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Abstract Royster and Cochran use the words of African American women writers to enrich our view of intersections between American civil rights discourses and the discourses of human rights as a global concept. They focus on both individual and collective activities of the women and contextualize this activism within the larger framework of the rise of individual human rights language in twentieth century international relations. Notes 1Sam Occom (1723–1792), a progenitor of Native-American literature, was a Mohegan minister and political leader who worked to protect the cultures, traditions, and practices of indigenous peoples. He was an advocate for their political autonomy, spiritual well-being, and their education, as evidenced by his associations with Dartmouth College. 2A simplistic measure of this positioning is a keyword search of a top-ranked research university's library (The Ohio State University). "African Americans Civil Rights" yielded 1,346 entries. "African Americans Human Rights" yielded 194 entries. 3For a complementary argument about connections between civil rights and human rights, see Kirt Wilson's Keynote Address at the 2010 Public Address Conference on Human Rights, "More than Civil Rights: The Fight for Black Freedom as a Human Rights Struggle." Also, as noted below we are distinguishing between human rights as a set of values, policies, and practices exercised by individuals and groups and human rights values, policies, and practices that function universally in international relations and thereby beyond the boundaries of nation-states. 4In presenting this analytical framework, we note the persistent ways in which the master narrative of self-determination, peace, and justice for all gave rise to special allowances among the Western powers, creating various illogicalities for those not in power, a situation that, as we explain with more detail below, has pushed persistently the double-edged sword of hope and rage/despair. 5The analytical framework for this essay is drawn from Royster's larger manuscript project, currently entitled A Nation Within: Utopian Desire, Radical Action, and the Voices of African American Women. 6In addition to its linkages with Christian discourses, Wheatley's quotation also suggests the impact of Enlightenment values on human rights discourses and a more inclusive approach to human dignity and human rights. Further, a case can be made that Wheatley positions herself as a witness to this "absurdity," the discontinuity between the words and actions that prevailed so dramatically during her era. 7For a book-length treatment of affective mapping, see Flately. 8This use of "museum piece" mirrors the use of this term by Spitzack and Carter (407). 9Insightful and compelling as a discursive framework, the quest for "civil rights" as a response to the disempowering conditions and effects of slavery, rather than the quest for "human rights" as a global concept, has been the norm in scholarly analyses of racial oppression in the United States. Examples of civil rights scholarship include leading scholars, such as: Stampp; Woodward; Gutman; Franklin; Sundquist; and others. More attention to the connection of struggles in the United States for civil rights to struggles globally for human rights include: Eric Foner; Anderson; Henry J. Richardson, III; Shuler; Soohoo, Albisa, and Davis; and others. 10Space limitations do not permit a full explanation of how transnational feminist scholarship (e.g., Alexander and Mohanty) has enriched contemporary human rights discourses or how women of African descent, including African-American women writers, continue to be pacesetters in making insightful connections, analyses, and interpretations. 11This explanation is based on Eleanor Hinton Hoytt. 12Note that elite African-American women broadened their horizons in the twentieth century through foreign travel, with increasing numbers participating in both individual and organized trips. By the mid-twentieth century, foreign travel had become a booming business among this group, as evidenced by the highly successful Henderson Travel Agency, founded in 1955 by African-American woman entrepreneur Freddye Henderson in Atlanta, Georgia. Furthermore, the push to be philanthropic was very much in motion, as verified by Gill's discussion of the community activism of beauticians in Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry (2009). 13For example, prominent writer H. G. Wells drafted an international bill of rights in his New World Order. 14The drafting subcommittee was composed of eight individuals from the United States, Lebanon, Great Britain, France, China, Australia, Chile, and the U.S.S.R., which appointed a "working group" of the first four state representatives listed. Rene Cassin, the lead author in drafting the UDHR, states all 58 nations contributed to the final shape of the UDHR. The UDHR was adopted unanimously, albeit with eight abstentions from the Eastern bloc, on 10 December 1948. 15Dorothy Jones discusses why the positioning of the term dignity in the Preamble and Article 1 is significant as a statement of intent for the whole document. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJacqueline Jones Royster Jacqueline Jones Royster is Ivan Allen Jr. Chair and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology, 781 Marietta Street, NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0525, USA. Molly Cochran Molly Cochran is Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, 781 Marietta Street, NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0610, USA.

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening.

An African Athens: Rhetoric and the Shaping of Democracy in South Africa by Philippe‐Joseph Salazar. Mahvah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. 226 pp. + xx. The Insolent Slave by William E. Wiethoff. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. 223 pp. Conceiving Normalcy: Rhetoric, Law, and the Double Binds of Infertility by Elizabeth C. Britt. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique Series, 2001. 206 pp + xi.

Traces of a offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women. With a shift in educational opportunity after the Civil War, African American women gained access to higher education and received formal training in rhetoric and writing. By the end of the nineteenth-century, significant numbers of African American women operated actively in many public arenas.In her study, Royster acknowledges the persistence of disempowering forces in the lives of African American women and their equal perseverance against these forces. Amid these conditions, Royster views the acquisition of literacy as a dynamic moment for African American women, not only in terms of their use of written language to satisfy their general needs for agency and authority, but also to fulfill socio-political purposes as well.Traces of a Stream is a showcase for nineteenth-century African American women, and particularly elite women, as a group of writers who are currently underrepresented in rhetorical scholarship. Royster has formulated both an analytical theory and an ideological perspective that are useful in gaining a more generative understanding of literate practices as a whole and the practices of African American women in particular. Royster tells a tale of rhetorical prowess, calling for alternative ways of seeing, reading, and rendering scholarship as she seeks to establish a more suitable place for the contributions and achievements of African American women writers.

