This paper introduces the concept of the phallic teacher, a spectral figure that needs to be negotiated in teachers' everyday work and in school-based disciplinary communities of practice. Reporting the findings of a three year doctoral study completed in 2014, the paper looks closely at how English teachers design both curriculum and identity in…

Introduction: Star and Bowker describe the residual as what does not fit into a category system and as an inevitable byproduct of classification. In this project, we explore what happens when we attempt to give prominence to the residual instead of minimizing it. Methods: The three authors created three "transformations" of a small…

As an initial step toward discovering whether a separate genre of women's rhetoric exists, this paper analyzes rhetorical forms used by Mary Daly in the book "Gyn/Ecology." The paper first outlines criteria for determining whether a form has rhetorical significance and traces the historical background of the contemporary feminist…

Ten recent articles and books are cited in this paper as examples of a continuing antifeminist bias in literary criticism. Several forms of this bias are discussed, including an imperviousness to the feminist awareness, a refusal to recognize it, and open irritation by some critics that women are now finding a voice in literary criticism. A…

Activities related to women's issues are many and varied at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, but it is doubtful how much of this sensitivity trickles down into actual literature courses. Efforts at moving students away from passive reading and into a more critical stance that would promote active engagement with texts must be encouraged…

In the process of delegitimating the master narratives that have sustained Western civilization in the past, Postmodernism provoked a "crisis in narrative" which Francois Lyotard describes as narrativity that presents a sense of loss but not of what is lost. Recent histories of rhetoric have promulgated the view that rhetorical maps…

The rhetorical technique of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" is discussed and analyzed as one source of its impact on the women's movement. De Beauvoir's existentialist philosophy is seen as the most significant factor both in her perception of the world and in the rhetorical style adopted in the book. This includes both a…

This exploration of what feminism has to contribute to pragmatism, and vice versa, considers the idea of contextuality through an examination of the role of current pragmatists, such as Cornel West and Richard Rorty, and current feminists, including Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Maxine Greene, and Seyla Benhabib. To set the stage historically for…

The term androgyny, with its sex-related etymology, is based on untenable social stereotypes and for feminist critics is a dead end. The androgyny myth, like matriarchal myths and myths which deify women, should be replaced. However, a replacement would have to fill a wide niche in order to allow critics to focus from a propitious vantage point on…

Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, investigated academic feminism as a case of transformation in higher education. Used narrative analysis to examine the transformative role of feminist scholarship in the contexts of disciplines, departments, and the university, illustrated by the life histories of nine diverse feminists and their…

Rachel Speght, a London (England) minister's daughter, was not yet 20 years old when she wrote her first pamphlet. In it and her other works, she attempted to transcend patriarchal discourses that sought to both define her identity and determine the limits of her rhetorical situation. Women's ontological status, as derived from orthodox…

In recent years some exceptionally optimistic writings by feminist scholars have addressed a shift away from the male manque model of femininity to one celebrating feminine growth. Archetypal myths have inculcated people's minds with the notion that domination and conquest serve to justify men's domination over the feminine. Narrative communicates…

To show how Hugh Blair's treatise on rhetoric helped shape the patriarchal context in which women write and to suggest some considerations for modern teachers of writing, it will be useful to look at the ways 18th-century belletristic rhetoric responded to the disruption occasioned by women's entry into public discourse. Blair's work, the most…

If feminist values are to penetrate and undermine the masculine systems which contain them, it is essential to believe that any serious writing that women do is literature. Only in the last few years has scholarship in women's studies begun to address women in the history of rhetoric. The contemporary woman rhetorician faces the tendency of the…

Examines the International Women's Decade conferences held in 1975, 1980, and 1985. Indicates that amount of coverage increased substantially at the last conference, newspaper editors tended to place stories in lifestyle section rather than in the hard news section, the greatly expanded 1985 coverage was conflict-oriented, and the term…