Signatures of citizenship: The rhetoric of women's antislavery petitions

The State of the Art in Feminist Scholarship in Communication

“…Finally, this review does not indicate the importance of the increasing numbers of scholarly books being published by feminist researchers in communication. For example, two of the essays highlighted here (Vavrus, 1998;Zaeske, 2002) Organizations (2003). This is a trend more evident in those areas of the field in which critical methodologies dominate, but these areas are also more conducive to the publication of scholarly books.…”

“…The most frequently referenced include personal narrative, consciousness raising, "feminine style," the comic frame, and perspective by incongruity or dissonant juxtaposition (e.g., Campbell, 1973Campbell, , 1989Hayden, 1999aHayden, , 2003Powell, 1995;Suzuki, 2000). Articles in the past 5 years have reiterated the utility of juxtaposition (Campbell, 1998;Cooper & Pease, 2002), petitioning (Zaeske, 2002), letter writing (Gring-Pemble, 1998), and humor or the comedic (Cooper & Pease, 2002;Demo, 2000). Most feminist scholars no longer expect to find "pure" tactics that can never go awry or be co-opted (Papa, Singhal, Ghanekar, & Papa, 2000), but they have argued that often devices such as synecdoche (Foss & Domenici, 2001), satire (Campbell, 1998;Gring-Pemble & Watson, 2003), reversal (Campbell, 1998;Hayden, 1999b), and narrative (Cooper & Pease, 2002;Fabj, 1998;Ford & Crabtree, 2002;Gring-Pemble, 2001;Schely-Newman, 1998) have affinities with feminist goals of dismantling patriarchal structures.…”

“…Second, feminist rhetorical studies are generally more theoretically informed in specifically feminist ways than they have been previously and are also generally more ambitious in their attempts to intervene in issues that preoccupy feminists across the academy, such as the development of political subjectivity (Gring-Pemble, 1998;Zaeske, 2002); the centrality of race, class, sexuality, and nationality to feminist analysis (Behling 2003;Brookey, 1998;Hayden, 1999b;Kowal, 2000;Morris, 2001;Olson, 1998;Ray, 2003;Suzuki, 2000;Triece, 2000); and the possibilities for using our scholarship to inform ongoing feminist conflicts and issues in the public sphere (Anderson, 2002;Demo, 2000;Gring-Pemble & Blair, 2000;Olson, 1998). Such foci indicate movement beyond the effects criterion often used in early studies of feminist discourse, a criterion that "focuses on successful adaptation to immediate audiences" and, given the powerful obstacles they faced, often resulted in finding women "deficient as orators" (Condit, 1993, p. 211).…”

“…Moreover, in recent years, such work is distinguished not only by its focus on feminist public discourse, but also by its use of the critique of that discourse to understand the possibilities and limitations of historical and contemporary feminist projects. From an early focus on orator studies (still a considerable focus in current scholarship, see Anderson, 2002;Behling, 2002;Brookey, 1998;Gutgold, 2001;Hayden, 1999aHayden, , 1999bHuxman, 2001;McGee, 2003;Miller, 1999;Olson, 1998;Shepler & Mattina, 1999;Suzuki, 2000;Voss & Rowland, 2000), scholarship on feminist discourse has expanded to include nonoratorical forms, such as books, newspapers, manifestos, letters, and petitions (Gring-Pemble, 1998;GringPemble & Blair, 2000;Pearce, 1999, Pearson, 1999Ray, 2003;Stormer, 2001;Zaeske, 2002) and nondiscursive forms such as cartoons, posters, parades, marches, and violent protest tactics (Borda, 2002;Demo, 2000;Foss & Domenici, 2001;Kowal, 2000;Ramsey, 2000).…”

“…This work generally highlights the form and function of feminist, and sometimes prefeminist (e.g., Gring-Pemble, 1998;Voss & Rowland, 2000;Zaeske 2002), discourse in the public sphere, focusing on issues as varied as the development of feminist consciousness (Gring-Pemble, 1998), intramovement conflict (Gring-Pemble & Blair, 2000;Pearson, 1999), rhetorical leadership styles (Huxman, 2001), the interaction of feminist discourse with broad historical and material conditions rather than narrowly drawn rhetorical situations (Kowal, 2000;Ramsey, 2000), and feminist rhetors' struggles with and responses to the constraints of patriarchal language or rhetorical norms (Hayden, 1999a;Morris, 2001;Pearce, 1999). In addition to the expansion in its range of texts and critical purposes, the maturation of the analysis of women's/feminist discourse over the past few decades is shown in at least two ways.…”