College English, Vol. 70, No. 5, May 2008

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Configurations of Transnationality: Locating Feminist Rhetorics

  Wendy S. Hesford and Eileen E. Schell

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  Abstract: This special issue on feminist rhetorics and transnationalism challenges the disciplinary defining of rhetoric and composition around U.S.-centric narratives of nation, nationalism, and citizenship. Such defining has tended to focus on feminist and women’s rhetorics only within the borders of the United States or Western Europe. The result is, potentially, the reproduction of institutional hierarchies. Transnationality refers to movements of people, goods, and ideas across national borders and, like the term borderland, it is often used to highlight forms of cultural hybridity and intertextuality. To bring a transnational focus to our field will require new methodologies and critical comparativist perspectives, which in turn may shift our objects and areas of study.

  Keywords: College

• Transnational Feminist Rhetorics in a Digital World

  Mary Queen

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  Abstract: Despite the important work emerging from both the global and digital turns in rhetoric and composition studies, one key area has yet to be examined: the central role that the circulation of digital texts plays in the transformation and appropriation of feminist discourse. This article proposes a new methodology for analyzing the processes through which the modes of global circulation of digital representations become rhetorical and, ultimately, political actions. Feminist rhetorical studies must extend its analyses to examine how the modes of digital circulation matter in the mediation of relations among groups, communities, and nations because this digital circulation often constructs and reinforces binary oppositions and rhetorics of superiority.

  Keywords: College

• Linking Transnational Logics: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Public Policy Networks

  Rebecca Dingo

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  Abstract: Links among the World Bank’s gender-mainstreaming policies and recent U.S. welfare policies demonstrate how transnationalism enables international gendered logics to become national (and international) norms. The metaphor of the network helps feminist rhetoricians expose how transnational linkages shape domestic and international policies by articulating the complex relationships among gendered logics, power, and occasion.

  Keywords: College

• Pleasurable Pedagogies: Reading Lolita in Tehran and the Rhetoric of Empathy

  Theresa A. Kulbaga

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  Abstract: This essay examines Azar Nafisi’s bestselling memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), in the context of U.S. book club culture. It argues that the memoir appeals to U.S. audiences by mobilizing a neoliberal rhetoric and a pedagogy of empathy that positions the United States as the geopolitical center of feminist empowerment and human rights.

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• Response: A World of Difference

  Deepika Bahri

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  Abstract: The author responds to the editors’ introduction, as well as to the articles by Queen, Dingo, and Kulbaga, emphasizing that feminists need to relate theories of rhetoric to theories of transnationalism if both areas of thought are to be useful.

  Keywords: College

• Review: Knowledge Making within Transnational Connectivities

  Min-Zhan Lu

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  Abstract: Reviewed is Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms by Inderpal Grewal.

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• Announcements and Calls for Papers

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  Abstract: Abstract for this article is currently not available.

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