Feminist Rhetorics Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Within media and our culture, we invite those of color to join us, however only as a source of entertainment. My problem is in the ways that western culture portrays feminism, in which our culture chooses to portray a white dominated... more

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- Feminist Rhetorics
- by Eliza Gellis
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- Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Christine de Pizan, Feminist Rhetorics

As Royster and Kirsch explain, because so much of our field is grounded in Western tradition, even though the recovery work of feminist scholars locates women’s rhetorical voices outside these frameworks, they continue to unwittingly serve as the measure. Globalizing the point of view is an approach that Royster and Kirsch describe as a tectonic shift asking us to rethink the assumptions embedded in our field: “how do we create linkages between local and global points of view, knowledge, experience, achievement?” My contribution further explores these questions with a focus on current research on transnational feminist rhetorics and complicates their approach by questioning what exactly do we mean when we define “local” and “global”? I posit that the challenge of researching women rhetors outside of our “local” context is not only measuring and valuing knowledge, but it is being open to questioning our beliefs about “others” as we struggle to find a place to value these voices in our field. As a scholar of Middle Eastern rhetoric, I am constantly reminded of the “lack of agency” of these women and that the work I do is “on the fringe” of our field, but I believe it is central to challenging the persistence of our borders. One suggestion in Royster and Kirsch’s approach is to use our classrooms as innovative experimental sites: “We look toward the world, but simultaneously we have the opportunity to look at the world in us—within our nation, in our communities, in our classrooms” (127). My pedagogical approach to teaching Middle Eastern feminisms is one that calls into question our own beliefs and values, one that is a necessary step towards practicing an ethics of care and towards a more comprehensive understanding of the limits and potentials of our field.

- by Nicole Khoury
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- Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Feminist Theory, Middle East Studies
- by Carolin Lehmann
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- Rhetoric, Rhetorical Analysis, Political Speech Analysis, Feminist Rhetorics

In this essay, we explore the logic behind restrictions on abortion and seek possible rhetorical alternatives by turning to an analysis of women’s later abortion narratives published between 2016 and 2020 in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s two most nationally visible remarks about “late-term” abortion. Because arguments for later abortion rights have implications for all women’s reproductive lives, we approach these narratives from a critical perspective rooted in intersectional feminist theory and praxis and reproductive justice. We argue that the narratives develop an idealist rhetoric of self-sacrificing maternity that emerges from an orchestration of racialized discourses of good motherhood and the gendered liberal political tradition. Later abortion narratives limit women’s reproductive freedom by constructing a motivational vocabulary for understanding (and supporting) later abortions based on mercy and good motherhood.

- by Kate Siegfried
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- Abortion, Reproductive Justice, Motherhood, Feminist Rhetorics

Identifying recent historical instances of rhetorical shaming, such as the verbal and nonverbal shaming practices related to unwed motherhood during the mid-twentieth century, contributes to a diachronic study of mothering rhetorics that can queer more recent histories of motherhood. This article analyzes narratives of once-unwed mothers who cite shame as a primary factor that shaped their “decision” to surrender a child for adoption. As rhetorics of reproduction, these stories account for an unspoken raced and classed purity practice of hiding unwed pregnancy and erasing an illicit mother identity due to the threat of communicable shame. As reproducing rhetorics of shame, the narratives demarcate the pure from the impure and serve as a mechanism that figures unwed pregnancy as proof of what I call ontological failure.

- by Heather Adams
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- Composition and Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorics

This essay examines moments of Black women’s rhetorical impatience, or performances used to manage time within adverse conditions, to expand conceptions of kairos and self-care. It shows how disruption is a vehicle of discipline designed to promote Black women’s respect and wellness, revealing discursive postures that must inform discussions of identity, risk, and power in relation to rhetorical criticism and education.

- by Tamika L. Carey
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- Rhetoric, Black feminism, Feminist activism, African American Rhetoric

This article defends the “rhetorical chorus” as a useful method for
recovering women’s voices in the history of rhetoric. As distinct
from the more amorphous term “collaboration,” which designates
any act of cooperation in the production of rhetorical texts, the
“chorus” offers a more nuanced way to identify and map the
recording, preservation, appropriation, and alteration of works
originally dictated by women rhetors. Using The Book of Margery
Kempe as an example, the study traces both homophonic and polyphonic relationships between the lead voice of Margery and the voices of her scribes and annotators.

