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February 1998

  1. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition
    Abstract

    These essays examine: how women have used language to reflect their vision of themselves and their age; how they have used traditional rhetoric and applied it to women's discourse; and how women have contributed to rhetorical theory.

    doi:10.2307/358573

January 1998

  1. Addressing bias in clip art provided with popular software
    Abstract

    Does language reflect psychological reality, or does it form psychological reality? In other words, does the language we use to discuss something determine our attitudes toward that thing? Feminist literature has made much of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which asserts that linguistic bias is a cause rather than a symptom of social bias (F.W. Frank and P.A. Tretchler, 1989; F.J. Newmayer, 1986). However, conflicting views do exist on the direction of influence. The article discusses a recent study published by M.A. Dyrud illustrating a clear gender bias in computer clip art (see Business Commun. Quart., vol.60, no.4, p.30-51, 1997). Dyrud argues that if language, as a symbol system, both reflects and invents our reality, the same can be said of another symbol system, that of visual images. If the images are predominantly one gender, they may reflect cultural mores, but at the same time they help to sustain those beliefs by shaping our concept of what is real. Her study examines more than 14000 images in Windows based programs. She found that gender bias does exist in available visuals. In addition to a bias in presentation, clip art is also a man's world in terms of sheer numbers of images. Of 14108 images, there were three times as many male as female. The attitude of available images also differs: male figures-often of athletic build with full heads of hair-are usually in motion; female figures are usually standing, waiting, or even posing fashion-model style.

    doi:10.1109/47.735369
  2. Virtual voices in “letters across cultures”: Listening for race, class, and gender
    doi:10.1016/s8755-4615(98)90005-6
  3. Predicting Computer Anxiety in the Business Communication Classroom: Facts, Figures, and Teaching Strategies
    Abstract

    The purpose of this study is primarily twofold: (1) to determine what factors, if any, are predictors of computer anxiety among business communication students and (2) to explore alternative teaching strategies suggested by the literature to effectively reduce computer anxiety in business communication classrooms. Participants consisted of 431 students enrolled in business communication courses during the 1995 spring semester at three state-supported universities in three southern states. Statistical analyses revealed that gender, keyboarding skill, age, socioeconomic status, and self-directedness are adequate predictors of computer anxiety in business communication students. Teaching strategies for reducing or eliminating computer anxiety in business communication classrooms are discussed.

    doi:10.1177/1050651998012001005
  4. An approach for applying cultural study theory to technical writing research
    Abstract

    When the idea of culture is expanded to include institutional relationships extending beyond the walls of one organization, technical writing researchers can address relationships between our power/knowledge system and multiculturalism, postmodernism, gender, conflict, and ethics within professional communication. This article contrasts ideas of culture in social constructionist and cultural study research designs, addressing how each type of design impacts issues that can be analyzed in research studies. Implications for objectivity and validity in speculative cultural study research are also explored. Finally, since articulation of a coherent theoretical foundation is crucial to limiting a cultural study, this article suggests how technical writing can be constituted as an object of study according to five (of many possible) poststructural concepts: the object of inquiry as discursive, the object as practice within a cultural context, the object as practice within a historical context, the object as ordered by language, and the object in relationship with the one who studies it.

    doi:10.1080/10572259809364617
  5. Taking a political turn: The critical perspective and research in professional communication
    Abstract

    This article examines the critical perspective as an alternative to our current descriptive, explanatory research focus. The critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation. It reinterprets the relationship between researcher and participants as one of collaboration, where participants define research questions that matter to them and where social action is the desired goal. Examples of critical research include feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research. Adopting the critical perspective would require that scholars in professional communication rethink their choices of research questions and sites, their views of the ownership of research results, and the types of funding they seek for research initiatives.

    doi:10.1080/10572259809364616
  6. Citation Functions: Unifying Feminist Communities

