ENGLISH 812 - SEMINAR IN COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC:
FEMINIST RHETORICAL THEORIES
FALL 2013
INSTRUCTOR - ALICE GILLAM
Office: Curtin 493
Phone: x5454
Office hours: TBA
Email: agillam@uwm.edu
DESCRIPTION :
Andrea Lunsford describes the aim of feminist scholarship in rhetoric as “not an attempt to redefine a ‘new’ rhetoric, but rather to interrupt the seamless narrative usually told about the rhetorical tradition and to open up possibilities for multiple rhetorics, rhetorics that would not name and valorize one, traditional, competitive, agonistic and linear mode of rhetorical discourse but would rather incorporate other, often dangerous moves” (
Reclaiming Rhetorica 6). In this class, we will “interrupt” the rhetorical tradition in four ways that roughly correspond to those proposed by Krista Ratcliffe in Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to Rhetorical Traditions .
Specifically, we will (1) examine feminist rereadings of canonical classical texts, (2) study feminist projects to reclaim rhetorica, (3) analyze non-rhetorical feminist texts to extrapolate rhetorical theory from their practices, and (4) consider recent reconceptualizations of rhetorical theory from feminist perspectives. Our study of these four approaches to feminist rhetorical theory will, of necessity, involve only a sampling, a series of examples or case studies of each approach, and will, inevitably, reveal the overlapping nature of these approaches. As Lunsford suggests, our purpose will not to be to derive a single coherent feminist rhetorical theory or to embrace a single methodological approach but rather to consider the debates, diversity, and ongoing questions regarding the means and ends of feminist rhetorical studies. We will continually ask such questions as following: what is rhetorical theory and what work can/does it do in the world? what does it mean to call a rhetorical theory “feminist”? a feminist theory
“rhetorical”? what might be learned by considering “rhetorical theories and rhetorical practices as cultural sites where we can observe the interdependence of codes of rhetorical performance and the construction of conventional identities, particularly but not exclusively gender identities”
(Nan Johnson)? what are the implications of feminist rhetorical theories for us as scholars and teachers?
GOALS:
• To become acquainted with the diverse kinds of scholarly projects entailed in current feminist rhetorical studies.
•
• To participate in the debates and conversation about feminist rhetorical studies through
our work as a class and as individual scholars.
To use this work to inform our everyday practices as teachers, scholars, and citizens.

REQUIREMENTS :
1. Careful reading of all class assignments and active participation in class discussion -
Seminars like this one offer unique opportunities to investigate and speculate together as well as to test individual interpretations and theories. Clearly, active participation of each member enriches the seminar for everyone. Try to set as your goal active participation in the discussion every week. Since the class meets only once a week, I expect regular attendance. (30%)
2. Position/Juxtaposition Papers - To facilitate class discussion and to encourage your critical engagement with these readings and issues, I am asking you to write 1-2 page position/ juxtaposition papers. Let me explain what I mean by “position” or “juxtaposition” papers. For one thing, I am calling them “position” papers rather than “response” papers because while you are not expected to offer an argument or forward a particular interpretation (although at times you may wish to do one or the other), I do expect that these brief papers will entail a particular line of inquiry. That is, these brief papers will require you to focus some aspect of the reading, to select particular passages, themes, questions about which to write. As you read, ask yourself which ideas or issues you find most compelling, surprising, confusing, troubling, or illuminating.
I have added the option of “juxtaposition” papers because you may well wish to discuss the readings for this course in relation to other readings and/or events. Feminist theorist Elizabeth
Ellsworth offers a provocative way of thinking about what I am calling “juxtaposition” papers which she calls “reading through”:
Reading through, then, doesn’t mean that I use various texts as static, given, or known filters or lenses for each other. Reading through instead highlights the process of my reading and draws attention to the interests I bring to reading and to how those interests shape the meanings I construct. Reading two texts side by side can destabilize the sense I have made of each text separately, because the presences and absences in each text and in the senses I have made of them never match up ( Teaching Positions 14).
These written responses can and should be informal and conversational in style but substantive in content. That is, they should go beyond summary to grapple with confusing or difficult passages, to identify points of connection or contradiction, to raise provocative questions, and/or to share your own insights and interpretations. Over the course of the semester you will each write three such papers, which will be disseminated and read by other class members as a reading assignment along with the other texts assigned for a particular date. That is, you will sign up for one of three groups, each of which will share their individual position/juxtaposition papers with the rest of the class three times during the semester, beginning Week #3 (Sept. 18).
These papers must be posted to the listserv by Tuesday, 7 PM, in advance of the date assigned.
So, for example, Group #1 will post their position/juxtaposition papers in response to the readings for Sept. 18th by Tuesday, Sept. 17th, at 7 PM. This will allow the rest of us to read them and include them in our discussion of the readings for that particular week. No late response papers will be accepted. (30%)

3. Seminar paper (draft due Nov. 27th, final paper due Dec. 13th)- The major assignment for the course is to write a scholarly paper (15-20 pages), excluding notes and works cited, written in
MLA format) which investigates some aspect of feminist rhetorical theory. You may decide to follow one of the four approaches mentioned above (i.e. rereading a canonical rhetorical text from a feminist perspective, studying the work of a “recovered” or as-yet unrecovered woman rhetorician, extrapolating feminist rhetorical theories from texts that might not be considered
“rhetorical” from a traditional perspective, reconceptualizing a traditional rhetorical concept
(like pathos ) from a feminist perspective or investigating a new feminist rhetorical concept (like
“listening”). Or you may wish to propose another kind of scholarly project that relates the theories we will be studying to other topics of interest to you--pedagogy, professional writing, and so on (40%).
TEXTS:
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion . New York: Routledge, 2004. (ISBN 0-415-
97255-8)
Plato. Gorgias . Trans. James H. Nichols Jr. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1998. (ISBN 0-8014-8532-0)
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness . Carbondale: SIU
Press, 2005. (ISBN o-8093-2669-8)
Schell, Eileen E. and K. J. Rawson. Rhetorica in Motion. Pittsburgh. U of Pittsburgh P, 2010.
(ISBN 0-8229-6056-7)
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas . 1938. New York: Harcourt, 1966. (ISBN 0-15-690177-3)
Essays on library e-reserve.