Rhetorics of the Body List

Rhetorics of the Body

Recently, rhetoric and composition scholars’ attention has been piqued by the rhetorical power of the material – in particular bodies. This renewed interest has been prompted in part by postmodern and feminist theories as well as by reactions against these theories; however, much of this scholarship has social justice as a goal, “identifying how rhetorical and literary productions are potentially disruptive of dominant structures which produce them” (Dickson 298).  Rhetoric and composition scholars have generally taken four approaches to studying the body. While collections like Crowley and Selzer’s Rhetorical Bodies emphasize how language about the body has bodily effects, texts like Hawhee’s Bodily Arts and Fleckenstein’s Embodied Literacy urge us to recognize how bodies and materiality participate in producing meaning. Recent work drawing from disability studies (e.g. Bruggman’s Lend Me Your Ear) focus on the impact of actual bodies, connecting notions of language directly to the body’s lived experience. Finally, some texts try to identify and reclaim bodies that historically have been left out of and ignored by rhetoric and composition.

Despite the seeming variety of approaches, rhetoric and composition’s focus on the body problematizes a disciplinary privileging of the epistemic over the ontic. Canonical Greek and Roman rhetoric texts regarded the body with suspicion and disparagement (e.g. Plato’s warnings about the body’s preference for cookery over medicine). Levy argues that, “from this lineage, we rhetors, compositionists, and theorists inherit and reinscribe our prioritization of language, ideas, words, and epistemology” (38) – often by emphasizing the power of language, ideas, and discourse over the body. Feminist theory, postmodern theory, and rhetoric of the body all trouble the long-standing philosophical tradition that the minded subject has agency over the physical body. They explore the ways the body is culturally constructed, naturally and biologically determined, and the spaces in-between. Their shared project highlights the way materiality is shaped and not-quite-constrained by dominant norms and a philosophical goal of disrupting these assumptions by insisting that the body – and indeed matter – matters, with the hope of allowing us to envision alternate worlds. 

In particular, I’m interested in reading the following list with these questions in mind:

·        How does language become inscribed on the body? What are its bodily effects? What effects does the body have on language?

·         How does the presence and shape of the body impact rhetorical productions?

·         How is the body discussed, framed, and placed in institutional discourses like those of medicine and science? And what bodies are deemed worthy of discussion? Appropriate for intervention and alteration?

·         How do the body and our experiences of embodiment affect our pedagogies?

·         What roles do materiality and the body play in histories of rhetoric?

·         How do different categories – disability, race, gender, etc. – affect who we see as a “fit” rhetor?

List: 72

Alexander, Jonathan. “Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body.”College Composition and Communication 57.1 (2005): 45-82. Print.

Baker, Lynne Rudder. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.

Banks, William P. “Written Through the Body: Disruptions and ‘Personal’ Writing.” College English 66.1 (2003): 21-40. Print.

Bay, Jennifer. “Screening (In)formation: Bodies and Writing in Network Culture.” Plugged In: Technology, Rhetoric and Culture in a Posthuman Age. Ed. Lynn Worsham and Gary A. Olson. Cresskill: Hampton P, 2008. 25-40. Print.

Bennet, Michael and Vanessa Dickerson. Recovering the Black Female Body: Self Representation by African American Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. Print.

Birke, Lynda. Feminism and the Biological Body. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000. Print.

Birmingham, Elizabeth. “Another Fine Mess: The Pregnant Body and the Discipline of the Line.” Writing on the Edge 14.2 (2004): 95-109. Print.

Boler, Megan. “Hypes, Hopes and Actualities: New Digital Cartesianism and Bodies in Cyberspace.” New Media & Society 9.1 (2007): 139-168. Print.

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.  10^th Anniversary Ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Print.

Bray, Abigail and Claire Colebrook. “The Haunted Flesh: Corporeal Feminism and the Politics of (Dis)Embodiment.” Signs 24.1 (1998): 35-67. Print.

Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Lend Me Your Ear: Rhetorical Constructions of Deafness. Washington, DC: Gallaudet UP, 1999. Print.

—. “An Enabling Pedagogy: Meditations on Writing and Disability.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory21.4 (2001): 791-820. Print.

Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, Linda Feldmeier White, Patricia A. Dunn, Barbara A. Heifferon, and Cheu Johnson. “Becoming Visible: Lessons in Disability.” College Composition and Communication 52.3 (2001): 368-98. Print.

Brush, Pippa. “Metaphors of Inscription: Discipline, Plasticity and the Rhetoric of Choice.” Feminist Review58 (1998): 22-43. Print.

Buchanan, Lindal. Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Rhetors. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.

Cixous, Helene, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs. 1.4 (Summer 1976): 875-893. Print.

Coleman, Rebecca. “The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Media Effects, and Body Image.” Feminist Media Studies 8.2 (2008): 163-179. Print.

