DawgNotes

Lundfords collection, Reclaiming Rhetorica began as student driven inquiry. Where were the women in the rhetorical tradition? How could these students know? What evidence could they find? In a sense, this collection is an historical archive project, calling up the writings and records of the lives of women in history and making a case that their activities constituted practices of rhetoric. The essays in this collection are careful to set each woman in her historical context, the social, family and power structures within which she made attempts to persuade, instruct, or plead for particular outcomes. This is not easy work, since many of these women left no written texts of their own. Susan Jarratt, for example, makes note of having to begin with the question, "did Aspasia exist?" Building her argument from a succession of other texts mentioning Aspasia, her salon, her compositions, and her circle of influence, Jarratt gives Aspasia the depth of a "real" historical figure. Other women in history did leave artifacts, such as letters, or instruction manuals for their children, or even religious writings. Scholars deadling with these figures, such as Mary Astell, don't have to first prove her existence, but focus instead on styling those writings and communicative practices as rhetoric, and worthy of inclusion in the rhetorical tradition. This collection also opens up the possibilities for more scholars to search for more figures, and thus open up the tradition of rhetoric even further.

Historical figures discussed in this collection include Aspasia, Diotima, Margery Kempe, Christine de Pisan, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Laura Jackson, Susanne K. Langer, Louise Rosenblatt and Julia Kristeva. Significantly, some of these figures and other women discussed in other collections, appear in the 2nd edition of The Rhetorical Tradition (2000). And the collection called Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s) (2001) presents women's writing and speeches as a collection, rather than having a set of essays about the women who made them. For me, this really shows the importance of the work Lunsford and her group and Wertheimer and her group did. It a very short period, a major anthology of the history was revised, and a free-standing anthology was assembled.

Wertheimer's collection emerged from a different set of circumstances, but at roughly the same time as Lunsford's work. Wertheimer characterizes her collection as within the boundaries of feminist theory. It is an interdisciplinary work, featuring scholars from history and rhetoric, and is positioned for "the promotion of pluralism." Aspasia appears here, along with Harriet Taylor and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, both of whom have remained underexplored and underappreciated alongside their male collaborators. Dhuoda, who wrote an instruction manual for her hostage sons, and Hildegard of Bingen invoked the authority of God working through her to give her writing authority at a time when women were to be silent, especially in the church. Margaret Cavendish broke the barrier of publishing in her own name as a woman, with her husband's support an an audience of his educated friends. An essay featuring the journal of Hestor Ann Rogers shows how the Methodist church under John Wesley encouraged women's rhetorical activity, only to silence them after his death. Additional essays discuss more general the rhetorical practices of women in Ancient Egypt and Rome. Interestingly, in the case of Rome, Robert W. Cape, Jr. discusses how women were allowed to speak in public, and the conditions under which they were hear. Malcom Richardson used business correspondence make his claims about women's rhetorical practices in Medeival England. while Shirley Wilson Logan contributes a chapter on the rhetorical activity of African American women in the nineteenth century, work she later expanded into a book. Mary Wollstonecraft is included here, positioned a little differently than in the Lunsford collection with her work set alongside Hugh Blair's in a feminist reading of Blair. Finally, the collection concludes with discussions of rhetoric handbooks at the turn of the 20th century authored by Gertrude Buck, Hallie Quinn Brown and Mary Augusta Jordan. Each of these women, Jane Donawerth agrues, wrote texts that differed from those intended for men in order to recognize the experiences of women, and the spaces in which their communication lived, more private than public, more conversation than address. These early women instructors works have been taken up since this collection in larger projects on the history of rhetoric and higher education.

The Sutherland/Sutcliffe collection emerged from an international, interdisciplinary conference. These essay extend the project of discovery. Vicki Collins' work on Hestor Rogers re-appears here, as does Jan Swearingen's work on Diotma. Aspasia is again featured, as are Mary Astell and Gerturde Buck. The collection also features St. Catherine of Siena, Lady Mary Wroth, Donna Haraway and Nicole Brossard, along with more general essays about different periods or theories (feminist thought, in particular.) I found the essay on Catherine of Siena particularly interesting, since Margo Husby Scheeler basically reads her life as a text, following Kenneth Burke's notion of behavior as rhetoric. In this case, Catherine's ethos made her iconic, so that the message of her life and its power to influence lived after her as if she were a book to be read and obeyed. Scheeler also makes a key point about recovery work of a historical figure. Following Habermas, she writes, "The researcher cannot merely subject the historical person's life to the researcher's standards but has to endeavor to understand how the person being studied interpreted her actions within the context of her own life." I wish that all my classes deadling with historical figures had begun with this admonition.

From my perspective as a CCR student from 2004 to now, the presence of women in the history of rhetoric, in the rhetorical tradition was "natural." These collections show the efforts that were necessary to make that so.