Where art thou, feminism and composition studies?

Rereading these articles on feminism and composition studies has sent me into a reverie of considering where feminism and composition studies has gone and where it is going. I started graduate school in 1989, one year after Elizabeth Flynn published her landmark article. Don't worry, though, I won't launch into a nostalgic narrative about the "good ole days" of feminist composition studies. Instead, I'm going to be asking Kelly Concannon to hop around on our blogs to comment this week (if she's willing--Kelly C., are you out there)? Kelly recently took a major exam in Feminism and Composition Studies, and one question that Margaret and I asked her to consider is where feminist composition studies has gone since the flurry of work in the late eighties and throughout the nineties. One hypothesis is that we noticed a drop-off in citations after the late nineties in feminism and composition studies and an upturn in work in feminist rhetorical studies due to the work of recovering and regendering the rhetorical canon. There is still work being produced in feminist composition studies, but much of it is being channeled toward rhetorical studies. I hope Kelly C. will jump in and comment and that others might offer other hypotheses.

I think Boardman and Ritchie offer us a strong analysis of how feminism in composition studies was present before Flynn's article in 1988. As they point out, feminism and composition

"cannot be constructed in a tidy narrative" (589). They both worry that Flynn's article is represented as the start when there is actually a more complex, embedded history. They argue that there are "three overlapping tropes that shed light on the roles feminism has played in composition and in the strategies women have used to gain a place in its conversations:

1) INCLUSION Following the the pattern of developing feminist thought in the 1970s and 1980s, many early feminist accoutns in composition sought inclusion and equality for women" (589).
There is a discussion of Florence Howe, Adrienne Rich, Pamela Annas and others who wrote from the vantage point of English depts where they taught women's literature and also writing courses. Ritchie and Boardman note that the point here is toaddress "What difference might it make if the student (or teacher) is female" (595). Flynn's article appears to fit into this genre.

2) INTUITIVE CONNECTION "More recent accounts like those of Louise Phelps and Janet Emig posit feminism as a "subterreanean' unpoken presence (xv), and Susan Jarratt and Laura Brady suggest the metonymy or contiguity of feminism and composition" (589). The idea here is that there is a metonymic relationship between feminism and composition. They cite Caywood and Overing's book _Teaching Writing: Gender, Pedagogy, and Equity_, "one of the first books to connect writing and feminism in composition" 595). They point to the "parallel lives of composition and feminist theory" (595).
Kelly has a good reading of this in her exam, so I hope she will discuss it.

3. FEMINIST DISRUPTIONS "Also developing during this time has been what feminist postmodernists define as disruption and critique of hegemonic narratives--resistance, interruption, and finally redirection of composition's business as usual" (589).
The idea here is that a new form of feminism (theorized or experienced) is addressed and/or past readings/relationships are reconfigured. A disruption that needs to be accounted for here in 1999 is how feminists in composition studies addressing race and ethnicity are "disrupting" narratives of feminism that presume whiteness, e.g., Malea Powell, Shirley Logan, Jacqueline Jones Royster. The authors acknowledge in the conclusion that "we have not thoroughly come to terms with students' or teachers' gendered, classed, raced position in the academy--or the continuing failure to provide a viaable education for many minority students or encouragement for minority colleagues in our field" (605).

What I have wondered on rereading this tropological formulation, though, is what politics and theories of feminisms drive these various tropes? I wonder what reading these individual theorists in light of traditions and theorizations of feminisms would reveal? For instance, It's important for us to read Rich's work within a tradition of lesbian feminism, but her work doesn't get read that way here, necessarily. The tropes do not necessarily capture the specific locations of each feminists' work and the evolution of their work over time. I worry we read only part of Rich's work "When We Dead Awaken" and "Taking Women Students Seriously" without accounting for the other parts of her work. Also, how do we read a figure like Florence Howe in relation to her contributions to feminist literary criticism and to the founding of women's studies? We have only part of Howe here? The part that pertains to composition studies with a brief glimpse into other aspects of her career and thinking.

I think it was interesting that Ritchie and Boardman pointed to the preponderance of inclusion and intuitive analysis of feminism in Faigley and Berlin's work and the lack of a mention of feminism and gender in Harris's work. They point to the fact that the first edition of _Cross-talk_ included one article: Flynn's. The second version, of course, has added a few more. This led me to wonder to what extent graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition encourages a historical and political analysis of feminism and feminist discourses/theories? Does feminist studies get relegated to the one or two articles in the introductory reading or into the individual course on feminist rhetorics or feminist composition studies--a feminist course that people can elect into or elect out of? I have to ask the same question of work in race and ethnicity in Rhetoric and Composition studies and of questions of sexuality and disability studies? How have these discourses, theories, and social and political movements made it into Rhetoric and Composition studies' introductory graduate courses or not? How much does this work truly get represented in the mainstream of composition studies?

I think a lack of education in feminist theory and feminist history is a lack of education in history, politics, theory, language, material conditions. I don't think it is about being a feminist or not being a feminist, although I think that there is a tendency to read feminism that way. I think we've all heard it before: " I'm not a feminist, so I don't need to know much--if anything--about feminist theory or history or politics. I don't need to read in those areas. Or feminism is over with, we're all equal, so what's the point." Or perhaps the more subconscious: "Feminism is a threat to me or to those I love or feel allied to--feminism is dangerous somehow." After all, we have plenty of discourse out there that is hateful to feminisms and to women. I open up the paper (_Post-Standard_) today to read about a local woman Wendy Dirk who was murdered by her husband after she left him (he killed himself afterward). This is one of four domestic abuse homicides in the county this year. The story takes up three pages describing Wendy's life and information about Vera House, the local domestic violence shelter is listed. The story (and there are more like this one every week) is a reminder of the lack of equity, inclusion, and the real threat of violence. This is one of the daily backdrops of living in this culture....as I blog about feminism, I am simultanenously reading a story about domestic violence.

I think that graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition studies has to address the history of the field through a feminist lens in order to account for the position of its practitioners, for one, and partly for its marginalized status. Earlier in the course, we read Milller and Holbrook and Connors, all of whom are addressing questions of gender and status. We read Royster and Williams who point out that the histories of the field have ignored race and ethnicity. But I think that seeing feminism as necessary only for a reading of the status and marginalization of the field is a mistaken move. I think those studies (Miller, Holbrook, Connors) have to be read, too, against the histories of feminist movements in the 19th/early and mid-20th century, the real struggles feminists were engaged in for access to the right to elective franchise and entrance into the professions, education, reform of divorce and employment laws, property rights, and other areas. A number of these struggles are still ongoing here in the U.S. and across the globe. Let's not forget it or suppress it or pretend otherwise!