The emergence of feminist scholarship in the field of communication follows, in many respects, a semilar historical trajectory to that of feminist visibility in the culture at large. When the second wave of feminism emerged in public consciousness around 1970, communication scholars began to attend more closely to the role of gender in communication practices. That attention was inflected by the concerns of the women’s movement—exposing sexism and sex-role socialization, interrogating the role of power in relations between men and women, understanding how awareness of the influence of gender requires rethinking claims of universality based on male experience and behaviors. In rhetorical studies, these emphases produced such germinal scholarship as Karlyn Kohrs Campbell’s 1973 essay, “The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymoron,” which argued that second-wave feminist rhetoric could not be adequately understood through traditional rhetorical models. In interpersonal communication, they led to a question

The State of the Art in Feminist Scholarship in Communication

This project responds to a need for new theoretical tools for understanding law as a site for the intersection of rhetoric and philosophy. In advancing the concept of “models of judgment” as a meta-theoretical approach to the philosophical rhetoric of jurisprudence, I argue that it provides a unique perspective on the rhetorical commitments undergirding prominent judicial theories. Paragons of good judgment crafted by Richard Posner, Martha Nussbaum, and Cass Sunstein are examined, foregrounding their rhetorical character and function.

Models of Judgment: Rhetoric and the Public Philosophies of Law

The growing integrative health care community has produced a rhetorical text stressing personal empowerment, egalitarian relationships, and medical knowledge based on one's bodily experiences. This article examines the rhetoric of best-selling books and PBS documentaries promoting integrative medicine. A metaphor analysis of the rhetoric suggests that integrative medical practitioners perform a feminist intervention in biomedical discourse having the potential to significantly alter health care practices in the U.S.

Feminist Interventions in Biomedical Discourse: An Analysis of the Rhetoric of Integrative Medicine

Extending an important rhetorical tradition of investigating women's positioning/positionalities in the national imaginary, in society, and in the law, this essay examines how non-US citizen women and their experiences are deployed toward objectives of the US state. Specifically, I analyze the rhetorical significance of two precedent-setting gender-based asylum cases, those of Fauziya Kassindja and Rody Alvarado, to understand the different ways non-US women are positioned by the state. These cases reveal that women claimants, depending on the nuances of their claims, are incorporated into the state as “good” women, pushed to the margins because their rhetoric is “threatening,” or appropriated by the state because their “otherness” provides an image that the United States can deploy in demonstrating itself as the “good” state that protects and supports women.

Positioned in/by the State: Incorporation, Exclusion, and Appropriation of Women's Gender-Based Claims to Political Asylum in the United States

Clients at a free-standing birth center resist the medical hegemonic construction of their pregnant bodies as risky entities through the spatial organization and material objects of the center. The center displays partisan messages about birth as a safe and private event. Therefore, when clients realize the physical and psychological consequences of structures and objects, they reconnect with their physical bodies, associate mental attitudes with physical sensations, and sustain a counterdiscourse about birth.

A Different Place to Birth: A Material Rhetoric Analysis of Baby Haven, a Free-Standing Birth Center

Because Roe v. Wade left ill-defined or derivative just who could be a medical caregiver for pregnant women, courts struggled in the post-Roe medico-legal environment to decide just who could be a medical advisor in this newly recognized zone of privacy. The courts also were challenged to balance individual privacy rights, state interest in health and potential life, and medical authority when dealing with alternative caregivers. This article examines five court cases involving traditional midwives in the 1970s in California and in the 1990s in New York. The cases afford the opportunity to examine emerging legal definitions of medical caregivers and the success or failure of certain forms of resistance to these definitions.

Mary M. Lay

Papers

Midwifery on Trial: Balancing Privacy Rights and Health Concerns after Roe v. Wade