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 19^th and Early 20^th 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