December 1997

  1. Subversive Feminism: The Politics of Correctness in Mary Augusta Jordan's Correct Writing and Speaking (1904)
    Abstract

    n the introduction to The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925, John Brereton remarks that few signs exist of explicitly feminist rhetoric texts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the presence of many women composition teachers in America at this time. While Brereton acknowledges the contributions of women professors who authored innovative textbooks (the first reader to use student papers, by Francis Campbell Berkeley, for example, as well as one of the first handbooks, by Luella Clay Carson), he argues that feminist rhetoric texts are conspicuously absent from the history of rhetoric and composition. Brereton asks to what extent publishing houses may have restricted explicitly feminist modes of writing and speaking instruction. He suggests that feminist rhetoric texts and pedagogies by women during this period perhaps operated in a more subversive fashion, reflecting the conservative climate of the time, and he suggests that women's rhetoric texts (as well as their pedagogical artifacts) ought to be read in terms of the climate of the historical moment (20-21). With Brereton's remarks in mind, I wish to discuss Mary Augusta Jordan's Correct Writing and Speaking, a rhetoric text authored for women who studied writing and speaking outside of the formal academy. Jordan (1855-1941) is a rhetorician to be added to the list of other remarkable women professors who wrote textbooks for new audiences at this time. Her work makes a con-

    doi:10.2307/358455
  2. Getting Restless: Rethinking Revision in Writing Instruction
    Abstract

    [This book] is a must for those committed to voicing the personal conflicts writers experience and to turning those confusing and sometimes dismaying moments into productive sites for questioning textual relations. - Journal of Advanced CompositionIn Getting Restless, Nancy Welch calls for a reconception of what we mean by revision, urging compositionists to rethink long-held beliefs about teacher-student relations and writing practices. Drawing primarily on feminist and psychoanalytic theories, she considers how revision can be redefined not as a process of increasing orientations toward a particular thesis or discourse community, but instead as a process of disorientation: an act of getting restless with received meanings, familiar relationships, and disciplinary or generic boundaries--a practice of intervening in the meanings and identifications of one's text and one's life. Using ethnographic, case-study, and autobiographical research methods, Welch maintains two consistent aims throughout the study: to show how composition teachers can create for themselves and for their students environments that encourage and support revision as restlessness and as a process of intervening in a first draft's thoroughly social meanings and identifications to demonstrate how composition's process legacy is revitalized when we understand that our means to form and change communities- to form and change constructions of authority--are located in revision. In achieving these ends Welch examines three academic sites: a campus writing center, undergraduate writing classrooms, and a summer workshop for K-12 teachers. This book will appeal to a wide audience, including classroom and writing center teachers, historians and theorists in composition and rhetoric, feminist theorists, and those engaged in literacy studies, teacher education, and connections/tensions among teaching, writing, and psychoanalysis.

    doi:10.2307/358474
  3. Subversive Feminism: The Politics of Correctness in Mary Augusta Jordan’s Correct Writing and Speaking (1904)
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Subversive Feminism: The Politics of Correctness in Mary Augusta Jordan's Correct Writing and Speaking (1904), Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/48/4/collegecompositionandcommunication3164-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc19973164

November 1997

  1. A Real Vexation: Student Writing in Mount Holyoke’s Culture of Service, 1837-1865
    Abstract

    Examines hundreds of compositions from 19th-century students at Mount Holyoke and other institutions. Finds that the first generation of women to attend United States colleges negotiated competing demands of service (to family and community) and of individual intellectual performance. Contrasts women’s compositions to men’s. Illustrates effects of gender on service, both as a concept and as an activity.

    doi:10.58680/ce19973652
  2. Feminism, Ecology, Romanticism
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Feminism, Ecology, Romanticism, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/59/7/collegeenglish3657-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19973657

October 1997

  1. Experimenting at Home: Writing for the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Workplace
    Abstract

    This article examines selected texts by Ellen Swallow Richards, a nineteenth-century scientist who wrote for a variety of audiences. Her audience awareness anticipates modem technical communication practices and alerts us to examine gender, class, and other social issues in historical documents as well as current pragmatic discourse.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq0604_1
  2. Argument Revisited; Argument Redefined: Negotiating Meaning in the Composition Classroom
    Abstract