- by Julia Smith
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- History of Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorics, Material Rhetorics

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was nominated as the first female presidential candidate of a major party in a United States election and Sylvanas Windrunner was appointed as the first female Warchief of the Horde in the fictional land of Azeroth in which the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft is set. This article is a rhetorical analysis of how authority and ethos were constructed by, respectively, Lady Sylvanas and Garrosh Hellscream in the World of Warcraft and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 United States election. As well as investigating issues of race and gender, it explores how these four figures deploy what Richard Weaver has termed "charismatic" and "ultimate" terms to establish the legitimacy of their actions and positions. This paper was published in Popular Culture Review 29.1 (Spring 2018): 31-50. It is an open access journal; the link is posted below.

- by carol poster
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- Rhetoric, Digital rhetoric, Digital Rhetorics, Video Games

This essay examines advertisements for Sarafem, an antidepressant treatment for Pre-menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. Using Thomas Lessl's concepts of priestly and bardic voices, this essay analyzes the relationship between scientific authority and postfemi-nism. Scientific discourse is mediated by bardic appeals to women's expressed desires, just as postfeminist persuasion appropriates and redeploys rhetorical elements from the feminist movement. The Sarafem advertisements fuse postfeminist and scientific rhetoric , resulting in a depoliticized feminism defined by neutrality, objectivity, and individual choice. Jreminist scholars have often struggled to articulate critical perspectives that recognize the ideological pitfalls of popular and scientific texts while simultaneously attempting to understand the persuasive appeals at work in these texts in a way that does not situate wometi as vultierable "dupes." This move away from traditional ideological criticism' is necessitated by an increasing recognition of the complexity of the relations between gender, power, and resistance. The term "postfeminism" has been introduced in an attempt to render this complexity theoretically coherent. Although the term is not always defined uniformly, it is generally used to describe recent texts and events that appear to advance feminist interests despite their concurrent participation in and perpetuation of oppressive structures. In this essay, I examine direct-to-consumer advertisements for Sarafem, a psychiatric medication indicated for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD, as postfeminist texts. Specifically, these advertisements provide a locale to examine the interactions between postfeminist and scientific discourses. To develop this relationship theoretically, I introduce Thomas Lessl's concepts of the priestly and bardic voices in order to better consider the connections between postfeminist appeals and

Although female magicians have existed since the rise of entertainment magic,
women have faced difficulty in entering the “fraternity” of the magic community. As
an art form largely based around persuasion, it is useful to study the performance of
magic as a text. It is additionally useful to study female magicians within this context
of rhetoric. Not only will examining the rhetoric of female magicians provide
insights on the rhetoric of women in this unique arena, but also of women in a
historically gendered and underrepresented field. Research into this area may
disclose other details regarding the communicative differences between women and
men and how communication is adapted within a gendered communication
paradigm.

- by Joseph Zompetti
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- Rhetoric, Magic, Feminist Rhetorics
- by Gavin P . Johnson
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- Queer Studies, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Feminist Theory

The author argues that we have chosen a rhetorical history that normalizes and silences rhetorical bodies. In response, the author exhumes an embodied history of rhetoric, reexamining the myths of the Greek goddess Metis as a means of enlivening rhetorical theory and history. The author then connects these myths to other rhetorical traditions invoked by Hélène Cixous and Gloria Anzaldúa, connecting Metis to Medusa and to mestiza consciousness. The author affirms the rhetorical power of the body, specifically of those bodies that challenge rhetorical norms.

