Synopsis
While the study of the history of rhetoric has expanded to include an ever-growing range of rhetorical traditions, lesser-known figures, and under- and un-studied texts, it has continued to exist in the hermetically sealed binary of West and Rest. Rhetorical scholars have begun uncovering the many marginalized rhetorical traditions silenced by the homogenous nature of our histories themselves, reading and writing new histories of the rhetorical tradition through frames from gender to geography. Despite these substantial challenges to the traditionally received history of rhetoric, many voices are still silenced and many spaces are still excluded—voices speaking within the spaces of the less-than-monolithic West itself. This silencing and excluding continues, perhaps, because of assumptions that no texts exist from these marginalized voices or that substantial rhetorical activity was not conducted in these marginalized spaces—regardless of already extant evidence of rhetorical activity as diverse as rural civic ethos in Classical Greece and Etruscan influences on Roman rhetoric or long-standing passive knowledge of scholarly activity in Medieval Andalusia and Ireland. Rhetoric in the Rest of the West attempts to expand the conversation in those gaps in the history of rhetoric by examining the traditions that lost the cultural competition and have been shrouded in the shadow of the rhetorical tradition.
About the Author
Shane Borrowman is a native of Anaconda, Montana, and a fan of the New England Patriots. His recent publications include the edited collection _On the Blunt Edge: Technology in Our Pedagogy and History_ and _The Cost of Business_, a short reader for first-year composition. Currently, he is a freelance writer and stay-at-home father, raising his twins John and Samantha and writing about topics as diverse as Jack Johnson's title fight in Reno in 1910 and Adelard of Bath's role in importing the astrolabe from the Near East into medieval Europe. Robert L. Lively is Chair of English at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. He is also a Ph.D. student at the University of Nevada, Reno pursuing a degree in Rhetoric and Composition. His areas of interest include History of Rhetoric, Creative Writing Studies, and Science Fiction and Fantasy in popular culture. His work has appeared in Channeling the Future and New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Marcia Kmetz is a native of Fort Benton, Montana, and rural rhetoric specialist whose work has appeared in Reclaiming the Rural, Rhetoric in the Rest of the West, and Composition Studies. She is at currently at work on a book examining the rhetoric of Jeanette Rankin, America's first congresswoman. And in the spirit of Jeanette Rankin, who worked to create positive change in her communities, she has founded and serves as president of Recovering Education, a nonprofit corporation working to ensure appropriate education for children with autism in the public education system.
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