Instructor: Valerie Palmer-Mehta
Course Time: R 5:30-8:50 pm
General Education: Western Civilization, U.S. Diversity & Writing Intensive
Term: Fall 2013

DESCRIPTION:

The course examines the role of women in the rhetorical tradition from classical antiquity to the present. The course provides a brief survey of the contributions of Western rhetorical scholars from classical antiquity and their influence on contemporary rhetorical theory and history, before identifying the gaps and limitations of the traditional approach. Subsequently, this course examines how traditional understandings of the Western rhetorical tradition and Western rhetorical history are being transformed and realigned by the addition of women, in all their diversity, into the rhetorical tradition. Students will have the opportunity to examine the intellectual debates and developments that inform research in women’s rhetorical theory and feminist historiography, which is not merely ‘adding’ women into the rhetorical tradition, but rather is shaking the conceptual foundations of the field, forging new stories and histories, re-theorizing and revitalizing theory, and re-examining unquestioned rhetorical scholarship. Additionally, students will be exposed to global fields of rhetorical action by examining women’s contributions in non-western, developing countries. We will examine how the values, practices, and experiences of varying cultures (with attention focused on developing countries and countries in Asia and Southeast Asia) have contributed to rhetorical theory and require a reconceptualization of traditional rhetorical theory and practice.

TEXTS:
-Buchanan, Lindal and Kathleen J. Ryan. Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010.

-Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. Man Cannot Speak for Her, Volume I: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989.