    Introduction - Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch, and Deborah Tenney ARGUMENT REVISITED The Reasoned Thesis - John T Gage The E-Word and Argumentative Writing as a Process of Inquiry Evidence as a Creative Act - Barbara Emmel An Epistemology of Argumentative Inquiry The Toulmin Model of Argument and the Teaching of Composition - Richard Fulkerson Rogerian Rhetoric - Doug Brent Ethical Growth through Alternative Forms of Argumentation Classical Rhetoric - Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor The Art of Argumentation ARGUMENT REDEFINED Positioning Oneself - Pamela J Annas and Deborah Tenney A Feminist Approach to Argument Principles for Propagation - Judith Summerfield On Narrative and Argument The 'Argument of Reading' in the Teaching of Composition - Mariolina Salvatori The Argument of Reading - David Bartholomae

    doi:10.2307/358414

August 1997

  1. Thoughts on Computers, Gender, and the Body Electric
  2. On Gender and Electronic Discourse

July 1997

  1. Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication
    Abstract

    This article considers why women have been absent from the history of technical communication. It discusses research from the history of technology suggesting that notions of technology, work, and workplace may be gendered terns. The piece concludes with several suggestions for defining technical communication so the significant works of women will not be excluded from the discipline's history.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq0603_2
  2. Emergent Feminist Technical Communication
    Abstract

    The feminist approaches to technical communication that have emerged recently are largely liberal feminist or radical feminist in orientation. Liberal feminism arises out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and emphasizes equality and rights. It sees that women's opportunities to develop their intellects and talents and participate freely in the world of men have been thwarted by discriminatory practices. Radical feminism, in contrast, emphasizes differences between women and men, the limitations of patriarchal culture, and the characteristics of women's ways of communicating and knowing. The essays included in this issue, while multidimensional, primarily exhibit characteristics of both liberal and radical feminism.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq0603_6
  3. Toward a Feminist Historiography of Technical Communication
    Abstract

    The essays published in this special issue of TCQ are contextualited within historiographical traditions of inquiry in the western history of science and technology.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq0603_7
  4. Contributions to Botany, the Female Science, by Two Eighteenth-Century Women Technical Communicators
    Abstract

    This article focuses on the botanical publications of two eighteenthcentury English women writers: Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal (l737-1739) and Priscilla Bell Wakefield's An Introduction to Botany (1796). A brief rhetorical description and analysis of these books indicates that they contribute several new perspectives and techniques to the historical tradition of botanical writing and illustrating, as well as exhibit many of today's techniques for effective technical communication. Several suggestions are offered for further research directions to establish the significance of these writers within the conceptual framework of the feminine "green" tradition.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq0603_5

June 1997

  1. Delivering Delivery: Theatricality and the Emasculation of Eloquence
    Abstract

    Ever since Aristotle noted in the Rhetoric that, when fashionable, delivery ταύτό πoiήσϵι τη υποκριτική (has “the same effect as acting”; 1404a), classical and medieval rhetorical theorists fulminated against a crowd-pleasing oratory that had devolved into a theatrical spectacle more akin to that provided by the comic “actress” or the “effeminate” male. It cannot be coincidental, however, that, as the fifth rhetorical canon documents the theatricalization of rhetoric, it also offers companion testimony about the so-called emasculation of eloquence. In this essay, I examine the early belief that legal and religious rituals crossed gender lines into effeminacy at they same time that they crossed genre lines into theater. Close analysis suggests that the persistent association between theatrics, bad rhetoric, and effeminacy struck four different targets in a single, well-conceived blow: it marginalized women, homosexuals, bad oratory, and theater by casting certain types of speakers and speech as perverse and disempowered. Delivering delivery today thus entails exposing the ways in which early theorists themselves attempted to deliver it from evil.

    doi:10.1353/rht.1997.0009
  2. Researching the body: An annotated bibliography for rhetoric
    Abstract

