"Feminism" and "rhetoric" have not always been overlapping terms. While neglected as subjects of scholarly interest for many years, women were nonetheless developing rhetorical practices and traditions all along. In recent decades women writers, speakers, and feminist scholars have forged new theories of and practices for feminist rhetoric. These women have struggled to see, re-shape, and re-deploy the rhetorical tradition in ways that not only admit but embrace and celebrate women and feminist understandings to the benefit of all people. This volume is the culmination of much of the work done by those scholars.
Edited by the leading experts in field, Cheryl Glenn and Andrea A. Lunsford, Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and Feminism earns its significance in several key ways: it includes work done by scholars from departments of communication, English, and writing studies as well as a variety of public intellectuals; it traces a series of encounters between rhetoric and feminism during the last three decades; and it highlights five themes that represent the history of encounters between rhetoric and feminism including (1) recovery and recuperation, (2) methods and methodologies, (3) practices and performances, (4) pedagogical applications and implications, and (5) new theories and histories.