- by Jay Dolmage
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- Rhetoric, Disability Studies, Rhetorical History, Feminist Rhetorics
- by Casey Kelly and +1
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- Feminism, Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Rhetorical Criticism, Feminist Rhetorics

Neuroscience rhetoric frames motherhood as the ultimate opportunity to recreate the self through individual choice. Engaging public conversations about brain health that celebrate maternal neuroplasticity's potential for brain enhancement, I trace a postfeminist figure I call ''mommy economicus'' (after Foucault's ''homo econom-icus'') as an emerging motherhood ideal that situates maternity as a privileged yet risky path to individual empowerment. I argue that the mommy brain story both illustrates the resilience of motherhood ideologies and illuminates the relationships between gender, postfeminism, and neoliberalism. This analysis confirms the central-ity of choice rhetoric in contemporary motherhood discourses and shows how social and economic changes blurring the boundaries between home and work intensify rather than dilute emphasis on maternal choice.

This article examines how Julia Child was able to tap into a range of circulating discursive and extra-discursive trends in midcentury American culture, and use them to cultivate a much broader than anticipated audience for her first... more

- by Erin Branch
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- Rhetoric, Rhetorical History, Food Studies, Feminist Rhetorics

This research explores rhetorical strategies employed by Angela Davis to (re)conceptualize liberal freedom as collective freedom and uncover hidden forms of oppression within America's criminal justice system. Criminal justice reform movements have gained increased attention in recent years, most notably through the Black Lives Matter movement, and Davis's rhetoric offers insights into how oppressive discourses can be deconstructed and challenged. Davis's strategies also demonstrate how abolitionist rhetoric from the 19th century has adapted to confront exigencies of the 21st century. This essay aims to understand how Davis relied on rhetorical strategies in two speeches she gave in the mid-2000s. I argue that Davis employed the metaphor of "prison is slavery" by using vivid examples and connecting present circumstances to historical beginnings. She also used contradiction as a rhetorical strategy and provided international comparisons to illuminate possibilities for transformation.

- by Vincent Russell
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- Intersectionality, Feminist Rhetorics, Neo-abolitionism

This article draws upon research with an Arab Muslim blogger on Tumblr to introduce “remonstrative agitation” as feminist counterpublic rhetoric. Farrah (the blogger’s chosen pseudonym) uses remonstrative agitation to challenge discursive and rhetorical imperialism, provoking accelerated circulation of counterdiscourse in response to impositions and harassment from white nationalists and white feminists. It functions as a performative, parrhesiastic rhetoric to claim rhetorical agency in the face of epistemic injustice while offering her counterpublic audiences discourse to learn from, relate to, and circulate. This article ultimately offers insights, methods, and visualizations for digital counterpublic rhetoric and future research.

- by Kyle Larson
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- Feminism, Counterpublics, Islamophobia, Blogging

This essay advances a theory of visceral counterpublicity through
two case studies of recent high-profile rape crimes in the United
States – the cases of Emily Doe and Emma Sulkowicz. Both cases
garnered considerable public attention, yet neither perpetrator
was convicted of rape. This essay analyzes how Doe and
Sulkowicz performed public responses to these outcomes, using
their bodies to argue what happened to them was indeed rape.
These embodied forms constitute what I call visceral
counterpublicity: modes of public engagement that (1) proceed
when discursive frameworks understood through liberal
subjectivity fall short; (2) expose the body’s threatened boundaries
to incite an affective response, or bodily intensity, in audiences;
and (3) illuminate a subjugated position within the public sphere.
Together, these cases call into question how mainstream publics
define and discuss rape and suggest a potential shift in public
opinion over rape to include visceral frameworks. This theory
provides utility for rhetorical theorists and critics attempting to
make sense of a range of embodied protests by drawing attention
to how legal structures appear in and create larger public
discourse about the body and violence.

- by Stephanie Larson
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- The Body, Affect (Cultural Theory), Rape Culture, Feminist Rhetorics
- by Doreen Piano
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- Composition and Rhetoric, African American Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorics
- by Keith Lloyd
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- Feminist Rhetorics

Comics artist Nell Brinkley's early twentieth-century line drawings engage provocative themes related to emerging expressions of and questions about modern womanhood. Brinkley's visually complex rhetorical techniques (strategic juxtaposition, visual chiasmus, inversion, and motif) create a space for audience contemplation, and her use of the female “looking subject” produces a meta-discourse on the gendered politics of looking. This article examines these stylistic and thematic choices through a feminist visual rhetorical analytic lens.