    In one way or another, an interest in has been present in from writings of Gorgias and Plato, through treatises on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres,' and on to work of Kenneth Burke, particularly his notions of identification and consubstantiality.2 As in many disciplines, has played its part implicitly in rhetorical theory and pedagogy. For example, reader response criticism addresses in terms of affective and subjective aspects of epistemic and composition theory; rhetorical interest in memory addresses theories of knowledge, sources of inspiration, and subjectivity in prewriting (see Rider, Reynolds), all of which are body-centered; bodily delivery remains a concern in speech communication. The rhetoric of and, more specifically, of medical science, explores ways in which medicalized is both socially and discursively constructed (see Duden). More recently, feminist rhetoricians such as Janice Norton have begun a historiography of which focuses on need to reread a rhetorical theory that theorizes without reference to sexual difference. Only recently, however, has the body as such become explicit locus of debates about interrelation of power and discourse. This annotated bibliography surveys germinal texts which read in terms of epistemology, gender construction, and social inscription of meaning. Its intent is to assist rhetoricians who wish to investigate as a crucial site of intersection of persuasion, discourse, and power. More explicit discussions of began when Anglo-American feminists asserted that the personal is political and French feminists exhorted us to write body. Since then, a number of disciplines have begun to work out what this focus on personal and could possibly mean: gendered body? symbolic body? social-political body? discursive body? While feminists are credited with initiating discussions of female as text or site in which issues of power are hotly contested, has become locus of cultural, historical, sociological, philosophical, and literary, as well as gender studies. As Anthony Synnott reminds us, is

    doi:10.1080/02773949709391098

May 1997

  1. Situating College English: Lessons from an American University
    Abstract

    Acknowledgments Introductions Standard at the University of Texas by Alan W. Friedman Political Correctness, Principled Contextualism, Pedagogical Conscience by Evan Carton Canonicity, Subalternity, and Literary Pedagogy Pedagogy and the Canon Controversy by Jacqueline Bacon A Multicultural Curriculum: Diversity or Divisiveness? by Helena Woodard Rereading Texas History: Cultural Impoverishment, Empowerment, and Pedagogy by Louis Mendoza English Literature, the Irish, and The Norton Anthology by Rachel Jennings The Thumb of Ekalavya: Postcolonial Studies and the Third World Scholar in a First World Academy by S. Shankar Reclaiming the Teaching Assistant: Dissent as a Pedagogical Tool by Jean Lee Cole and Jennifer Huth Reading, Writing, Teaching: Principles and Provocations Warranting a Postmodernist Literary Studies by Gordon A. Grant III Knowledge, Power, and the Melancholy of Studies by Robert G. Twombly Collaborative Learning in the Postmodern Classroom by Jerome Bump Professionalism and the Problem of the We in Composition Studies by Nancy Peterson An Accidental Writing Teacher by Sara E. Kimball Having Students Write on Moral Topics: Legal, Religious, and Pedagogical Issues by James L. Kinneavy Bodies, Sexualities, and Computers in the Classroom Desire and Learning: The Perversity of Pedagogy by Kathleen Kane Learning and Desire: A Pedagogical Model by Edward Madden Gender and Trauma in the Classroom by Margot Backus Type Normal Like the Rest of Us: Writing, Power, and Homophobia in the Networked Composition Classroom by Alison Regan Rethinking Pedagogical Authority in Response to Homophobia in the Networked Classroom by Susan Claire Warshauer Here, Queer, and Perversely Sincere: Lesbian Subjects in the Department by Kim Emery Works Cited Index

    doi:10.2307/358679

March 1997

  1. Review essays
    Abstract

    John C. Brereton. The Origin of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. xvii + 584 pages. $24.95 paper. Krista Ratcliffe. Anglo‐American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. 227 pages. Ulla Connor. Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross Cultural Aspects of Second‐Language Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xv + 201 pages. $44.95 hardcover, $17.95 paper. Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Madision: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. xii + 315 pages. $21.95 paper.

    doi:10.1080/07350199709359227

February 1997

  1. The Relative Contributions of Research-Based Composition Activities to Writing Improvement in the Lower and Middle Grades
    Abstract

