an introduction
This project, for me, illustrates the perfect example of a kairotic moment. The idea to do an expansive, feminist-focused review of Kairos webtexts had been on my radar for a while, but I had gotten sidetracked as I moved across the country and transitioned into a new department.
When I was assigned a new course, Feminist Rhetoric, I struggled to design content for the course that would cover everything from Aspasia and the Seneca Falls Convention to Ginsberg and Beyoncé.
Yet, the kairotic moment presented itself just as Kairos prepared to celebrate 20 years of influence in our field; I realized that my students and I could look back and re-envision a decade of Kairos webtexts through a feminist lens.
What follows is a retrospective of the scholarship published in Kairos from 2002–2012, but with the added intention of revealing the unseen feminisms at work in the journal.
My students and I identified implicit strains of feminism embedded in Kairos webtexts from that decade and then related them directly to a definition of feminist rhetoric that we built from our study of ancient and modern works.
Though the majority of the authors of the scholarship we analyzed did not—and may not—identify as feminist scholars, it is our hope that our analysis will create new bridges between those who may be united by some of the core values and characteristics we identify here.
As Kairos readers look back and celebrate two decades of work, we hope that this analysis reinvigorates and repositions not only the work in this journal but perhaps also the sometimes less-than-celebrated feminist label.
–Jen Almjeld, Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication at James Madison University
about us
We come from the Women and Gender Studies program; the Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication program; and the School of Communication at James Madison University.
Our review essay has been designed as a tool to highlight the feminist perspectives already at work within Kairos by identifying webtexts of particular interest to scholars seeking a feminist perspective.
We recognize that our voices do not represent the entirety of Kairos's academic discourse community. Some of us are rhetoric majors, as is our professor; however, many of us are in other fields, such as social work, women and gender studies, English, politics, justice, and communication studies.
Each of these fields represent a different set of scholars, methods, and conventions, so while many of us may be considered outsiders, we claim that outsider status and the way it rhetorically colors this webtext. We bring a fresh perspective to the scholarship in Kairos.
meet the class
our mission & philosophy
This review essay evaluates a decade of scholarship from a feminist perspective and, in so doing, encourages both journal contributors and readers to recognize hidden strains of feminism in webtexts appearing in this journal. While Kairos might not specifically identify as a feminist publication, there are many instances of latent feminism in works published here. On the other hand, many of the webtexts published in Kairos overtly engage feminist topics and concerns like gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. However, we hope our work might invite more authors to specifically situate their work as a feminist rhetoric and perhaps openly claim the term feminist for themselves. This reluctance of authors we see performing feminist scholarship to avoid labeling their work as such may be an intentional avoidance of the "f-word," a word with a history.
As an ideology, the feminist movement often avoids labels and categories. But we feel that there is a real power in using the "f-word" to define and re-define scholarship taking on the work of challenging norms and structures of power—in this case, often in the classroom and workplace—and in opening up new spaces for a variety of voices to be heard via a variety of modalities. Ultimately, many pieces of scholarship published in Kairos demonstrate various feminist rhetorical elements, and in doing so they challenge existing ideas that sometimes seek to constrain teaching and research in rhetoric, composition, and pedagogy.
Since we collectively produced this feminist review of Kairos, we thought that it was only fitting that the review itself adhere to the feminist rhetorical principles we identified in our class. An important first step in developing our commentary on Kairos's position within feminism involved coming up with a definition of feminist rhetoric that we could use as a point of reference. We agreed on seven terms that we felt were essential components of other standout feminist works to create our definition.
First, our review embodies the authors by providing bios that explain who we are and our own relationships to the project and to feminism. We not only include images and text about ourselves, but also include a video—despite its ametuerish production value—in hopes of connecting with readers as with more than words on a screen. Our review also gives a voice to our participants when we highlight the feminist strengths of Kairos and its publications. Similarly, we seek to validate various experiences by highlighting both hidden and obvious aspects of feminism impacting the journal. Like Kairos itself, our review essay is multimodal, incorporating both text and video in an attempt to increase its overall reach and accessibility. In terms of positionality, we are aware that we are not all experts in the field of computers and writing. In acknowledging this limitation, we position ourselves as curious outsiders interested in joining the larger conversation about the role of feminism in the discipline of rhetoric.
Having said that, we do not intend this to be your typical scholarly review essay. Seeking to explicitly challenge systems of power and the norms of traditional scholarship allows us to approach this review in a new way. Our review empowers different ways of being by celebrating a variety of rhetorical approaches, design choices, and narrative voices found in the journal. We hope this work inspires others to consider this publication as a space where feminist rhetorical principles are enacted, celebrated, and made explicit. We see our review as an example of how online scholarly journals like Kairos can promote accessibility for all ways of being and can be used as safe spaces for feminists to claim that title.
rhetorical roots
Our class began in the way that most feminist classes begin, by reading what we termed "the rockstars of feminist thought." We traversed decades of speeches, writing, and visual works by and about women. We began our study of feminist rhetorics with Cheryl Glenn's (1997) foundational text, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance. This is where we began to re-map or re-claim the essential texts of female rhetors like Aspasia, Sappho, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Margaret More Roper, Anne Askew, and Queen Elizabeth I. We also considered the work of contemporary feminist writers and scholars including bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, and Audre Lorde.