Connor, David J., and Beth A. Ferri. Learning Disabilities. Special Issue of Disability Studies Quarterly30.2 (2010). Web. 27 Nov. 2011.

Corker, Mairian and Tom Shakespeare, eds. Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Political Theory. London: Continuum, 2002. Print.

Crable, Bryan. “Symbolizing Motion: Burke’s Dialectic and Rhetoric of the Body.” Rhetoric Review. 22.2 (2003): 121-137. Print.

Crowley, Sharon and Jack Selzer, eds. Rhetorical Bodies. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1999. Print.

Davis, Lennard, ed. The Disability Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1984. Print.

Dolmage, Jay. “Breathe Upon Us An Even Flame: Hephaestus, History and the Body of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 25.2 (2006): 119-40. Print.

—. “Metis, Mętis, Mestiza, Medusa: Rhetorical Bodies across Rhetorical Traditions.” Rhetoric Review 28.1 (2009): 1-28. Print.

—. “Disabled Upon Arrival: The Rhetorical Construction of Disability and Race at Ellis Island.” Cultural Critique 77 (2011): 24-69. Print.

—. “Between the Valley and the Field: Metaphor and the Construction of Disability.” Prose Studies 27.1 (2005): 108-19. Print.

—. “Disability Studies Pedagogy, Usability and Universal Design.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25.4 (2005). Print.

Durham, Meenakshi. “Body Matters: Resuscitating the Corporeal in a New Media Environment.” Feminist Media Studies 11.1 (2011): 53-60. Print.

Fixmer, Natalies and Julia T. Wood. “The Personal is Still Political: Embodied Politics in Third Wave Feminism.” Women’s Studies in Communication 28.2 (2005): 235-57. Print.

Fleckenstein, Kristie S. “Bodysigns: A Biorhetoric for Change.” JAC: A Journal of Advanced Composition Theory 21.4 (2001): 761-90. Print.

---. Embodied Literacies: Imageword and the Poetics of Teaching. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2003. Print.

---. “Writing Bodies: Somatic Mind in Composition Studies.” College English 61.3 (1999): 281-306. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.

---. History of Sexuality: v1. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.

---. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Boston: U of Massachusetts P, 1988. Print.

Freedman, Diane P., and Martha Stoddard Holmes, eds. The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003. Print.

Gibson, Barbara E. “Disability, Connectivity and Transgressing the Autonomous Body.” Journal of Medical Humanities 27.3 (2006): 187-96. Print.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Print.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.

Harold, Christine L. “The Rhetorical Function of the Abject Body: Transgressive Corporeality in Trainspotting.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 20.4 (2000): 865-87. Print.

Harrington, Dana. “Remembering the Body: Eighteenth-Century Elocution and the Oral Tradition.”Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 28.1 (2010): 67-95. Print.

Hartsock, Nancy C.M. “Experience, Embodiment and Epistemologies.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 21.2 (2006): 178-83. Print.

Hawhee, Debra. Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece. Austin: U of Texas P, 2004. Print.

—. Moving Bodies: Kenneth Burke at the Edges of Language. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2009. Print.

Hesford, Wendy S. “Rereading Rape Stories: Material Rhetoric and the Trauma of Representation.”College English 62.2 (1999): 192-221. Print.

Hindman, Jane E. “Writing an Important Body of Scholarship: A Proposal for an Embodied Rhetoric of Professional Practice.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 22.1 (2002): 93-118. Print.

Iwanicki, Christine E. “Living Out Loud within the Body of the Letter: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Materiality of Language.” College English 65.5 (2003): 494-510. Print.

Jack, Jordynn, ed. Neurorhetorics. Special Issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40.5 (2010). Print.

Johnson, Nan. Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866-1910. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. Print.

Jordan, John W. “The Rhetorical Limits of the Plastic Body.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.3 (2004): 327-58. Print.

Juarez, Marissa Marie. Bodily Force and Rhetorical Function in the Afro-Brazilian Art Form of Capoeira. Diss. University of Arizona, 2012. Tucson, AZ. Print.

Jung, Julie. “Textual Mainstreaming and Rhetorics of Accomodation.” Rhetoric Review 26.2 (2007): 160-78. Print.

Kates, Susan. “The Embodied Rhetoric of Hallie Quinn Brown.” College English 59.1 (1997): 59-71. Print.

Kazan, Tina S. “Dancing Bodies in the Classroom: Moving Toward an Embodied Pedagogy.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Composition, and Culture 5.3 (2005): 379-408. Print.

Kennedy, Kristen. “Hipparchia the Cynic: Feminist Rhetoric and the Ethics of Embodiment.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 14.2 (1999): 48-71. Print.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. “Appeals to the Body in Eco-Rhetoric and Techno-Rhetoric.” Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication. Ed. Stuart Selber. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2010. 79-93. Print.

Kuppers, Petra. Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on the Edge. Routledge: New York, 2003. Print.

