office: 460 Denney Hall
phone 292-7696
fax 292-5284
e-mail: lunsford.2@osu.edu
office hours: by appointment
Course Description: This experimental course will be taught
simultaneously by the current and former presidents of the Coalition
of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition:
Professor Kathleen Welch of the University of Oklahoma, Professor
Andrea Lunsford at the Ohio State University, and Professor Cheryl
Glenn at Pennsylvania State University.
As conceived in discussions held during meetings of the Coalition,
the course has several key aims: to further new paradigms of the
scholar/teacher whose research and pedagogy merge; to enrich the
profession(s) of English (Rhetorical and Feminist) Studies with
recent feminist theories of rhetoric and writing by providing
a course model for other scholar/teachers to adapt; and to enact
multiple technologies that increase student access to scholar/teachers
at other universities. In addition, this seminar aims to integrate
women's writing and writing practices into traditional receptions
of historical rhetoric, not only by reading women's work into
this history but also by exploring how various constructions of
gender, race and technology have worked to make women and all
people of color invisible within the tradition.
Course Organization: Our explorations will proceed chronologically,
in three major leaps: we will begin with ancient Greece, focusing
on the figures of Sappho, Diotima, and Aspasia; then we will move
to nineteenth-century African-American and Anglo-American women's
writing, focusing on Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, and Margaret
Fuller. We will conclude with contemporary women's rhetorics/writings,
focusing here on Donna Haraway and related work on woman/writer
as cyborg, on the Biesecker-Campbell debate (on attempts to write
women into the history of rhetoric), and on careful analysis of
the issues raised in the Phelps/Emig collection Feminine Principles
and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric.
These core readings will be supplemented by electronic and print
selections in a coursepak that will make central the contributions
of women rhetoricians and writers in these three Western historical
periods, and we will work throughout to serve as appropriate and
responsive audiences to those voices that have long been ignored
or silenced.
Texts: available at OSU Bookstore
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Phelps, Louise Wetherbee and Janet Emig, eds. Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.
Lunsford, Andrea, ed. Reclaiming Rhetorica:Women in the Rhetorical Tradition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995
Plato. Dialogues of Plato. R. E. Allen, trans. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1984.
Plato. Symposium. Hackett
Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.
Sappho. Sappho, A New Translation California Press
coursepak (cp in schedule)--available for copying on the bookshelf
in Denney 421
Requirements: (1) attendance and class participation; (2)
weekly online participation: a minimum of one post and one response
each week; (3) intermittent participation in cross-campus small-group
discussion; (4) two brief reports to be presented orally in class
and added to online discussion; (5) a midterm meta-analysis of
the online discourse; (6) a final research project proposal for
further study (an opportunity for you to prepare a conference
presentation, an essay for publication, dissertation topic or
subtopic, a grant project on an individual or collaborative scale)--print,
multi-media, and hyper-textual formats are all welcome; (7) participation
in the Ohio State University Symposium for Women in the History
of Rhetoric, November 6-8.
Course Schedule
Week One
Sept. 25 What Do Histories Do?
Readings: Biesecker, "Coming to Terms with Recent Attempts to Write Women into the History of Rhetoric" (cp)
Campbell, "Biesecker Cannot Speak for Her Either" (cp)
Glenn, "Mapping the Silences, or Remapping Rhetorical Territory" (cp)
Corbett, "A Brief History of Rhetoric" (cp) OPTIONAL
Blair, "Contested Histories of Rhetoric: The Politics of Preservatio,
Progress, and Change" (cp) OPTIONAL
Sutton, "The Taming of Polos/Polis: Rhetoric as an
Achievement Without Woman" (cp) OPTIONAL
Assignments: Read online summary/responses provided by the OU
and PSU students; prepare to join the listserv conversation; schedule
IRCs
Week Two
Sept. 30 (Re)Situating Ourselves and Our Histories
Readings: Lunsford, RR, Introduction
Glenn, "Classical Rhetoric Conceptualized, Or Vocal Men and Muted Women"
Sappho - Barnard trans.
"Sappho" in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric
Activities: focus on formulating postings on Sappho and historiography
on listserv
Oct. 2 Symposium, with special attention to sections on Diotima
Welch, "Plato, Diotima, and Teaching Discourse" (cp)
"Diotima" entry from Encyclopedia of Rhetoric
Halperin, "Why is Diotima a Woman?" (cp) OPTIONAL
Activities: first brief response/report due: one page in hardcopy
and online (website?)
Week Three
Oct. 7
Readings: Menexenus, with special attention to Aspasia.
"Aspasia" entry form Encyclopedia of Rhetoric
Lunsford, RR, Jarratt and Ong chapter OPTIONAL
Activities: set up class presentation schedule for rest of term;
IRCs scheduled?