We examined ways these female intellectual figures had their work co-opted, ignored, or dismissed by authorities, and how the patriarchal practice of sexualizing female thinkers and public figures and devaluing their work continues today. Many of the works displayed a tendency to invoke power through their exploration of the relationship between body, spirit, and intellect; the growth of knowledge through religious and emotional expression; and an awareness of the author's own positionality and the challenges faced in giving voice to ideas others felt unfit for public spheres of rhetoric.
What emerged was a framework for defining historic and modern examples of feminist rhetorical expressions. As this list of characteristics emerged, we noted that many of these characteristics were also present in Kairos, perhaps most notably the use of multiple modes and the challenging of norms and systems of power—in this case in regards to academic publishing. What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list of feminist rhetorics, but is instead intended to ground readers in the terms we will use as we review Kairos issues and to understand how we came to choose these rhetorics as particular lenses through which to review Kairos. During our study of both canonized works of feminist rhetorics and what we consider covert feminist works in Kairos, we identified seven characteristics we feel mark a rhetoric as a feminist enterprise. We read feminist rhetorics as doing or being at least one of these.
feminist rhetorics are...
(select to expand)
embodied.
Margery Kempe, credited with writing the first autobiography in English, gained acclaim for publicly challenging notions of women's fitness to speak on spiritual matters. This important work was achieved by ignoring the distinction between personal experience and public and political rhetorics. Known for possessing the "gift of tears," Kempe is often dismissed as suffering hysteria rather than religious insight. But this linking of her corporal body with her intellect and spiritual awakening was exactly what gave her rhetoric power. The works of contemporary rhetorician bell hooks also embodied the scholar through grounding in her life experiences. "Sexism... is the practice of domination most people are socialized to accept before they ever experience other forms of oppression," according to hooks (Foss, Foss, & Griffin, 2006, p. 77). She established her experiences of familial patriarchy and institutional sexism in academia and addressed life events as not just relevant but crucial to feminist understandings, urging teachers in particular to allow students to discuss their unique perspectives. hooks writes memoirs alongside political texts and lets her experience cross over into her cultural theory, using her life as subject while diverting attention toward ideas and decentralizing her authorial self from her work's focus.
voiced.
In our reading of Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald's (2001) Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s) , we encountered poet and activist Sappho, among others. Her words were neither humble nor apologetic in tone, but exuded confidence in voice and being. Sappho, perhaps best known for her sexual orientation, was an important rhetorical figure that gave voice to women's experience and feelings and also prowess in poetry, an arena formerly reserved only for men. Voice—whether one's own or afforded to others and often overlooked through a rhetorician's work—expresses linguistic identity and the performative power of language. In "Reflections from the Borderlands," rhetorician Gloria Anzaldúa explained, "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white" (Foss, Foss, & Griffin, 2006, p. 105). She challenged dichotomies by exploring how interconnected body and intellect, language, and identity are to the individual. The blurring of this dichotomy allows for new self-identification from the participant. By encouraging individuals who are traditionally marginalized to locate their voice, they are no longer limited to the phallocentric language systems used as a means of oppression.
positioned.
Privileged, highly educated, and tremendously powerful, Queen Elizabeth I was a woman in a unique rhetorical position to say the least. She once said, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too" (Ritchie & Ronald, 2001, p. 48). To secure her position as monarch she was often forced to eschew her gendered existence, but she was always profoundly aware of the rhetorical context from which she spoke. Recognizing one's privilege and limitations is vital when taking on research. Our reading of Nancy L. Deutsch (2004) helped us understand how vital it is to recognize one's positionality when conducting research and the ways that position might impact participants. Deutsch's work explored her identity as a researcher and the ways in which that identity sometimes conflicted with her personal identity.
multimodal.
So many of the texts we read in our course began as other texts—as speeches like the one delivered at the Seneca Falls Convention, as popular songs like those of Beyoncé, as performance pieces and legal defenses. Anne Askew, for example, was a Protestant martyr put to death for her belief that women could speak in matters of faith and is perhaps most famously remembered for her rhetoric of silence. When she refused to answer the questions of her inquisitors, she shifted power and created a rhetorical appeal out of thin air. Like Askew, modern feminists utilize multiple rhetorical appeals to speak to various audiences. Feminist rhetoricians recognize the importance of accessibility to our works by making them available in vernacular and alternate modes. As well, they acknowledge multiple ways of learning, privileging multiplicity over the author-as-expert model.
validating.
