For Tuesday, February 17

 

Introductory thoughts, followed by a list of readings:

In this week’s response papers, many of you demonstrate high awareness of the rhetorical repertoire of individual rhetors; we have so much to learn from them, yes? We have been led by Logan and Bacon to attach words to speakers and to read these words as informed by rhetorical situation. This is good. To a lesser degree, we’ve been invited to “look” at these speakers as they speak, at their delivery, yet some cases of delivery are better visualized than others. We also have before us a good amount of information about speakers’ education, civil status, and venues for being “public.” In particular, you’ve made lists (mapping exercise) of the “occasions” and “media’ for rhetoric (newspapers, letters, speaking engagements at halls and churches).

 

We’ll now take different approaches before moving to into the interest area of Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. Campbell’s Man Cannot Speak for Her (2 vols.) focuses on women’s rights in general and the vote in particular.

 

1. We’ll read Kohrs Campbell’s introduction to Vol. 2, which gives a nice overview of the century and discusses intersections and ruptures among white and African American women’s movements.

 

2. We’ll look briefly at a couple of lines from and about Kenneth Burke because his work on hierarchies indentifications, courtship, and mystery helps us gather under a single umbrella the various moves of marginalized rhetors. Burke is, of course a 20th c. theorist who crosses the literary and rhetorical divide—beloved in both disciplines. Soon we’ll be looking at 19th c. theories of rhetoric (coming soon). Don’t try too hard to process all of what Burke says—just search for things you do get. I’ve also assigned a couple of pages from Blakesley, who is exceedingly clear. I searched his little book (Elements of Dramatism) for the term “courtship” and “mystery” w/o success. But I’ll look more closely to see if he’s translating these into some other idiom. I’ve also provided the URL for his entire book. If you want it, go a head and download now, as I’ll probably remove it because it takes up a lot of my available space.

 

3. Finally I want us to a set of articles that has become very famous in feminist historiography: the exchange between Barbara Biesecker and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell published in 1992-93 in Philosophy and Rhetoric. I include in this discussion a 2005 article by Kohrs Campbell that I believe is a follow-up to the hostility sequence. It features Sojourner Truth, so is very apt for this class.

 

Below I list the URLs for each reading—the final sequence is not yet in place—but I’ll let you know when it is.

 

Kohrs Campbell Introduction to Volume II

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Kohrs%20Campbell%20Intro%20Volume%202.pdf

 

Burke Courtship

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Burke%20courtship.pdf

 

Blakesly pp. 14-17 on identification and consubstantiality

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blakesley%2014%2015%2016.htm

 

Blakesley, Elements of Dramatism entire.

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blakesley%20Elements%20all.pdf

 

Biesecker, Coming to Terms with Recent Attempts to Write Women into the History of Rhetoric (1992)

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Biesecker%20Coming%20to%20Terms.pdf

 

Kohrs Campbell, Biesecker Cannot Speak for Her Either (1993)

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Kohrs%20Campbell%20Biesecker%20Cannot%20Speak%20for%20Her.pdf

 

Biesecker, Negotiating with our Tradition:  Reflecting Again (Without Apologies) (1993)

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Biesecker%20Negotiating%20with%20Our%20Tradition.pdf

 

 

Kohrs Campbell Agency: Promiscuous and Protean (2005)

http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/kohrs%20campbell%20agency%20promiscuous%20and%20protean.pdf

 

Finally, here’s the URL for an issue of Peitho: Newsletter for the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition containing a bibliography of work on feminist historiography. (The newsletter is no longer published but the Coalition is alive and well.) This is published elsewhere—I can’t recall exactly where; and in any case I wanted to introduce you to the organization.

 

http://cwshrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/peitho10_2.PDF