    In a benchmark meta-analysis of experimental research findings from 1962 to 1982, Hillocks (1986) reported the varying effects of general modes of instruction and specific instructional activities (foci) on the quality of student writing. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the relative effectiveness of those modes and foci using a non-experimental methodology and a new group of 16 teachers and 275 students in grades 1, 3–6, and 8. Teachers who had attended a summer writing institute reported on 17 different instructional variables that were primarily derived from the meta-analysis during each week of a ten-week treatment period that occurred at the beginning of the next school year. A pre- and post- treatment large-scale writing assessment was used with a prompt that allowed latitude in student choice of topic and extra time for prewriting and/or revision. Large gains in quality and quantity were found in the lower grades (1, 3, and 4) and smaller gains were found in the middle grades (5, 6, and 8). The demographic variables of SES, primary language, residence, and gender were found to have small and/or insignificant relationships to gains. Teacher-determined combinations of instructional variables and their relationship to gains in quality were investigated through factor analysis while controlling for pretreatment individual differences. Only one combination of activities was associated with large gains, and it was interpretable as the environmental mode of instruction. This combination included inquiry, prewriting, writing about literature, and the use of evaluative scales.

    doi:10.58680/rte19973874

January 1997

  1. Cyberbabes: (Self-) representation of women and the virtual male gaze
    doi:10.1016/s8755-4615(97)90020-7
  2. A Descriptive Study of the Use of the Black Communication Style by African Americans within an Organization
    Abstract

    The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the use of the Black communication style by African Americans in an organized environment. The research method which was used involved a multimethod approach of data collection in the field using direct observation, and obtrusive observations, as well as semi-structured interviews. This investigation has shown that although the Black employees in this organization felt, in general, as if they were changing their communication style to fit the organizational norms, they continued to rely on the cultural norms underlying the Black communication style. U.S. demographics are foretelling a future that will require innovative organizational communication strategies. According to Fine, two facts about the U.S. corporate environment which are uncovered by demographic trends are that the workforce will be comprised of a “greater diversity of gender, race, age, culture, and language” and that the demand for qualified workers will exceed the supply thereby “creating intense competition among organizations for workers” [1]. These changing demographics are not going unnoticed by the U.S. corporate leaders. Specifically, the issues of most concern to organizational executives, according to Workforce 2000, center around linguistic and cultural differences. Most organizations have no innovative strategies for meeting the demands of a diverse workforce. Traditional programs, such as day-care provisions, flexible work times, and hiring and recruiting more people of color are being implemented by corporate America in an effort to meet the demand for diversity. However, organizations are often lacking in creative programs which will provide for this emerging diverse workforce an environment that will accept and nurture their diversity. Certainly these corporate executives are receiving little in the way of guidance from organizational researchers.

    doi:10.2190/hu2d-67fd-nduu-9lgy
  3. Reviews
    Abstract

    Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece by John Poulakos. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995, pp. xiv + 220. Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition by Madeleine M. Henry. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995; 201 pp. Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition edited by Andrea A. Lunsford. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995; xiv; 354. Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women eds. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. Albany: SUNY Press. 1995. 293 pp. Allegories of America: Narratives, Metaphysics, Politics, by Frederich Michael Dolan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, 232 pp. The Past as Future by Jürgen Habermas (Interviewed by Michael Haller); edited and translated by Max Pensky. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994; xxvi; 185pp.

    doi:10.1080/02773949709391089
  4. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace
  5. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace

December 1996

  1. Review: Shakespeare Studies: Gender, Materialism, and the Cultural Other
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Review: Shakespeare Studies: Gender, Materialism, and the Cultural Other, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/58/8/collegeenglish9013-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19969013
  2. Shakespeare Studies: Gender, Materialism, and the Cultural Other
    doi:10.2307/378233

November 1996

  1. For a Red Pedagogy: Feminism, Desire, and Need
    Abstract

    Preview this article: For a Red Pedagogy: Feminism, Desire, and Need, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/58/7/collegeenglish9020-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19969020

