Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work

An examination of women's work, rhetorical agency, and the construction of female reputationBefore the full and honest tale of humanity can be told, it will be necessary to uncover the hidden roles of women in it and recover their voices from the forces that have diminished their contributions or even at times deliberately eclipsed them. The past half-century has seen women rise to claim their equal portion of recognition, and Remembering Women Differently addresses not only some of those neglected—it examines why they were deliberately erased from history.The contributors in this collection study the contributions of fourteen nearly forgotten women from around the globe working in fields that range from art to philosophy, from teaching to social welfare, from science to the military, and how and why those individuals became either marginalized or discounted in a mostly patriarchal world. These sterling contributors, scholars from a variety of disciplines—rhetoricians, historians, compositionists, and literary critics—employ feminist research methods in examining women's work, rhetorical agency, and the construction of female reputation. By recovering these voices and remembering the women whose contributions have made our civilization better and more whole, this work seeks to ensure that women's voices are never silenced again.

About the Author

Lynée Lewis Gaillet is Distinguished University Professor and chair of the English Department at Georgia State University. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Award and an International Society for the History of Rhetoric Fellowship. Gaillet is the author of many articles and book essays on rhetoric, program administration, composition/rhetoric pedagogy, and archival research methods.

Helen Gaillet Bailey is a marketing communications professional and blogger in Atlanta, Georgia.