covid and Shared Black Health: Rethinking Nonviolence in the Dual Pandemics," DiArron M.

"Covid and Masking: Race, Dress, and Addressivity," Angela Nurse and Diane Keeling

"Covid and Disability: Tactical Responses to Normative Vaccine Communication in Appalachia," Julie Gerdes, Priyanka Ganguly, and Luana Shafer

"Covid and Doubt: An Emergent Structure of Feeling," Jeffrey A. Bennett

As one of the most successful pieces of transnational popular culture, we rhetorically analyze the compelling critique of neoliberal capitalism in the 2020 anime film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train. Alongside this criticism of neoliberal capitalism, we theorize relations of mujō (無常/impermanence) found in the film, foregrounding this Buddhist principle to advance ways of being that resist neoliberal capitalist impulses. We forward three tenets that emerge in our analysis of this film: (1) recognizing that all beings are embedded within shared entanglements; (2) holding all beings responsible to serve others; (3) transcending the bounds of death by passing the torch of omoi (想い/human feeling). We argue that Mugen Train’s protagonists, the Demon Slayers, embody mujō that demonstrates how those under capitalist subjugation can only be liberated by recognizing human community grounded in such a relational ethic. We thus situate relations of mujō as a critical rhetorical theory that releases us from the neoliberal capitalist pursuit of mugen (無限/limitless).

Social media platforms have heightened the demand for identity-based politics, in which the public expects politicians to display personal aspects of their lives toward strategic ends. Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, this study analyzes the tweets of Ghanaian Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in his first year after the 2020 election and to understand how he constructs his public image through personalization. Results indicated that he displayed his religious beliefs, strong relationship with his wife, personalized visual graphics, and patriotic participatory acts. The study argues that Bawumia’s identity and Ghana’s cultural context manifest in his personalization on Twitter. The image he constructs and the broader implication of this present study for strategic communication are discussed.