- by Heather Adams
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- Visual Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorics

In this chapter, we examine the enactments of love, community, and justice by the Murfreesboro Loves collective. Although some scholars have critiqued concepts such as love and community for enabling racialized exclusions/ others express hope for a critical politics of love. Rhetorical scholars also have demonstrated interest in rhetorics of love, a conversation to which this chapter contributes. We examine Murfreesboro Loves' mobilization of love as an organizing strategy of social justice, specifically exploring how Murfreesboro Loves engaged an invitational rhetorical style that differed from other modalities of counterprotest. By appealing to audiences from diverse racial, religious, and political backgrounds; promoting messages of inclusion and acceptance; employing a power-with rather than a power-over approach; and avoiding confrontation, Murfreesboro Loves interrupted the antagonistic model that characterizes the current political climate. Our study responds to critiques of invitational rhetoric's pragmatic and political utility and invites further consideration of how invitational rhetoric can contribute to community and social justice organizing, providing "an important foundation for achieving radical change.

- by Roberta Chevrette
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- Social Movements, Rhetoric, Race and Racism, Community Organizing

The #MeToo movement unveiled a shifting testimonial landscape available to victims of sexual assault, one that was able to apprehend the attention of vast public audiences unlike other protests before it. Through an analysis of published #MeToo tweets and public discussion of them, this essay argues that what happened during #MeToo reveals a feminist deployment of megethos. Theorizing what I term feminist megethos through the lens of listing extends theories of magnitude beyond the idea of cultivating coherence or amounting excessive detail, toward a theory that captures how megethos can puncture pervasive yet normalized attitudes that constrain efforts for justice.

- by Stephanie Larson
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- Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Feminist Rhetorics, MeToo-movement

The prevalence of nontraditional gender identities in many autistic people raises provocative questions for feminist scholars. In particular, autistic writers often invite alternative understandings of sex/gender as a multiple, rhetorical phenomenon. Autobiographies, blogs, and Internet posts show how autistic individuals view gender as a copia, or tool for inventing multiple possibilities through available sex/gender discourses. Four particular discourses emerge through which autistic people understand gender: identification, neurodiversity, performance, and queer identity.

- by Jordynn Jack
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- Gender Studies, Rhetoric, Sex and Gender, Feminist Theory

Rhetorical scholarship has for decades relied solely on culture to explain persuasive behavior. While this focus allows for deep explorations of historical circumstance, it neglects the powerful effects of biology on rhetorical behavior – how our bodies and brains help shape and constrain rhetorical acts. Not only is the cultural model incomplete, but it tacitly endorses the fallacy of human exceptionalism. By introducing evolutionary biology into the study of rhetoric, this book serves as a model of a biocultural paradigm. Being mindful of biological and cultural influences allows for a deeper view of rhetoric, one that is aware of the ubiquity of persuasive behavior in nature. Human and nonhuman animals, and even some plants, persuade to survive - to live, love, and cooperate. That this broad spectrum of rhetorical behavior exists in the animal world demonstrates how much we can learn from evolutionary biology. By incorporating scholarship on animal signaling into the study of rhetoric, the author explores how communication has evolved, and how numerous different species of animals employ similar persuasive tactics in order to overcome similar problems. This cross-species study of rhetoric allows us to trace the origins of our own persuasive behaviors, providing us with a deeper history of rhetoric that transcends the written and the televised, and reveals the artifacts of our communicative past.

Although neuroscientifically informed mothering advice manuals published in the past 15 years speak in the languages of liberation, empowerment, and self-realization, I argue that they ultimately imbricate women in ever-more-dense networks of authority, expertise, and government, and contribute to the proliferation of entrepreneurial models of self-conduct that comprises the defining feature of American neoliberalism. This rhetoric situates motherhood as a practice of freedom, both drawing from and contributing to affective forces that suture freedom to economic models of conduct. Through these discourses, emotion-centric, self-interested mothering practices become a key site for the production and reproduction of entrepreneurial selves.