Lay, Mary M. The Rhetoric of Midwifery: Gender, Knowledge, and Power. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000. Print.

Lay, Mary M., Laura J. Gurak, Clare Gravon, and Cynthia Myntti, eds. Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2000. Print.

Lebesco, Kathleen. Revolting Bodies?: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2004. Print.

Levy, Daisy. This Book Called My Body: An Embodied Rhetoric. Diss. Michigan State University, 2012. Lansing, MI. Print.

Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia. “Ableist Rhetorics, Nevertheless: Disability and Animal Rights in the Work of Peter Singer and Martha Nussbaum.” JAC 31.1-2 (2011): 71-101. Print.

Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia, and Brenda Jo Brueggamann, with Jay Dolmage, eds. Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. Print.

Lunsford, Scott. “Seeking a Rhetoric of the Rhetoric of Dis/Abilities.” Rhetoric Review 24.3 (2005): 330-33. Print.

Mascia-Lees, Frances E. A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011. Print.

Marback, Richard. “Detroit and the Closed Fist: Toward a Theory of Material Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review17.1 (1998): 74-92. Print.

—. “Unclenching the Fist: Embodying Rhetoric and Giving Objects Their Due.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly38.1 (2008): 46-65. Print.

Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon, 1987. Print.

Mattingly, Carol. Appropriate[ing] Dress: Women’s Rhetorical Style in Nineteenth Century America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. Print.

May, Vivian M., and Beth Ferri. “Fixated on Ability: Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance.” Prose Studies 27.1-2 (2005): 120-40. Print.

McGee, Robyn. Hungry for More: A Keeping-it-Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and the Body. Emeryville, CA: Seal, 2005. Print.

McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: New York UP, 2006. Print.

Mendelson, Michael. “The Rhetoric of Embodiment.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28.4 (1998): 29-50. Print.

Mitchell, David, and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependence of Disclosure. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001. Print.

Mol, Annemarie. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Print.

Mountford, Roxanne. The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2003. Print.

Parrot, Roxanne, and Celeste Condit, eds. Evaluating Women’s Health Messages: A Resource Book. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996. Print.

Perl, Sondra. Felt Sense: Writing With the Body. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2004. Print.

Price, Margaret. “Access Imagined: The Construction of Disability in Conference Policy Documents.” Disability Studies Quarterly 29.2 (2009): n. pag. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.

—. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2011. Print.

Pruchnic, Jeff. “Rhetoric, Cybernetics, and the Work of the Body in Burke’s Body of Work.” Rhetoric Review 25.3 (2006): 275-296. Print.

Rinaldi, Jacqueline. “Rhetoric and Healing: Revising Narratives about Disability.” College English 58.7 (1996): 820-34. Print.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.

Roets, Griet, and Dan Goodley. “Disability, Citizenship and Uncivilized Society: The Smooth and Nomadic Qualities of Self-Advocacy.” Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008): n. pag. Web. 27 Nov. 2011.

Rothblum, Esther, and Sondra Solovay, eds. The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.

Salamon, Gayle. Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.

Schweik, Susan M. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.

Segal, Judy. Health and The Rhetoric of Medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.

Seigel, Marika. “Exposing the Body.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 21.3 (2001): 683-89. Print.

Shalma, Margaret and Rod Michalko. “Resistance Training: Re-Reading Fat Embodiment at a Women’s Gym.” Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008): n. pag. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

Shapiro, Sherry and Svi Shapiro, eds. Body Movements: Pedagogy, Politics, and Social Change. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002. Print.

Shaw, Andrea Elizabeth. The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006. Print.

Shildrick, Margrit. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism, and (Bio)Ethics. New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2008. Print.

Snyder, Sharon, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: MLA, 2002. Print.

Stenberg, Shari. “Embodied Classrooms, Embodied Knowledges: Re-Thinking the Mind/Body Split.”Composition Studies 30.2 (2002): 43-60. Print.

Sunden, Jenny. Material Virtualities: Approaching Online Textual Embodiment. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Print.

Thayer, Kevin A. Cyborg Metapathography in Michael Chorost’s Rebuilt: Introducing the Cyborg Patient as Transhumanist Rhetor. Diss. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Troy, NY, 2012. Print.

Titchkosky, Tanya. “Clenched Subjectivity: Disability, Women, and Medical Discourse.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25.3 (2005): n. pag. Web. 27 Nov 2011.

—. Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2007. Print.

Vidali, Amy. “Performing the Rhetorical Freak Show: Disability, Student Writing, and College Admissions.”College English 69.6 (2007): 615-641. Print.

Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly. Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Black Female Body in American Culture. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002. Print.

Weiss, Gail. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Wells, Susan. Our Bodies, Ourselves and the Work of Writing. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2010. Print.

Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print.

White, E. Frances. Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2001. Print.

Wilson, James C. and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, eds. Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. Print.

Young, Iris Marion. On Female Body Experience. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.