Stephanie R. Larson

3 articles
Carnegie Mellon University ORCID: 0000-0002-9379-5767
  1. The Rhetoricity of Fat Stigma: Mental Disability, Pain, and Anorexia Nervosa
    Abstract

    Scholars in disability studies have recently sought to account for fatness, claiming an inseparable link between disability and fat scholarship. Interrogating the stigmas of fatness as a sign of bad character or lack of discipline, rhetoricians have advanced this thinking, illustrating how to be fat is to be rhetorically disabled. Contributing to these efforts, this essay argues that eating disorders, too, are often framed through deficit thinking, positioned as antithetical to mental fitness—a disparaging view echoed prominently by Hilde Bruch. Challenging normative perspectives of rhetoric centered in her theories, I analyze Bruch’s The Golden Cage, tracing descriptions of anorexia and pain through a feminist materialist lens, ultimately revealing how the rhetoricity of fat stigma can be read not only as a product of cultural, patriarchal norms but also as a complex, lived, felt experience of mental disability, expanding theories of rhetoric to the material intersection of gender and embodiment.

    doi:10.1080/02773945.2021.1972131
  2. “Just let this sink in”: Feminist<i>Megethos</i>and the Role of Lists in #MeToo
    Abstract

    The #MeToo movement unveiled a shifting testimonial landscape available to victims of sexual assault, one that was able to apprehend the attention of vast public audiences unlike other protests before it. Through an analysis of published #MeToo tweets and public discussion of them, this essay argues that what happened during #MeToo reveals a feminist deployment of megethos. Theorizing what I term feminist megethos through the lens of listing extends theories of magnitude beyond the idea of cultivating coherence or amounting excessive detail, toward a theory that captures how megethos can puncture pervasive yet normalized attitudes that constrain efforts for justice.

    doi:10.1080/07350198.2019.1655304
  3. <i>Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope</i>, by Cheryl Glenn
    Abstract

    Equal rights remain a fantasy in the United States. In 2017, President Trump rolled back the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order made by President Obama, an order that ensured busines...

    doi:10.1080/02773945.2019.1595617