The Rhetoric Society of America, founded in 1968, comprises rhetoricians from a variety of disciplines who share a common interest in the ongoing inquiry into the nature and functions of rhetoric. Topics of rhetorical interest examine the power of language in political deliberation, in legal argument, in spiritual development, in the construction of human consciousness and human communities, in the negotiation of specialized discourses, and in the interpretation and transmission of history, among other interests. Scholars of rhetoric study the histories of these rhetorical concerns and the most useful pedagogies for addressing them with students in the 21st century. Scholars of rhetoric also engage in rhetorical analysis of the communicative power of visual and electronic media, architecture, and mass culture, as well as continuing to investigate a theoretical heritage that goes back at least to ancient Greece and includes non-Western antecedents as well.