The importance of gender studies and feminist theory to revisions of rhetoric and rhetorical studies has become a topic of scholarly interest, but to my knowledge has not been addressed specifically in our rhetoric courses.  This class will attempt to remedy that lack by reexamining the rhetorical tradition and contemporary rhetorical theory and practice in light of gender studies and feminist theory.  Thus the course will involve more rhetoric, less literature.  More precisely, it addresses the relation between literary theory, the history of rhetoric, and composition studies.

The class will be divided into three parts.  In the first we will examine the gendering of rhetoric in the classical tradition.  In the second we will address texts that can provide a basis for using gender to revise reigning definitions of rhetoric.  (Here we will focus on the work of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, although we will read other people.)  In the third section we will focus on gender and composition theory and practice.

Texts:

• Plato, Gorgias and Phaedrus  (Hamilton and Cairns, Plato:  The Collected Dialogues)
• Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1
• Cicero, Orator  (Loeb Classical Library)
• Seneca, "On Style as a Mirror of Character" from Epistulae Morales (Loeb Classical Library)
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book 12 (Loeb Classical Library)
• Susan Miller, Rescuing the Subject
• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
• Mary Field Belenky et al, Women's Ways of Knowing:  The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind
• Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering
• Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice
• Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place
• Sarah Ruddick, Maternal Thinking
• Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born Woman
• Cynthia Caywood and Gillian R. Overing, eds., Teaching Writing:  Pedagogy, Gender, and Equity

Requirements:

a.  a short essay "revising" some aspect of classical rhetoric from the perspective of gender.  Possible topics include the notion of levels of style, the orator's ethical nature, the role pathos in rhetorical transactions, the relationship between ethics and persuasiveness, the definition of argument, the role/status of verbal style.  I'm basically asking for a preliminary exploration of how the texts we are reading make you revise the classical definition of rhetoric, as we have inherited it from the classical tradition.  The short paper will be due at the end of week 7.

b.  a long essay on a topic of your choice.  You have a number of possibilities.  Papers applying the theory we read to a literary text or texts, theoretical explorations of a topic, and empirical studies of gender and writing are all welcome.  A two page prospectus will be due at the beginning of week 4.  The long paper itself is due on March 16.

c.  a 10 minute report on a book outside the reading list.  Your task is to introduce other members of the class to other works by our principal authors or to texts related to the topics touched on by those primary texts.

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