- by Davi A Thornton
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- Motherhood, Feminist Rhetorics, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine

This symposium reaches print as the US electoral machinery—thus far, the bizarre and often troubling marketing campaigns of both party primaries—whirs and spins and thuds into high gear. This coming autumn, in November 2016, voters throughout the United States (and writing in from abroad) will cast ballots, offering guidance to an Electoral College that, by tradition, will adhere to that guidance in selecting a president. Next winter, in January 2017, the “Age of Obama,” called such appreciatively or derisively, will come to an end. This symposium, “Barack Obama’s Significance for Rhetoric and Composition,” aims to provoke and renew disciplinary conversations about the meaning of an age now nearly past, as well as to pose questions that resonate for presidential rhetoric generally.

- by Ira Allen and +2
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- Rhetoric (Languages and Linguistics), Communication, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric

This essay examines the rhetoric surrounding bobbed hair in the U.S. in the 1920s. Drawing on recent feminist rhetorical scholarship, I argue that discourse over the bob reflected societal tensions generated by women’s changing public roles and in particular women’s incursions into new public and professional spaces. The intense public debate over the bob not only exposes the extent to which women’s bodies and behavior can be regulated by social norms but also suggests how those norms may be challenged and changed.

- by David Gold
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- Rhetoric, Women's Studies, Women's History, Dress and identity
- by Jordynn Jack
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- Rhetoric, Women's Rhetoric, Women's Rhetorics, Feminist Rhetorical Criticism

Sor Juana, a criolla nun in Mexico's colonial period, is most recognized for her letter, "La Respuesta" (or "The Response"), to the Bishop of Puebla where she fiercely championed women's rights in the Americas. However, few discursive spaces take up critical examinations of her work. As such, she is often inscribed within the remnants of White, European intellectual legacies. But what if there was more? Sor Juana's epistolary writing is a rich site of revisionary possibilities, especially as feminist archival methodology flourishes in rhetoric and composition. This article aims to complicate discussions of Sor Juana as a (proto)feminist rhetorician by including interdisciplinary and intersectional renderings of her embodied, epistolary writing. Drawing on Black feminist rhetorics, I argue that we can discursively (re)read Sor Juana not just as a rhetorician but as an intersectional, cultural, and feminist rhetorician.

- by Alexis Mcgee
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- Cultural Rhetorics, History of Rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorics
- by Sarah Mayberry Scott
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- Archiving, Feminist Rhetorics, Close Reading

Given that feminists raise concerns regarding adversarial model for conducting communicative and rhetorical exchanges, an interpretation and critique of alternative models of communication and rhetoric is needed. The models I focus on... more

- by Jessica L Shumake
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- Rhetorical Theory, Feminist Rhetorics

This essay examines how and why the lived, experienced, and complicated maternal body matters in influencing public conversations about motherhood. Through analysis of Serena Williams's acts of rhetorical agency (writings, interviews, and celebrity branding), I trace her employment of three distinct, but related, embodied rhetorical strategies-maternal vulnerability, ambivalence, and empowerment. I argue that Serena elevates the "rhetorical saliency" of motherhood at the intersections of race, privilege, power, and celebrity while addressing how we need to think about various issues impacting mothers in a more interconnected way, and how different mothers are (or may be) interconnected because of these issues.

This essay links the ubiquitous presence of algorithms with feminist engagements with agency. Grounding our intervention in the concerns of feminist digital studies with embodied experiences of risk and vulnerability in digital networks, we call for feminist attention to the agential consequences of algorithms. We target especially the complex and compromised forms of agency that participants in digital networks share with both human and nonhuman others. Drawing on feminist and technofeminist approaches, we characterize how contemporary digital networks, shaped powerfully by algorithms, not only fall short of ideals of safe, civil, public engagement, but also how algorithms-and the agency attributed to them within digital networks-constrain professional and activist work. Guided by our concern for pragmatic implications of these agential complications, we address three key audiences: graduate students undertaking their professional development in this contemporary digital context; faculty members on search committees making high-stakes hiring decisions; and advocates seeking to bridge academic and public engagement around issues of injustice and equity. To these audiences we articulate seven feminist propositions to clarify and foreground the way algorithmic agency complicates routine rhetorical readings of digital participation. Highlights Feminist rhetorical theory enables critiques of digital presence. Digital presence in algorithm-driven networks compromises user agency and might involve risk. "Shared" agency is with algorithms can result in risk and violence, especially for users from marginalized populations. Absence and limited presence might be a strategic and intentional choice. Public writing, professionalization, and pedagogy would benefit from more feminist attention to algorithmic agency.

