Rhetorical Women : Roles and Representations

by MILLER, HILDY; Bridwell-Bowles, Lillian

• ISBN13: 9780817351830
• ISBN10: 0817351833
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-27
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

Just as women in Greek myth are cast in roles ranging from the helpless and innocent to the manipulative and powerful, so women throughout the history of rhetoric have represented themselves as fulfilling roles that range from dependents or enablers of male authority to autonomous agents acting on their own. These essays examine the tactics women have employed in self-representation and the feminist rhetorics that result. Contributors examine both past and present practices, highlighting correspondences between them and the ways those practices have varied, succeeded, or failed. Essays in part 1 consider how women historically have found ways to speak and write, while negotiating the limitations of their positions as women, as well as their spiritual, class, and ethnic roles. Essays in part 2 study the formal genres, strategies, and techniques female rhetoricians have used; and the essays of part 3 consider the contemporary challenges faced by women rhetors in a pluralistic world and the strategies and genres they have inherited and transformed. Collectively, the essays look at the rhetorical issue of roles and representations by criss-crossing time and selecting particular issues and/or figures. Rhetorical Women is unique in that it juxtaposes several historical contexts in order to spotlight the strategies of the women rhetors. CONTRIBUTORSDorothy Allison Lillian Bridwell-BowlesKarlyn Kohrs CampbellLois Cucullu Julia DietrichJane DonawerthJane GallorYvonne MerrillHildy MillerCindy Moore Malea PowellJoy RitchieKate RonaldElizabeth West

Author Biography

Hildy Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing at Portland State University. She is coauthor of The Guide to Professional Development for Graduate Students in English. Lillian Bridwell-Bowles is Professor of English and Director of Communication at Louisiana State University, and author of Identity Matters: Rhetorics of Difference.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(16)
PART I. REPRESENTING WOMEN RHETORS: COMPLICATIONS, MISREPRESENTATIONS, OCCASIONAL SUCCESSES	17	(86)
1. Women and Authority in the Rhetorical Economy of the Late Middle Ages
Julia Dietrich	21	(23)
2. The Role of Language in the Construction of Mary Wortley Montagu's Rhetorical Identity
Yvonne Merrill	44	(19)
3. Princess Sarah, the Civilized Indian: The Rhetoric of Cultural Literacies in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's Life among the Piutes
Malea Powell	63	(18)
4. Cooper and Crummell: Dialogics of Race and Womanhood
Elizabeth West	81	(22)
PART II. REPRESENTING WOMEN'S RHETORICS: GENRES, STRATEGIES, TECHNIQUES	103	(84)
5. Authorial Ethos, Collaborative Voice, and Rhetorical Theory by Women
Jane Donawerth	107	(18)
6. Theory Emergent from Practice: The Rhetorical Theory of Frances Wright
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell	125	(17)
7. Econstructing Sisterhood
Jane Gallop	142	(16)
8. Exceptional Women, Expert Culture, and the Academy
Lois Cucullu	158	(29)
PART III. REPRESENTING WOMEN'S CONTEMPORARY IDENTITIES: POSITIONS, LOCATIONS, APPLICATIONS	187	(52)
9. Why Feminists Can't Stop Talking about Voice
Cindy Moore	191	(15)
10. Pedagogy and Public Engagement: The Uses of Women's Rhetorics
Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie	206	(23)
11. Between Fiction and Real Life: The Reality of Our Work
Dorothy Allison	229	(10)
Bibliography	239	(8)
Contributors	247	(4)
Index	251