Oct. 9
Readings: "Plato" entry in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric
Welch, "Appropriating Competing Systems of Classical Greek Rhetoric:
Considering Isocrates and Gorgias with Plato in the New Rhetoric of the Fourth Century B.C." (cp)
Activities: wrap up discussion of engendering classical rhetoric
class presentations:
Week Four (Un)Settling 19th and Early 20th Century Rhetorical Traditions
Oct. 14 Women and Public Speech: Sojourner Truth
Readings: Lunsford, RR, Lipscomb chapter on Truth
Logan, Intro and timeline from Pen and Voice (cp)
Logan biographical sketch of Truth from Pen and Voice (cp)
"Sojourner Truth" entry from Encyclopedia of Rhetoric
Logan, "Black Women on the Speaker's Platform 1832-1900: An
Overview" (cp)
Activities: class presentations:
discuss meta-analysis of online discourse
Oct. 16
Readings: Truth, "Address to the Women's Rights Convention," Akron, Ohio, 1851
and "Address to the Mob Convention," NY, 1853
Activities: class presentations:
Week Five Women in Conversational Discourse and Other Arenas
Oct. 21
Readings: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (excerpts to be chosen)
Lunsford, RR, Kolodny chapter on Fuller OPTIONAL
opt. Hobbs, "Cultures and Practices of U.S. Women's Literacy" (CP);
Activities: class presentations:
Oct. 23
Readings: Kates, "The Embodied Rhetoric of Hallie Quinn Brown"
(cp)
Gere and Robbins, "Gendered Literacy in Black and White" (cp)
Gere, "(Re)Calibrating Culture" (cp) OPTIONAL
Laqueur, "Discovery of the Sexes" (cp) OPTIONAL
Activities: Meta-analysis of online discourse
Class presentations:
Week Six: Women in Print: Ida B. Wells
Oct. 28
Readings: Lunsford, RR, Royster chapter on Wells
Logan, biographical sketch of Wells (cp)
Royster, introduction to Southern Horrors
Logan, "'Out of Their Own Mouths': Ida B. Wells and the Presence
of Lynching" (cp) OPTIONAL
Activities: Class presentations:
Oct. 30
Readings: Wells's Anti-Lynching Campaign: Royster, Southern Horrors
Activities: Class presentations
Week Seven Where Are We Now?
Nov. 4
Readings: Welch, "Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Rhetoric
and Composition Studies: Electrifying Classical Rhetoric"
(cp)
Activities: OSU Symposium on the History of Rhetoric
second brief response/report due - hardcopy and online
Nov. 6 OSU Symposium
Readings: Jamieson, Eloquence in an Electronic Age OPTIONAL
Activities: OSU Symposium on the History of Rhetoric
Week Eight Contemporary Women's Rhetorics/Writings:
The Electronic Present
Nov. 11
Readings: Ede, Glenn, and Lunsford, "Border Crossings" (cp)
Spender, "Women, Power, and Cyberspace" (cp)
Ullman, "Come in CQ: The Body on the Wire" (cp)
Wambeam, "Spiderwoman Summit" (cp)
Borsook, "Memoirs of a Token: An Aging Berkeley Feminist Examines
Wired" (cp) OPTIONAL
Activities: Class presentations:
Nov. 13
Readings: Krochmal, "Fighting the Copyright Wars with a 'Genius Grant' in Hand" (cp)
Carter, bibliography (cp)
Turkle, "Who Am We?" (cp)
Benedek, "Steal This Program" (cp)
Activities: Class presentations:
Week Nine
Nov. 18
Readings: Lunsford, interview with Gloria Anzaldua
Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.
Activities: Meta-analysis of online discourse due; discussion of implications
Class presentations
Nov. 20
Readings: Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, cont.
Olson, "Writing, Literacy, and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing" (cp) OPTIONAL
Penley and Ross, "Cyborgs at Large: An Interview with Donna Haraway" (cp) OPTIONAL
Activities: Class presentations
Hoped-for guest: Brenda Brueggemann
Week Ten Where Do We Want to Go?
Nov. 25
Readings: Phelps and Emig, Introduction and chapters 10, 13, 20
Activities: Class presentations
Nov. 27 Thanksgiving
Week Eleven
Dec. 2
Readings: Phelps and Emig, chapter 18 and "Reflections"
Introduction to Jarratt and Worsham MLA volume if possible (cp)
Moss, "Intersections of Race and Class in the Academy" (cp)
Ladson-Billings, "For colored girls who have considered suicide
when the academy is not enough" (cp)
Activities: Class presentations
Dec. 4 Presentations of term projects-in class and online
Final project/proposals due