- by Heather Adams
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- Feminism, Feminist Rhetorics

Rhetoric and composition historiography has recently undergone a rapid transformation as scholars have complicated and challenged earlier narratives by examining diverse local histories and alternative rhetorical traditions. This revisionist scholarship has in turn created new research challenges, as scholars must now demonstrate connections between the local and larger scholarly conversations; assume a complex, multivocal past as the starting point for historical inquiry; and resist the temptation to reinscribe easy binaries, taxonomies, and master narratives, even when countering them. This essay identifies and analyzes these challenges, posits responses to them, and suggests exemplars for future practice.

- by David Gold
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- Philosophy, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Theory

This dissertation argues that rhetorical strategies of contemporary evangelical purity movements create and perpetrate systems of sexual violence, heterosexist ideologies, and reproductive violence in the US. Purity culture is a term that references a recently public movement to declare one’s dedication to sexual abstinence before marriage. In 1994, over 210,00 young adults participated in a nationally broadcasted True Love Waits purity rally hosted on the Washington Mall, where they signed purity pledges in front of national news organizations. Altared Bodies: Evangelical Purity Rhetorics in the Age of Sexual Politics maps the shifting popularity of purity culture in public political discourse through three distinct genres: purity self-help texts, purity rallies like True Love Waits, and purity covenants and pledges. My archival research on purity rhetoric explores how the rhetorical reframing of purity and abstinence shape political and cultural values in both secular and religiou...

- by Victoria Houser
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- Queer Theory, Corporeal Feminism, Reproductive Justice, Feminist Rhetorics

This article examines the framing of female healthcare workers—the “inside women”—in the 1971 edition of OBOS, the 1973 edition when it transitioned to Simon and Schuster, and the current 2011 edition. While each historical moment was marked by ideological shifts in the goals of feminist health movements, the editions are consistently mistrustful towards female healthcare workers, arguing that they approach healthcare like men. Drawing on rhetorical frame analysis, this article demonstrates how this perspective remained anchored over time and considers the implications of this mistrustful stance towards healthcare insiders for both OBOS and feminist health movements today.

- by Valerie Palmer-Mehta
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- Feminist Rhetorics
- by Tricia Serviss
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- Latin American Studies, Literacy, Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric
- by Nathan Stormer
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- Gender Studies, Rhetoric, Women's Studies, Rhetoric and Embodiment
- by Jordynn Jack
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- Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Collective Memory, World War II

Although female magicians have existed since the rise of entertainment magic, women have faced difficulty in entering the “fraternity” of the magic community. As an art form largely based around persuasion, it is useful to study the performance of magic as a text. It is additionally useful to study female magicians within this context of rhetoric. Not only will examining the rhetoric of female magicians provide insights on the rhetoric of women in this unique arena, but also of women in a historically gendered and underrepresented field. Research into this area may disclose other details regarding the communicative differences between women and men and how communication is adapted within a gendered communication paradigm.

- by Joseph Zompetti
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- Rhetoric, Performance Magic, Magic, Feminist Rhetorics

While feminist scholars consider bodies, dress, and space central to inquiry into gendered rhetorics, we lack methodologies that situate these factors—and the additional factor of time—in an integrated system. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of “acts of institution” can help feminist rhetoricians to construct richer accounts of the gendering of the female body. The example of rhetorics surrounding women factory workers in World War II America demonstrates how rhetorical practices produce gender differences through embodied, spatiotemporal rhetorics. In this case wartime adjustments did not bring about long-term changes because they relied on a fundamental antithesis between men and women.

- by Jordynn Jack
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- Gender Studies, Rhetoric, Feminist Theory, Visual And Material Rhetoric