Often the first step to challenging systems of power and oppression is to validate other ways of being and knowing. Julian of Norwich, venerated by the modern Lutheran and Anglican churches, validated the role of women in the church with her bold use of "I" in her writings—acknowledging her own right to speak. Her 16 "showings" or religious visions were the basis for her text, Revelations of Divine Love, but her radical contribution to the rhetorical canon was her feminizing of the trinity and insistence that the female was not at odds with faith. Like Julian of Norwich, Audre Lorde validated experience by showing women how they could use their difference to create stronger communities. "Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself," Lorde wrote (Ritchie & Ronald, 2001, p. 301), and in so doing she claimed her unique voice. As a rhetor, Lorde constantly challenged what could be a public discourse for academia. By breaking conventions of her race and gender, she interrogated academia to recognize privilege while breaking the silence for individuals who could not speak.
challenging.
Perhaps most importantly, we see feminist texts as challenging systems of hegemonic power and normative practices. By disrupting these behaviors, new discourses surface and permeate the community of learning. Ancient female rhetorician Hortensia, voiced only through Plato in his Symposium, was important not only in her arguments for the valuing of women, but also in her ability to be heard in this male space. Diversity of being greatly relates to a diversity of intellectual thought, and therefore should always be the means to which systems of powers are challenged. Simone de Beauvoir challenged the very system of gender in her Second Sex when she reminded us that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" (Ritchie & Ronald, 2001, p. 254). Similarly, Judith Butler challenged systems of power regulating gender performance with her writings, but did so in a manner that made feminist perspective and philosophy palatable for traditional academic readers.
empowering.
While not all rhetorical acts lead to change, many of the feminist rhetorics we studied sought to empower listeners and readers, even in the face of systems of power and oppression. Medieval author Christine de Pizan is often cited as the first woman to support herself by writing, and her work, The Book of the City of Ladies, celebrated the wisdom of women. And though suffragist and writer Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not live to see the 19th amendment passed in 1919, her impassioned writing about women's voting rights inspired future generations of suffragettes. No one piece of rhetoric alone could change systems of power that have marginalized and continue to marginalize, but together these texts—in all their forms—empower generations to act.
our definition
Feminist rhetorics are embodied in that they acknowledge the real person behind the scholar by honoring the personal and the political. This embodiment gives voice to participants and validates their experiences. It is also situated by recognizing positionality and potential bias of the reader. These rhetorics are more accessible to various ways of learning through a nontraditional multimodal presentation. Perhaps above all, feminist rhetorics challenge systems of power and norms set up through hegemonic principles by empowering all ways of being.
feminist rhetorics in Kairos
We spent the Spring 2014 semester immersed in feminist rhetorics and exploring a range of feminist topics spanning Aspasia in ancient Greece to multimodal composition scholars featured in Kairos. Individually each of us chose an issue of Kairos to examine that interested us personally. In our individual reviews, we focused on identifying instances, both hidden and intentional, of the seven key themes of feminist rhetorics we had agreed upon as a group. In the process, we began to see patterns of feminist strategies and values in current scholarship published in the journal. We then worked to meld these individual voices into a collective review. Our individual reviews gave us direction for our collaborative essay and provided us with a clearer idea of our underlying purpose. We placed ourselves into informal groups of writers, editors, videographers, statisticians, and designers.
Through our evaluation of Kairos we noticed feminist themes within the issues but also noticed that the word feminism was never mentioned in the webtexts we studied. As a Feminist Rhetoric class we found this omission curious, and we hope that this project encourages readers and scholars to imagine Kairos as a feminist space where issues of access, gender, socio-economic status, and other issues related to "the f-word" are frequently taken up. Additionally, we hope that our work might prompt some Kairos contributors to more overtly claim the title of feminist scholarship for their work.
our findings
We decided as a group to focus our coding efforts on webtexts featured in the primary sections of the journal: Features (which became Topoi in the 10th anniversary issue of 2006), CoverWeb (which also became part of Topoi in that issue, but then re-appeared as a separate section in the last issue we cover here, in Fall of 2013), Inventio, and Praxis. (All of these sections also happen to be the peer-reviewed sections of the journal during that decade.) The exclusion of the PraxisWiki webtexts, which can arguably be considered a featured section of the journal (particularly in more recent years, since it became peer reviewed, in 2014) happened for two reasons: the first is practical, because we felt we could not feasibly code any more than a decade's worth of webtexts from the peer-reviewed, featured sections of the journal in a 16-week semester. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we wanted to devote our time to revealing some unexpected instances of feminism in the journal. The PraxisWiki—with its focus on "narratives, assignments, and short pedagogy pieces"—would no doubt have yielded tons of feminist work as it relates so closely to the classroom, but we wanted to concentrate our efforts on "re-mapping" those spaces not so obviously feminist. We also felt the webtexts in the featured sections more closely aligned in length and scope with more traditional scholarly webtexts—not surprising, given their peer-reviewed status—and so might offer interesting insights particularly in ways Kairos authors subvert traditional academic conventions.
