Rethinking Ethos: A Feminist Ecological Approach to Rhetoric

Labels traditionally ascribed to women—mother, angel of the house, whore, or bitch—suggest character traits that do not encompass the complexities of women’s identities or empower women’s public speaking. Rethinking Ethos: A Feminist Ecological Approach to Rhetoric redefines the concept of ethos—classically thought of as character or credibility—as ecological and feminist, negotiated and renegotiated, and implicated in shifting power dynamics. Building on previous feminist and rhetorical scholarship, this essay collection presents a sustained discussion of the unique methods by which women’s ethos is constructed and transformed.

Editors Kathleen J. Ryan, Nancy Myers, and Rebecca Jones identify three rhetorical maneuvers that characterize ethos in the feminist ecological imaginary: ethe as interruption/interrupting, ethe as advocacy/advocating, and ethe as relation/relating. Each section of the book explores one of these rhetorical maneuvers. An afterword gathers contributors’ thoughts on the collection’s potential impact and influence, possibilities for future scholarship, and the future of feminist rhetorical studies.

With its rich mix of historical examples and contemporary case studies, Rethinking Ethos offers a range of new perspectives, including queer theory, transnational approaches, radical feminism, Chicana feminism, and indigenous points of view, from which to consider a feminist approach to ethos. 

Kathleen J. Ryan is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition and the coordinator of the writing major at Montana State University. She is a coeditor of Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies and a coauthor of GenAdmin: Theorizing WPA Identities in the Twenty-First Century.

Nancy Myers is an associate professor of English and the director of college writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a coeditor of The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook, fourth edition.

Rebecca Jones is a UC Foundation associate professor in the English department at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her coauthored article, “Counter-Coulter: A Story of Craft and Ethos,” originally published in Writing on the Edge, is featured in Parlor Press’s The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals 2013.  

Contributors include Risa Applegarth, Sean Barnette, Paige A. Conley, Beth Daniell, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Letizia Guglielmo, Wendy S. Hesford, Kendall Leon, Valerie Palmer-Mehta, Mary Beth Pennington, Stacey Pigg, Stacey Waite, and Christy I. Wenger.