Toward a Feminist Rhetoric: The Writing of Gertrude Buck (Pittsburgh Series in Comp, Literacy and Culture)

Gertrude Buck

ISBN 10: 0822955733 / ISBN 13: 9780822955733

Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996

About this Item

1996. 1st Edition. Paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780822955733

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Toward a Feminist Rhetoric: The Writing of Gertrude Buck (Pittsburgh Series in Comp, Literacy and Culture)
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822955733
• ISBN 13: 9780822955733
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The nature of Gertrude Buck, professor of English at Vassar College from 1897 until her death in 1922, is well-known to anyone interested in the history of composition. Her writing is less well-known, much of it now out of print. JoAnn Campbell gathers together for the first time the major work of this innovative thinker and educator, including her most important articles on rhetorical theory; The Social Criticism of Literature, a forerunner of reader-response literary theory; selections from her textbooks on argumentative and expository writing; poetry; fiction; her play Mother-Love, and unpublished reports and correspondence from the English department at Vassar.
In her introduction, Campbell describes the masculine rhetorical tradition within which Buck wrote and taught. Her theories of language and composition quietly challenged the dominant rhetorics issuing from Harvard and Amherst. An unusually productive scholar, Buck wrote textbooks for her female students that affirmed women\u2019s intellectual abilities and trained them to participate in political debate. In the Vassar English Department she found a community of women among whom she could practice and develop her theories regarding rhetoric, pedagogy, and the role of the individual in society.

About the Author

JoAnn Campbell is assistant professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.