As a group we read and coded 143 individual webtexts, authored by 277 writers and designers in 26 issues of Kairos. While coding the issues, we focused on identifying explicit and implicit instances of webtexts enacting the seven characteristics of our definition for feminist rhetorics.
This count of feminist markers began simply as a way for class members to mark one of the seven terms identified in our definition (embodied, voiced, positioned, multimodal, validating, challenging, and empowering) and help us see patterns across issues. We felt this sort of statistical approach might inform our work and might also allow another layer of accessibility to the work as statistics empower other ways of knowing and being in regards to scholarship. Below is a description of frequency in regards to each term.
10 years of authorship
Our focus on numbers continued with special attention to statistics related to authorship. We first coded authors' names for gender, any mentions of self-identified gender, self-identified credentials or degree, what institution the author represented, and whether or not the writer identified as a feminist. We chose to only report what was reported by the author in the webtext in order to best honor the author's choice of voice and electronic embodiment.
We noted interesting findings in three main areas: gender of the author (or lack of gender identification), author credentials, and whether or not any of the Kairos authors explicitly defined themselves as feminists.
To discover these aspects, we relied only on the webtexts and did not perform background research on any writers. When identifying gender, we made gender norm assumptions based on names and authors' photographs. We recognize that this binary gender assignment is problematic, but we also felt that identification of gender was important according to precedents in the field of feminist rhetoric (Glenn, 1997; Foss, Foss & Griffin, 1999; Ritchie & Ronald, 2001).
Highlighting author gender is also a tradition rooted in the computers and writing field. "It’s true that Kairos’ use of a modified version of APA style that shows authors’ first names was a conscious feminist choice," editor Cheryl Ball (2015) explained in an email. "Kairos wasn’t the first to do this—the practice was taken from the in-house style guide we used at Computers and Composition, when I was an assistant and associate editor there in the early 2000s." For Ball and her colleagues at Kairos, this practice was adopted "primarily to stop the obfuscation of gender in research roles, as names would be listed in the References list." Erasing or ignoring gender has impact not only for authors of the online journal, but also for ways we view the field as gendered—or not. "Our new focus … is to ensure that Reference lists aren’t dominated by male researchers. I’ve stated a few places publicly that if a submission doesn’t include any women on the references list, I’ll reject it out of hand. While that’s not totally true, it’s certainly a rule of thumb that I am trying to follow when working with authors to develop their research." These types of editorial decisions reinforce our reading of Kairos as a space open to and supportive of feminist ideals of inclusion and increased visibility for women.
We found that of the 277 authors listed in the webtexts we reviewed, 97% did identify their gender, and roughly half of those authors were females. Of the authors, more than half (63%) did not provide their academic or professional credentials in their webtexts. And lastly, of the 277 authors who have contributed to Kairos in the past decade, only five identified themselves as feminists.
We felt there are interesting implications here. First, though we read Kairos as a journal that is heavily influenced by feminist scholarship, the overwhelming majority of authors claim no explicit identification as a feminist scholar or writer. This may be because authors perceive the work of feminism as different from the work done by a journal focusing on rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. Others may not consider themselves feminists regardless of the context.
That the majority of authors, 63%, chose not to provide their credentials is also noteworthy. Without surveying the authors it is impossible to say why this is so, but some authors may purposely omit their credentials in an effort to even the balance of power between themselves and junior colleagues or graduate or undergraduate student co-authors or research participants. For others, this omission may be because a general assumption exists that one's credentials are easily accessible with a quick Google search.
[Editor's addendum: Although it is not part of our submission guidelines, Kairos has consistently asked authors to refrain from including their credentials in biographies, because that information changes quickly in academia, particularly in terms of rank or institutional affiliation. Indeed, in our ghost copy-editing process for this issue, Editor Ball removed several instances of rank, and also gender, from the author biographies of this webtext. This was done particularly in bios of students who self-identified as "getting ready to graduate," referring most likely to May 2014. She offers this bit of information about Kairos author ranks: During the journal's metadata project of 2011, we researched all authors' ranks and discovered that the numbers were roughly split down the middle (~50%/50%) between untenured authors (i.e., undergraduate student, graduate student, independent scholar, unaffiliated scholar, nontenure-track lecturer, academic staff, or tenure-track scholar) and tenured authors (i.e., at the associate or full levels). We did discuss whether to mine metadata for gender during that project but felt we had to draw the line at collecting too much data in order to complete the project at hand—perhaps an oversight that this review is having us reconsider.]