Inspired by conversations at the 2021 Rhetoric Society of America Institute workshop on Pandemic Rhetoric(s), this dialogue assembles graduate student, early-, mid-career, and established rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) and critical health communication scholars to discuss a keyword that has structured political, social, and biomedical thinking about COVID-19: un/precedented. In identifying un/precedented as an organizing temporal rhetoric for the pandemic, we interrogate how recurrent appeals to the pandemic’s novelty both allow for and limit our capacities to meet the pandemic’s tremendous exigencies head-on. Leveraging our unique scholarly and community commitments, we theorize how un/precedentedness 1) becomes complicit in government inaction, 2) (re)asserts conceptual and literal borders, 3) justifies state and national public health mandates, and 4) obscures other historical and contemporary pandemics. We conclude by offering possibilities for interdisciplinary and longitudinal research into the far-reaching effects of contagious disease.

This paper explores how I navigated the complicated terrain of opposition research during the dissertation phase of my doctoral program. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted on a pro-life organization, I illustrate that care-based ethics (Held, 2006; Tronto, 1994) is not just for vulnerable and agreeable participants but is valuable and appropriate for researching powerful groups whom we oppose. Furthermore, I argue that rhetorical listening (Glenn & Ratcliffe, 2011; Ratcliffe, 1999, Ratcliffe, 2005) is not just a valuable methodological approach to research, but also a form of reciprocity, especially critical when studying groups we oppose. Such an approach promotes the mutually beneficial goals of respect and understanding.