**Preface to "Histories of Ethos: World Perspectives on Rhetoric"**

Some years ago, James S. Baumlin called to ask me to join him on a project about ethos. Never one to turn down an opportunity to work with Jim, I listened to his idea about an encyclopedia-like text on ethos. As our discussion expanded and continued, we soon realized the Eurocentric nature of much of the previous scholarly discussion surrounding ethos. This bothered us (it still does). We thought of gathering scholars from around the world and having them write about ethos from their perspective, their positionality, and their culture. To our knowledge, no collection had ever compiled a global discussion of ethos in quite the way we were thinking.

Thus, we divvied up the work. Jim looked for a publisher that suited our needs; I set out to contact scholars with expertise and experience in Asian, Middle Eastern, and African cultures, among others. I soon learned why such an undertaking was so rare, if one had ever been attempted. With different languages, time zones, and technological differences, communicating and explaining the Histories of Ethos project was intensive work. Part of the challenge in communicating with scholars was explaining the importance we placed on their articulations of their interpretations of ethos based on their culture, location, experience, and background. Through the trajectory of this project, I spoke with scholars around the world, made friends with people I would never otherwise have met, and read about cultures I knew very little about. As I learned about other cultures, I reflected back to my own, and I (we) hope readers consider their own cultures as important and deserving of scholarly ethotic attention. This communal self-awareness and our hopeful progress toward understanding, empathy, and cooperation also became a strong driving force over the last few years, impelling our project toward completion.

As a human race, we face many challenges and we must learn to come together, to listen to each other, and to work together to solve them.

One of the clear limitations of this project was language. While we needed contributions to be in English, there is no doubt that many potential contributions were lost to the language barrier. We hope future projects are able to incorporate these voices that we were unable to at this time. Additionally, we hope that this project inspires further projects, collections, collaborations, and conferences that explore ethos and that connect people from around the globe.

As editors, we are grateful for the authors and their contributions. (Any oversight, of course, is our own.) Through many revisions and discussions, the authors worked to ensure the quality product you now view. The reviewers also deserve a round of applause, since this peer-reviewed and refereed work would not be possible without their professional and underappreciated dedication; their insights and suggestions have made this a better volume. Furthermore, we thank MDPI for funding this entire project. We are forever grateful to the editorial, production, and other MDPI staff for their tireless work and dedicated time to this project. Every person we worked with was gracious, supportive, helpful, and kind. My co-editor and I do wish, however, to thank Ms. Gloria Qi by name: more than an editor, she was an advocate and guide for our work. Without any one of the aforementioned, this project would not have been possible; hence, our gratitude and respect for each and all is unwavering and unending. In addition, we thank Luis Quintero for the cover photo.

We dedicate this work to our teachers, our students, and our collective humanity in hopes that, through these ongoing discussions about our differences and similarities, we find peace and prosperity for everyone, everywhere.

> **James S. Baumlin, Craig A. Meyer** *Editors*