October 1996

  1. Landmark Essays on Writing Centers
    Abstract

    Contents: C. Murphy, J. Law, Introduction: Landmark Essays on Writing Centers (1994). Part I:Historical Perspectives. R.H. Moore, The Writing Clinic and the Writing Laboratory (1950). L. Kelly, One-on-One, Iowa City Style: Fifty Years of Individualized Instruction in Writing (1980). M. Harris, What's Up and What's In: Trends and Traditions in Writing Centers (1990). P. Carino, What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Our Metaphors: A Cultural Critique of Clinic, Lab and Center (1992). G. Olson, E. Ashton-Jones, Writing Center Directors: The Search for Professional Status (1984). J. Simpson, What Lies Ahead for Writing Centers: Position Statement on Professional Concerns (1985). J. Summerfield, Writing Centers: A Long View (1988). Part II:Theoretical Foundations. S.M. North, The Idea of a Writing Center (1984). K.A. Bruffee, Peer Tutoring and the Conversation of Mankind (1984). L. Ede, Writing as a Social Process: A Theoretical Foundation for Writing Centers? (1989). A. Lunsford, Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center (1991). C. Murphy, Writing Centers in Context: Responding to Current Educational Theory (1991). A.M. Gillam, Writing Center Ecology: A Bakhtinian Perspective (1991). M. Cooper, Really Useful Knowledge: A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing Centers (1994). Part III:Writing Center Praxis. J. Simpson, S. Braye, B. Boquet, War, Peace, and Writing Center Administration. D. Healy, A Defense of Dualism: The Writing Center and the Classroom (1993). R. Wallace, The Writing Center's Role in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program: Theory and Practice (1989). R. Leahy, Writing Centers and Writing-for-Learning (1989). H. Kail, J. Trimbur, The Politics of Peer Tutoring (1987). A. DiPardo, Whispers of Coming and Going: Lessons From Fannie (1992). M. Woolbright, The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism Within the Patriarchy (1992).

    doi:10.2307/358309

September 1996

  1. Beyond dissensus: Exploring the heuristic value of conflict
    Abstract

    In Challenge of Diversity, H. Roy Kaplan, executive director of The National Conference of Christians and Jews, writes, Our obsession with or fear of differences has become a morbid fetish that threatens to tear our moral fabric apart (8). The article appeared in a weekly newspaper that covers arts, entertainment, and public issues in and around Tampa Bay area. The newspaper is also read-with varying degrees of attention-I discovered, by about two-thirds of my first-year composition students at University of South Florida. Although well intentioned, piece answers the of with a kind of laissez-faire pluralism: We must create an environment where people, all people, feel needed and wanted-part of a of caring and sharing human beings; where diversity, pluralism and differences are valued for richness and value they bring to human experiences (8). My students' offerings on cultural diversity and race relations bear striking resemblances to Kaplan's sentiment. At institutions with culturally diverse populations like South Florida, students often find it convenient and reassuring to believe in promise of a harmonious pluralism. Like Kaplan, many students believe that it is focus on and preoccupation with gender, racial, and class differences that is actually problem and not social and political dimensions of these differences. Certainly, in order to work for livable futures and in order to interrogate asymmetrical power formations in multicultural societies, we should envision difference as an asset and not a liability. However, we cannot create livable futures by simply ignoring real frictions and tensions created by unequal access to power and benefits of dominant culture. The answer to challenge of is not to imagine a community of caring and sharing human beings but to recognize our multicultural society as a tense plurality, as Joseph Harris says, and learn how to generate productive dialogue from tensions of difference. As evidenced above, students do not come to class ignorant of tensions

