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List of female rhetoricians

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Within the field of rhetoric, the contributions of women rhetoricians have often been overlooked. If one were to peruse through any number of anthologies comprising the history of rhetoric or rhetoricians would often leave the impression there were none. Throughout history, however, there have been a significant number of women rhetoricians.

Re∙Vision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction--is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. -Adrienne Rich

This quote signifies the very essence of Women's Rhetoric. It is about looking at things in different ways. A dissection of rhetoric through the lens of a woman. The following is a time-line of contributions made to the field of rhetoric by women.

Before Common Era

Aspasia (c. 410 BC)

Although most women of the time were generally not as educated as their male counterparts and were generally restricted in public roles, Aspasia was an exception. She is mentioned in Plato's Memexenus and was known and highly regarded for her teaching of political theory and rhetoric. She is often credited with teaching the Socratic method to Socrates.

Diotima (4th Century BC)

The only reference to Diotima is found in Plato's Symposium. It is still uncertain if she were a real person or perhaps a character molded after Aspasia, for whom Plato had much respect.

Hortensia (1 BC)

  • Letter I. Heloise to Abelard" (1132)

14th Century

Julian of Norwich (1343-1415)

Challenged the teachings of medieval Christianity in regard to women's inferior role in religion.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

Influential for her writings to men and women in authority where she begged for peace in Italy and for the return of the papacy to Rome. Catherine of Siena was canonized in 1461 by Pope Pius II.

  • "Letter 83: To Mona Lapa, her mother, in Siena" (1376)

Christine de Pizan (1365-1430)

Influential as being a significant writer, rhetorician and critic during the medieval period. She confronted sexist thinking of the time by establishing herself as a female thinker and author in a male-dominated society. She was Europe's first female professional author.

15th Century

Laura Cereta (1469-1499)

Cereta was a Renaissance humanist and feminist who was influentional in the letters she wrote to other intellectuals. She learned to read and write while at a religious convent. She got married at sixteen and was only married a short time before her husband died. After her husband died, she concentrated on her own scholarly pursuits, and she fought to defend women's rights for education and fought against the oppression of married women she saw taking place through her letters.

  • Letter to Bibulus, Sempronius, Defense of the Liberal Instruction of Women" (1488)

Margery Kempe (1373-1439)

Kempe could neither read nor write, but she dictated her life story after receiving a vision of Christ during the birth of the first of her fourteen children.

Her story is considered to be the first autobiography written in English and provides valuable insight to the middle-class female experience of the Middle Ages, enhanced by social and spiritual commentary. Scholars in the 15th century viewed Kempe as a holy woman after a pamphlet was published which stripped any thought or behavior that could potentially be viewed as nonconforming or unorthodox out of her book.

17th Century

Margaret Fell (1614-1702)

Fell challenged the Quaker religion, defending women's rights to speak in church. She was persecuted and imprisoned for speaking her mind. She is credited with many essential changes within the Quaker church which brought more freedom for women in religious, social, and political areas.

  • Womens Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by the Scriptures (1666)

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695)

Mexican of origin, de la Cruz entered a convent to dedicate her life to scholarship where she took part in elite intellectual circles of her time. Many see her as the first feminist of the New World. Wrote poetry, essays, and religious treatises, and argued for a more holistic role for women in society.

Mary Astell (1668-1731)

Many regard her to have been the first English feminist writer. In her anonymous publications, Astell vigirously supported equal education opportunities for women.

18th Century

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Wollstonecraft was a British writer who wrote abundantly across the disciplines. In her brief writing career she advocated women's equality and argued against the male birthright as a necessity for political rights. Today, she is celebrated as an essential force in the history of feminism.

19th Century

Maria W. Stewart(1803-1879)

Stewart, who had no formal education, became a powerful orator in the early 1830s. Her speeches addressed the plight of Northern black people and drew from the Scriptures to form strong arguments. She became the first woman to speak in front of a mixed audience, both male and female, black and white.

  • "Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall" (1832)

Kate Chopin (1850-1904)

Sarah Grimke (1792-1873)

Grimke was influential for work in the abolotionist movement during the Civil War and also for writings and lectures she made in support of President Abraham Lincoln.

Since Grimke was prohibited from receiving formal education, she educated herself to become an attorney and eventually a judge. She also taught her personal slave to read even though it was against the law for her to do so. Grimke became a Quaker in 1821 where she attacked slavery. She noted that fighting for abolition was as important as fighting for women's rights.

