Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, by Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa E. Kirsch. Southern Illinois, 2012. 180p bibl index afp ISBN 9780809330690 pbk, $35.00; ISBN 9780809330706 e-book, $35.00

Royster (Georgia Tech) and Kirsch (Bentley Univ.), both well-established scholars, propose a future for feminist rhetorical practice. The book’s first section, “A Call for Action in Research, Teaching, and Learning,” begins with the authors’ intellectual biographies, a familiar feminist practice, thus identifying their political vantage points. Part 2, “Re-visioning History, Theory, and Practice,” reviews the literature of the last quarter century, highlighting changes from the formerly hegemonic Western white male point of view. Part 3, “Recasting Paradigms for Inquiry, Analysis, and Interpretation,” most interestingly dissects the methods inherent in various feminist scholars’ work, expands on their methods, and provides a “how to” on emulating them. Here the authors introduce methods of thinking about writing that one can implement in lower-level classes and, beyond that, make clear that the “intellectual” and the “emotional” and “ethical” are complementary processes. The authors then link their solid overview of feminist rhetorical history to an innovative range of pedagogical and writing practices. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.–B. A. McGowan, Northern Illinois University

–B. A. McGowan “CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries” (8/1/2012 12:00:00 AM)

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Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies, by Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa E. Kirsch. Southern Illinois, 2012. 180p bibl index afp ISBN 9780809330690 pbk, $35.00; ISBN 9780809330706 e-book, $35.00

Royster (Georgia Tech) and Kirsch (Bentley Univ.), both well-established scholars, propose a future for feminist rhetorical practice. The book’s first section, “A Call for Action in Research, Teaching, and Learning,” begins with the authors’ intellectual biographies, a familiar feminist practice, thus identifying their political vantage points. Part 2, “Re-visioning History, Theory, and Practice,” reviews the literature of the last quarter century, highlighting changes from the formerly hegemonic Western white male point of view. Part 3, “Recasting Paradigms for Inquiry, Analysis, and Interpretation,” most interestingly dissects the methods inherent in various feminist scholars’ work, expands on their methods, and provides a “how to” on emulating them. Here the authors introduce methods of thinking about writing that one can implement in lower-level classes and, beyond that, make clear that the “intellectual” and the “emotional” and “ethical” are complementary processes. The authors then link their solid overview of feminist rhetorical history to an innovative range of pedagogical and writing practices. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.–B. A. McGowan, Northern Illinois University

–B. A. McGowan “CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries” (8/1/2012 12:00:00 AM)

Jacqueline Jones Royster is a professor of English and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her previous books include Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women, and Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003. Gesa E. Kirsch is a professor of English and Co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Institute at Bentley University in Waltham, MA. Her previous publications include Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation, and Publication, Women Writing the Academy: Audience, Authority, and Transformation; and several co-edited collections, most recently, Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process.