    doi:10.1080/07350199609359211

May 1996

  1. Ideology as the Ethos of the Nation State
    Abstract

    Abstract: Ideology can be considered the ethos of the modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist nation state. Working from the descriptions of political ethos in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Tapies, and Politics, the differences from and similarities to post-Renaissance political structures underline the modern insistence on ways to stabilise the representation of the group in power, giving it its veil of authority, as well as ways to stabilise the description or definition of the individual within the nation. Looking at a number of contemporary commentaries from both political theory and cultural studies, the essay elaborates the rhetoric necessary to constitute ideology as the ethos of the nation state, and goes on to detail some of the constraints on the individual who, in gaining access to power, becomes subject to that state. The rhetoric of ideology provides not only an ethos for the character of the group in power, but also a set of guidelines for establishing a spedfic responsive state in the audience, an ethics of pathos. Its ethos is a strategy that imposes a strategy. The circularity of this ethos marks many of the analyses undertaken by current theory, and it has only recently been challenged by, among others, feminist historians of rhetoric. The discussion moves to a point where it asks: given that multinational and transnational corporations now share with the nation state the regularisation of capitalist exploitation, is ideology effective as a political rhetoric any more? Who is the wife of the nation state? And, what is the ethos of the multinational?

    doi:10.1525/rh.1996.14.2.197

April 1996

  1. Writing Together: Gender's Effect on Collaboration
    Abstract

    Recent studies identify gendered differences in communication and collaboration styles which suggest consequences for professional writing classrooms. If, indeed, men tend to stereotype women as clerks, prefer hierarchical collaboration, and value product over process, and, too, if gendered differences tend to increase counterproductive dissent, then the gender balance of writing groups might affect their dominant styles in those respects. However, when I analyzed the behaviors of over sixty student groups in my professional writing classes, I did not find gender balancing to have such effects. Instead, however, I observed other gender-related effects on collaboration: tendencies to stereotype men as technical experts and to self-segregate into gendered working teams. These findings suggest new perspectives on the role of gender for collaborative groups in professional writing classrooms.

    doi:10.2190/xdca-www0-v9fn-y4u9
  2. Joint Composition: The Collaborative Letter Writing of a Scribe and his Client in Mexico
    Abstract

    Although notions of literacy tend to be dominated by images of solitary readers and writers, collaboration and assistance with reading and writing are widespread practices. This article presents a detailed description of a scribe and his client in Mexico producing a letter through joint composition, a term used to refer to letter-writing episodes involving two or more active participants. Through an examination of the discussions that occurred between the scribe and the client, the analysis illustrates how both actors contributed to the final outcome. This article discusses how the participants negotiated their points of view and pooled their knowledge to produce a specific type of document in accordance with their expectations and purposes. The analysis suggests that joint composition is the outcome of multiple contextual elements: authority, gender, and literacy competency. It further concludes that scribing is a complex, heterogeneous literacy activity.

    doi:10.1177/0741088396013002002

March 1996

  1. Oxidization Is a Feminist Issue: Acidity, Canonicity, and Popular Victorian Female Authors
    Abstract

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    doi:10.58680/ce19969056

February 1996

  1. Gender Issues in College Composition
    Abstract

    Instructors should learn both to celebrate and to accommodate gender differences in the writing classroom.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19965473

January 1996

  1. Gender bias and critique of student writing
    doi:10.1016/s1075-2935(96)90004-5
  2. Competence and Critique in Technical Communication: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Journal Articles
    Abstract

    This study uses qualitative content analysis to discuss current perspectives in technical communication pedagogy. It examines the 1990-94 issues of five major scholarly journals—a collection of 563 articles—to identify 98 articles mentioning teaching in undergraduate technical communication courses. Influenced by differing theoretical and practical approaches, the 98 articles were classified according to four pedagogical perspectives: (1) the functional perspective, based on empirical research and workplace experience; (2) the rhetorical perspective, based on scholarship in the humanities and influenced by rhetorical theory; (3) the ideological perspective, also based on scholarship in the humanities but influenced by critical theory; and (4) the intercultural and feminist perspective, a bridging perspective based on both empirical research and critical theory. This article discusses the four perspectives in terms of the educational goals of communicative competence (the ability to use language to succeed in the workplace) and social critique (the ability to question existing social structures and to envision cultural change).

