The CEA Forum

Summer/Fall 2007: 36.2

__________________________________________

Book Review:

Ronald, Kate and Joy Ritchie, eds. Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, Practice. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2006.

by Christine Denecker, University of Findlay

The stylistic adornment of the lily; the solid reasoning of the chain; the classical wisdom of the old man and crow—these elements combine in one image to personify rhetoric's power and beauty: Lady Rhetoric. Ironically, though, while a mythical female image first embodied rhetoric's power and beauty, the voices of real females remained largely unheard in the rhetorical tradition until Andrea Lunsford's groundbreaking collection, Reclaiming Rhetorica (1995) offered an initial scholarly look into women's rhetorical practices. Just over a decade later, Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie's edited collection, Teaching Rhetorica: Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice, examines the effects of rhetorica's renaissance in not only what is taught in university rhetoric and writing courses but also how those courses are taught. Even more importantly, the essays in the collection ponder the impact rhetorica, as an entry-point into meaning making, might have on “caus[ing] us to rethink our positions as teachers, scholars, and administrators, and citizens” (12).

Described by its editors as “the next step in the recovery of women's rhetorics” (1), Teaching Rhetorica serves to further reconceptualize scholars' basic assumptions of “what is rhetoric” by both expanding and troubling the definition via the inclusion of new practitioners and new practices into conversations, classrooms, and communities both within and outside university walls. This expansive, universal view of rhetoric threads throughout the collection and is complemented by equally bold calls to action among the texts' writers who, as a whole, see rhetorica's import as extending beyond the “private” realm of theoretical discussions and pedagogical approaches to the public sphere of local, national, and even global change.

Ronald and Ritchie's introduction acknowledges what both Andrea Lunsford and Cheryl Glenn, respectively, have noted as the gaps, blanks, and erasures in the history of women's rhetorics. And while Lunsford, Glenn, and a number of others have done much to reclaim those missing voices, Ronald and Ritchie frame their collection with the question “To what effect?” In other words, amidst the ongoing and crucial work of regendering rhetoric, “What difference does women's rhetorics make to our teaching? . . .”, and how can rhetorica lead “us to more complex and divergent notions of feminist rhetorical theory as well as feminist pedagogy”? (3). The essays housed in Ronald and Ritchie's text get at those questions—not with easy answers but with answers both disconcerting and enlightening.

Fittingly, Lunsford, in an article with Lisa Ede entitled “Crimes of Writing and Reading,” opens Ronald and Ritchie's collection. The article begins with a recitation of the body of works that have collectively “reclaimed rhetorica” to this point—from Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's Man Cannot Speak for Her (1989) to Radical Feminism, Writing, and Critical Agency (2005) by Jacqueline Rhodes. This nascent yet burgeoning list evokes the roots of rhetorica and its challenge to hegemony; furthermore, it lays the groundwork for Lunsford and Ede's discussion of the works, acts, and ultimately the “crimes” of Kathy Acker, Anna Deavere Smith, and Azar Nafisi who, by turns, have challenged how and under what circumstances one writes, performs, reads, and teaches a text. Lunsford and Ede's piece closes with the important reminder that “rhetoric is, after all, the search for the best available means of persuasion in a particular situation—whether that situation involves writing an argument or teaching a class” (30). The notion of “best available means” seems at the heart of Krista Ratcliffe's analysis of gender theory and feminism in rhetoric, composition, and cultural studies as well as Writing Program Administration. Through an application of Adrienne Rich's feminist theories in the aforementioned areas, Ratcliffe argues the need for a “feminist literacy” among instructors and students; a literacy “which challenges us to question commonly accepted patterns of thinking, feelilng, and acting and then to reaffirm, resist, and/or revise them” (40). Ratcliffe, in a “practice what you preach” turn, then discusses her own reconfiguration of the first-year English program at Marquette University in Milwaukee where she melded theory and pedagogy based on Rich's work.

Kathryn T. Flannery, too, channels Rich in her essay, “Shifting the Center of Gravity” by discussing the impact of women's liberation and feminist movements both within the official university and outside university walls. Like Rich and so many others, Flannery sees women as “knowledge producers” and delineates the collaborative, recursive, on-going, and paradoxical nature of feminist pedagogies and scholarship. Gwendolyn D. Pough, her article, “Each One, Pull One,” further highlights the multifaceted nature of rhetorica by explicating the many “shades” of feminism—specifically black feminist pedagogy and womanist rhetoric. In teasing out the differences, Pough also uncovers the complementary nature and effectiveness of combining these particular elements of feminism as is seen in her students' evolving responses to Alice Walker's poem “Each One, Pull One.” Similarly, Beth Daniell describes her application of feminist pedagogy via the “Dissoi Logoi” in her own composition classroom and explains how ancient rhetoric's theories on opposing arguments align with women's propensity to see more than one viewpoint. The result, according to Daniell, is a feminist pedagogy that facilitates increased meaning making, empowerment, and voice among student writers.

Although a universality of cause and a call to an increased transnational perspective permeates many of the selections in Ronald and Ritchie's text, this impetus appears most strongly in the selections of Wendy S. Hesford, Nancy Welch, and Eileen E. Schell, who discuss women's trauma pedagogies, political activism, and geopolitical rhetoric, respectively. Hesford's piece, “Documenting Violations,” analyzes the powerful rhetorical impact of “witnessing” human suffering versus being a “consumer of others' suffering” (101)—an impact that, as pedagogy, may aid students and scholars in an understanding of each individual's culpability in acts of global violence. This movement toward not just acknowledging global transgressions but acting upon that knowledge drives Welch's “Taking Sides,” an article which critiques maternalist and third-sophistic rhetoric and then poses an intersection of the two where collective rhetorical strategies can emerge as “powerful tools” in the fight against “women's oppression” (157). Likewise, Schell espouses new activist rhetorics in her essay “Gender, Rhetorics, and Globalization” by recasting oppressed women as empowered and “actively engaged in crafting and deploying the available means of persuasion to fight back against exploitation” (162). Drawing on theories of third-wave feminism, Schell argues for transnational feminism as a starting point in the development of global connectivity and global citizenship. She then demonstrates the transformative nature of transnational feminist pedagogy in action by sharing observations from her undergraduate writing and rhetoric courses that focus on sweatshop labor.

A similar blurring of public and private, inherent in women's rhetorics, is seen in the work of Marguerite Helmers who discusses in “Objects, Memory, and Narrative” how everyday objects can be utilized to create an object-based rhetoric as seen in artifacts collected or placed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. According to Helmers, artifacts should not be overlooked in rhetorical scholarship and pedagogy, since they possess an enthographic rhetorical agency infused with “the powerful forces of history and memory” (128). Shari Stenberg also calls for an “interruption” of traditional rhetoric in her essay, “Making Room for New Subjects.” Complete with its own narrative “interruptions,” Stenberg's entry ponders issues of authority in the classroom, excess in scholarship, and the possibilities of feminist pedagogies for truly meeting the needs and challenges of teaching composition and rhetoric at the university level.

In all, Ronald and Ritchie's text does exactly what it claims; its writers examine rhetorica's diverse theories and pedagogies and then show the “expansive possibilities” (12) that emerge when rhetorica is practically applied in the classroom. Admittedly, the results of such applications are not necessarily neat or predictable, but as the essays in the volume demonstrate, they are transformative. In other words, Teaching Rhetorica lives up to its mythical namesake: it embraces the stylistic adornment of the lily, the solid reasoning of the chain, the classical wisdom of the old man and the crow, and most importantly the powerful woman at the center who is both an individual and a collective force that continues to define and redefine rhetoric.

Return to Table of Contents