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Research Article| February 01 2000 Short Reviews: Plato's Sophist, by Martin Heidegger, Chaucer and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales, by J. Stephen Russell, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters, by Lynne Magnusson, “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women, by Shirley Wilson Logan and Critiques of Knowing: Situated Textualities in Science, Computing, and the Arts, by Lynette Hunter Martin Heidegger,Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and AndréSchuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), xxvii + 476 pp.J. Stephen Russell,Chaucer and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), x + 266 pp.Lynne Magnusson,Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), x + 221 pp.Shirley Wilson Logan,“We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 255 pp.Lynette Hunter,Critiques of Knowing: Situated Textualities in Science, Computing, and the Arts (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), vi + 239 pp. Michael J. MacDonald, Michael J. MacDonald Department of English, The University of Illinois at Chicago, 601 South Morgan Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7120, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Anne Laskaya, Anne Laskaya Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Judith Rice Henderson, Judith Rice Henderson Department of English, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon SK S7N 5A5, Canada Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jacqueline Jones Royster, Jacqueline Jones Royster Department of English, The Ohio State University, 421 Denney Hall, 164 West 17th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43202, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar C. Jan Swearingen C. Jan Swearingen Texas A & M University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2000) 18 (1): 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2000.18.1.103 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michael J. MacDonald, Anne Laskaya, Judith Rice Henderson, Jacqueline Jones Royster, C. Jan Swearingen; Short Reviews: Plato's Sophist, by Martin Heidegger, Chaucer and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales, by J. Stephen Russell, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters, by Lynne Magnusson, “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women, by Shirley Wilson Logan and Critiques of Knowing: Situated Textualities in Science, Computing, and the Arts, by Lynette Hunter. Rhetorica 1 February 2000; 18 (1): 103–117. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2000.18.1.103 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 2000, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric2000 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviews 111 Shirley Wilson Logan, "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 255 pp. Shirley Wilson Logan introduces "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women by stating, "This book examines the public persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women intellectuals" (p. xi). She continues in the Preface to talk more specifically about the nature of the historical era of the analysis, constraints on the availability of texts, the nature of both public discourse and persuasive discourse, and the rhetorical theories and strategies that shape her analysis. Near the end of the Preface she says, "My hope is that these discussions might also add to a clearer understanding of nineteenth-century culture and of the ways in which the persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women adapted itself to its multiple audiences and multilayered exigences" (p. xvi). By this process, Logan makes the reader immediately aware of the extent to which the participation of African American women in public discourse during the nineteenth century signals complexity, rather than simplicity, and a need for contemporary researchers to account for patterns in rhetorical practices at the same time that we resist reducing those patterns to simplistic and monolithic notions of a "Black women's rhetoric". First of all, in focusing attention on specific rhetors, Logan re­ inscribes the historical record with the names of women who actively charted new pathways for rhetorical engagement during an era of remarkable social, political, and economic change. She brings texture to what we have come to know about the rhetorical performances of Maria Miller Stewart, Frances Watkins Harper, Ida Wells Barnett, Fannie Barrier Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, Victoria Earle Matthews, Mary Shadd Cary, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, and others who in recent years have been brought to the attention particularly of teachers and scholars in women's studies, ethnic studies, and literary studies. To this list, however, she adds the names of women whose accomplishments are much less familiar: Rosetta Douglass-Sprague, Alice Woodby McKane, Lucy 112 RHETORICA Wilmot Smith, Mary Cook, Edmonia Highgate, Georgia Swift King and others. She reminds us that to date we have only scratched the surface of the history of African American women's intellectual work as she places the subjects of her study more visibly onto the rhetorical landscape. Using five themes that are symbolized by quotations from the texts of die rhetors, Logan explains in systematic ways how the rhetorical actions of this group were shaped and performed amid various systems and forces of the social environment. She raises for critical viewing points of inquiry that help us to envision these women both individually and collectively, interrogating, for example: the importance of allusions to an African past in the gamering of rhetorical power; their commitment to forging alliances across various communities of interest; the directing of their energies toward critical issues within the African American community; the use of specific strategies in the art of persuasion; their creation of their own arenas for rhetorical engagement; and the ways and means of rhetorical action in the particular arena of the Black Clubwomen's Movement, that is, their shaping of the discourse of racial uplift. Logan suggests that individually these women illustrate a breadth of rhetorical responses to a continuity of exigencies and that collectively they were quite astute at finding ways to invoke lively connections between themselves and their audiences; to invent themselves anew within their performative arenas; and to respond provocatively to the exigencies of multiply constrained rhetorical situations. The effect of Logan's approach is to underscore a critical point that she makes in her statement of purpose, that is, her assertion that these women are intellectuals. In attending to individual practices, common exigencies, and thematic points of inquiry, Logan makes visible that the case to be made ultimately with this analysis is not simply that African American women engaged persuasively in rhetorical practices in public arenas during this era, but that their doing so demonstrates the liveliness of their intellectual engagement and their ethical commitments. Logan's choice in making this case is to lead us analytically through a textual display, making conditions...

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