    doi:10.1177/1050651996010001003
  3. Women's Studies on Trial
    Abstract

    I hese two books have very different stories to tell about the state of feminism in the American academy. The story told in Professing Feminism is already notorious beyond the academy; Gender and Academe will almost certainly never circulate so widely. Together, though, these books imply more than either does alone about how centrally academic feminism figures in current struggles over the nature of academic work and the policing of the academy's borders. Professing Feminism, according to its authors, is an inquiry... concentrated on feminism as it is practiced in Women's Studies at colleges and universities (xvii). Daphne Patai, a literary scholar, and Noretta Koertge, a historian of science, insist that their inquiry is an inside critique, aimed at calling academic feminism back from what they diagnose as its current ills to its liberal origins. We are feminists and.. . friends of feminism, they write in their Postscript, feminists arguing from within feminism about the means for achieving the basic goal of the liberation of women from all that impedes their ability to lead full and productive lives (218). Their methods of inquiry draw on the feminist models of ethnography and

    doi:10.2307/378541
  4. “A Feminist Just Like Us?” Teaching Mariama BÂ’S So Long A Letter
    Abstract

    Preview this article: "A Feminist Just Like Us?" Teaching Mariama BÂ'S So Long A Letter, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/58/1/collegeenglish9074-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19969074
  5. "A Feminist Just like Us?" Teaching Mariama BA's so Long a Letter
    doi:10.2307/378532

December 1995

  1. Passing through the Needle's eye: Can a feminist teach logic?
    doi:10.1007/bf00744759
  2. Rhetoric in Popular Culture
    Abstract

    Preface Part I. THEORY 1. Rhetoric and Popular Culture The Rhetoric of Everyday Life The Building Blocks of Culture: Signs 2. Rhetoric and the Rhetorical Tradition The Rhetorical Tradition: Ancient Greece 3. Rhetorical Methods in Critical Studies Texts Influence through Meanings 4. Varieties of Rhetorical Criticism, part one An Introduction to Critical Perspectives Culture-centered Criticism Marxist Criticism Visual Rhetorical Criticism Psychoanalytic Criticism 5. Varieties of Rhetorical Criticism, part two Feminist Criticism Dramatistic/Narrative Criticism Media-centered Criticism Summary and Review Looking Ahead Part II. APPLICATION 6. Paradoxes of Personalization: Race Relations in Milwaukee The Problem of Personalization The Scene and Focal Events 7. On Gangsta, Written with the Help of the Reader False Claim #1: African American Culture Is Violent False Claim #2: African American Culture Is Sexual False Claim #3: African American Culture Is Crassly Materialistic Conclusion 8. Simulational Selves, Simulational Culture in Groundhog Day 9. Media and Representation in Rec.Motorcycles 10. Two Homological Critiques One: Opening my iPod nano: A homological study of media and discourse Two: Queering the Gecko: Race, Sexual Orientation, and Marginality in GEICO's Cavemen Suggested Readings Index

    doi:10.2307/358335

November 1995

  1. Border Crossings: Intersections of Rhetoric and Feminism
    Abstract

    Abstract: In this essay, we explore the intersections of rhetoric and feminism and the resulting transformations to both disciplines. Rhetoric offers feminism a vibrant process of inquiring, organizing, and thinking, as well as a theorized space to talk about effective communication; feminism offers rhetoric a reason to bridge differences, to include, and to empower, as well as a politicized space to discuss rhetorical values. The fraditional rhetorical canons, with their enthymematic familiarity, mark the sections of this essay, for they emphasize the mutually heuristic nature of the border crossings between these two disdplines. Although the linearity of print demands that we treat the canons consecutively, they, nevertheless, have a tendency to overlap and interact. Our discussions of arrangement, style, and delivery, for instance, both assume and depend upon a rethinking of invention and memory—a rethinking that recognizes the role that both these canons play in current efforts to reconceptualize and reenact what it means to know, speak, and write. As our essay argues, such attention to what we speak about, and how and why we speak, urges ail of us not only to continued exploration and interrogation but also to a renewed responsibility for our professional and personal discursive acts.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.401

October 1995

  1. Feminist Critical Pedagogy and Composition
    doi:10.2307/378579
  2. Review: Feminist Critical Pedagogy and Composition
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Review: Feminist Critical Pedagogy and Composition, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/57/6/collegeenglish9107-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ce19959107