  • "Letter to Theodore Weld" (1837)

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Fuller is seen by many as a ground-breaking contributor to the first wave of feminism which pinnacled in the Seneca Falls Convention. Her idea of gender equality rested upon the transcendental notion of the universal one, the fact that female and male form a whole and require one another.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)

A former slave, Truth became an important rhetorical figure for the women's rights movement with her powerful oratory skills with which she recalled her slavery experience to her audience. Truth could neither read nor write, but shone with her brilliance in spoken argument in which she challenged white Americans to live up to their own ideals.

Fances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

Sarah Winnemucca (1841-1891)

Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was involved in the 19th century temperance and the abolitionist movements. Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the primary organizers of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments" for the convention, in which she declares that men and women are created equal. She also proposed a resolution demanding the right to vote be extended to include women. That resolution was voted upon at the convention and carried. Stanton went on to write many important documents and speeches of the women's rights movement.

Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944)

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)

Born into slavery, Wells is considered the first female reporter of the U.S. She researched and rallied campaigns against systematic lynching in the South at the end of the 1800s. After much personal tragedy, she expanded her activism to Europe. Wells was known for her strong belief in logos, her idea that the truth speaks for itself, and her neglience of emotional appeal in her reporting.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was prominent an an American author, artist, lecturer, and feminist social reformer. She is best known for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she based on her own experience with mental illness and misguided medical treatment.

20th Century

Gertrude Buck (1871-1922)

Mary Augusta Jordan (1855-1941)

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)

Margaret Sanger was the founder of the American Birth Control League (currently called Planned Parenthood), a birth control activist, and an advocate of certain aspects of eugenics. Stanger eventually gained support of the public and courts for ideas giving women the right to decide when and how she will bear children even though the public and courts were fiercely opposed to them at first. Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control.

Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)

Dorothy Day (1897-1980)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf was a British author who is considered, by many, to be one of the foremost modernist/feminist literary figures of the twentieth century. Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group between World War I and World War II.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

Adrienne Rich (1929- )

Helene Cixous (1937- )

Cixious is considered one of the three most famous feminists in France, being a professor of literature at the Universite de Paris VIII which she helped to found in 1968. She has written more than thirty books of fiction as well as numerous essays and plays. She urges women to reclaim their natural relationships with their bodies and become rhetorically expressive. Cixiuos's work sparked the French feminist theory of ecriture feminine.

Julia Kristeva (1941- )

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

Merle Woo (1941- )

An Asian American activist who brought two lawsuits against the University of California in the 1980s for race, gender, sexual orientation, and political bias. In her "Letter to Ma," she re-lives the silent relationship with her mother and addresses social issues such as racism, sexism, oppression and exploitation as underlying themes. Her letter resonates with the Asian American experience and reclaims power and pride for Asian American heritage.

Alice Walker (1944- )

Evelyn Fox Keller (1936- )

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005)

Paula Gunn Allen (1939- )

Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004)

June Jordan (1936-2002)

Trinh T. Minh-Ha (1952- )

Bell Hooks (1952- )

Bell Hooks, who was born Gloria Jean Watkins, is an internationally recognized intellectual, speaker, writer, and social activist. She focuses on how race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination are interconnected. She is a recognized author and has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles. She has also appeared in several documentary films, and participated in various public lectures. Hooks addresses race, gender, and class in education, sexuality, feminism, history, art and the mass media through a black female perspective.

Nancy Mairs (1964- )

Terry Tempest-Williams (1955- )

Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946- )

Dorothy Allison (1949- )

Nomy Lamm (1976- )

Nomy Lamm is a self-described “fat-ass bad-ass Jew dyke amputee.” She is also an award winning musician (queer punk). She forces her audience, whether through her music or through her lectures, to consider the oppression of fat people. Because of this activism, she earned the title "Woman of the Year" from Ms. Magazine.

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948 - )

Ruth Behar (1962- )

Behar was born in Cuba in 1962. Her parents moved Behar's family to the US where she became an accomplished poet, writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist. She is currently employed at the University of Michigan.

Gloria Steinem (1934- )

  • Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions(1983)
  • Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
  • Revolution from Within (1992)
  • Moving beyond Words (1993)
  • Supremacy Crimes (1999)

Source

  • Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric. Ed. Richie, Joy & Kate Ronald. Pittburgh: University Press, 2001.
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