and Stand Speak:
Feminist Rhetorics and Social Change
Writ 242 MW 2:45-4:00 / Fall 2008
Professor S. B. Spring Dept of Writing and Rhetoric [e-mail] 222 Alumni Hall tele: x7316 office hours: W 1:30-3:30 & by appointment "Oh woman, woman! upon you I call; for upon your exertions almost entirely depends whether the rising generation shall be anything more than we have been or not."
- Maria W. Stewart, "An Address Delivered before
the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston," 1832
"And will she not soon appear? The woman who shall vindicate their birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim and how to use what they obtain?" - Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845
Course Description
Maria W. Stewart and Margaret Fuller were two women, among many others, to call women to action in the antebellum period. Concerned with social change and with the methods and language that could affect it, their texts and `living examples' educated women of not only "what to claim [but also] how to use what they obtain." Central to this work and to education in the nineteenth century was the study of rhetoric, formally or informally, whether it be ecclesiastic, civic or belletristic. As an introduction to rhetoric, rhetorical criticism and feminist rhetorics, this course foregrounds the study of how nineteenth century women used both pen and voice with rhetorical precision, to `stand and speak' to issues that marked their personal lives and their times. By studying women who composed and embodied what we now call the `first wave of feminism,' we access a genealogy of women rhetors who serve as exemplars and cautions for later waves and for our own personal visions of social change. Finally, by positioning the study of rhetoric as a study of language as it constitutes social relations, power, and knowledge, we become more acutely aware of and fluent in the composition, circulation and criticism of private and public discourses, the verbal material through which we construct our social worlds. The work for this course requires close reading and active discussion of course texts through a rhetorical lens; an analytic essay that contributes to rhetorical criticism; a performed (or recorded) text of your own that addresses an issue important to you and to our own time; and mid-term and final exams.
Required Texts
Primary Text Anthologies: With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women. Shirley Wilson Logan, ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 1995. Man Cannot Speak For Her: Key Texts of the Early Feminists, Volume 2. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1989. Plus various handouts and documents posted on Blackboard (including primary texts, biographies and rhetorical criticism and theory).
Course Requirements Readings and Course Blog
Our course readings will have three strands: primary texts of nineteenth-century women's addresses (spoken and written), critical texts written by contemporary scholars, and chapters from a contemporary rhetorical textbook that will introduce us to rhetorical concepts and criticism. To prepare for braided discussions of these texts, and to pay homage to the high regard nineteenth-century women gave to conversation, we'll exchange our views in a twenty-first century conversation space: a course blog. Once a week, you will either post to the blog, or respond to a classmate's post through the comment function. Your posts should be lively and engaged and they should show evidence of your growing fluency with rhetorical concepts. We will draw from these on-line conversations as we engage in our classroom conversations.
Performed "Speech" with Rhetorical Analysis
Many of the primary texts we will read were written and then either performed by the author, read aloud by others, or circulated as print texts in public and private forums. We'll listen carefully to these texts, as a class, attempting to hear each woman's voice and performance. In addition, each student will be required, twice, to choose excerpts from these texts and "perform" (give an oral reading) in class. We'll do all of this with an ear toward creating our own "speeches" about an issue pressing to us individuals. This issue may be the same or different from the one addressed in your analytic essay. You will decide how you will circulate this text to a particular public forum: either by an embodied performance in person or by another mode, such as a recorded text or a video production or a material installation.
Analytic Essay
You will be expected to propose and carry out an analytic project, which will ultimately result in a 8-10 page piece of rhetorical criticism. This means that you will address a social issue of interest to you (historical or contemporary), read a selection of primary texts, and contextualize your ideas and arguments through recent scholarship and theoretical frames. As a means to help you through the writing process that such a project requires, we will engage the project in steps. Over the first few weeks, as we discuss each day's assigned texts, we'll take time to talk about the ways these texts reflect on our own interests and 2
possible future essays. In early October, you will be expected to turn in a 1-page proposal for this project. In mid-November, an annotated bibliography. We will arrange the week before Thanksgiving in a workshop format in order to begin to engage and give critical (and encouraging) response to each other's projects; you should expect to be writing and revising consistently over these last weeks. The final paper will be due in class on December 10, 2008. Should you wish to create a multi-modal essay (electronic or installation) instead of the final print essay, you may submit a proposal for such a variation; however, the same rigor of research must inform your final product.
Archival Visit and the Ray Smith Symposium on Feminist Rhetorics
Our class has been invited to take part in the Symposium on Feminist at Rhetorics Syracuse University on October 23-25, 2008. The symposium intends to bring together scholars and social activists, as well as to make a space for undergraduate and graduate students to present their work and take part in conversations about feminism, social activism and social movements, informed by the study rhetoric. Please put this on your calendars immediately. In addition to this Symposium, as a class we will visit Colgate's Special Collections and, as an introduction to material collections of women's texts, as well as an initiation (if you haven't yet forayed into archival study beyond on-line collections!) to archival research. Should this visit intrigue you, I will work with you to set up visits to other local archives that may have texts of interest to your final project. Mid-Term and Final Exams There will be two short written exams for this class during over the course of the semester. It will ask you to articulate your understandings of and insights into our course readings and discussions through your acquisition of rhetorical concepts; and it will allow you to demonstrate your interpretive skills on a selection of women's texts. You must complete both exams to pass the course.
Evaluation
Evaluation will be based primarily on the following: Response Posts to Blog & Participation "Speech" with Rhetorical Analysis Analytic Essay Mid-Term and Final Exams total:
10% 30% 30% 30% 100%
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Other Primary Materials and Critical Essays will be drawn from:
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, ed. Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. Donawerth, Jane, ed. Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900: An Anthology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Eldred, Janet Carey and Peter Mortensen. Imagining Rhetoric: Composing Women of the Early United States. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh UP, 2002. Enoch, Jessica. Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865-1911. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 2008 Gere, Anne Ruggles. Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U.S. Women's Clubs, 1880-1920. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1997. Hobbs, Catherine, ed. Nineteenth Century Women Learn to Write. Charlottesville: University P of Virginia, 1995. Johnson, Nan. Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1860-1910. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. Logan, Shirley Wilson. "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Black Women. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. Miller, Hildy and Lillian Bridwell-Bowles. Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press. 2005. Portnoy, Alisse. Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2005. Mattingly, Carol. Appropriate[ing] Dress: Women's Rhetorical Style in Nineteenth-Century America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 2002. Miller, Susan. Assuming the Positions: Cultural Pedagogy and the Politics of Commonplace Writing. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Press. 1998. Mountford, Roxanne. The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2003. Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth-Century American Women Editors. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995. Ray, Angela. The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States . East Lansing: Michigan State UP. 2005.
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Ritchie, Joy, and Kate Ronald, eds. Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s). Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2001. Stabile, Susan. Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembranc...