AMST 165 Pen and Voice: Feminist Rhetorics and Abolition
This course is an examination of feminist rhetorical history, theory, and criticism. We will study the way women (a gendered term we will complicate) have been represented through language, and how social, historical, and cultural circumstances have shaped the ways women speak, write, and communicate more broadly. We will examine how social relations, power, knowledge, and identities are constituted through rhetorical acts such as speeches, literature, film and media, and music. Through these materials, we will discern how gender abolitionists and activists advanced a vision of social change, acted to implement such change, and contributed to rhetorical history in the process. Throughout the course, we will interrogate and challenge the seeming erasure of women and "gender outlaws" from white patriarchal rhetorical history, or what bell hooks termed “white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”
We examine feminist rhetorics focused on topics of abolition, rights, and reform movements from the U.S. 19th century to the present including:
At the end of the course, students will create a social justice project that will allow them to put their own “femrhet” into action and envision a more just world. This course is part of the Humanities for Just Communities curriculum.