Jane Donawerth

Donawerth traces the development of women’s rhetorical theory through the voices of English and American women (and one much-translated French woman) over three centuries. She demonstrates how they cultivated theories of rhetoric centered on conversation that faded once women began writing composition textbooks for mixed-gender audiences in the latter part of the nineteenth century. She recovers and elucidates the importance of the theories in dialogues and defenses of women’s education by Bathsua Makin, Mary Astell, and Madeleine de Scudéry; in conduct books by Hannah More, Lydia Sigourney, and Eliza Farrar; in defenses of women’s preaching by Ellen Stewart, Lucretia Mott, Catherine Booth, and Frances Willard; and in elocution handbooks by Anna Morgan, Hallie Quinn Brown, Genevieve Stebbins, and Emily Bishop. In each genre, Donawerth explores facets of women’s rhetorical theory, such as the recognition of the gendered nature of communication in conduct books, the incorporation of the language of women’s rights in the defenses of women’s preaching, and the adaptation of sentimental culture to the cultivation of women’s bodies as tools of communication in elocution books.

Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) was the most popular novelist in her time, read in French in volume installments all over Europe and translated into English, German, Italian, and even Arabic. But she was also a charismatic figure in French salon culture, a woman who supported herself through her writing and defended women's education. She was the first woman to be honored by the French Academy, and she earned a pension from Louis XIV for her writing.

Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues is a careful selection of Scudéry's shorter writings, emphasizing her abilities as a rhetorical theorist, orator, essayist, and letter writer. It provides the first English translations of some of Scudéry's Amorous Letters, only recently identified as her work, as well as selections from her Famous Women, or Heroic Speeches, and her series of Conversations. The book will be of great interest to scholars of the history of rhetoric, French literature, and women's studies.

Winner of the "Best Translation of 2004" award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

This anthology is the first to feature women's rhetorical theory from the fifth through the nineteenth centuries. Assembling selections on rhetoric, composition, and communication by 24 women around the world, this valuable collection demonstrates an often-overlooked history of rhetoric as well as women's interest in conversation as a model for all discourse. Among the theorists included are Aspasia, Pan Chao, Sei Shonagon, Madeleine de Scudéry, Hannah More, Hallie Quinn Brown, and Mary Augusta Jordan. The book also contains an extensive introduction, explanatory headnotes, and detailed annotations.

Beginning with the birth of science fiction in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Jane Donawerth takes a broad look at science fiction and utopian literature written by women. In a creative close reading of Frankenstein, Donawerth pinpoints the gender problems that reside in the male-oriented science fiction genre. Employing feminist, social and cultural theory, Donawerth identifies new forms of science fiction that emerge from women writers as they address the problems of the genre. The range of works by women makes this volume an invaluable scholarly review of the entire field of feminist science fiction and criticism.

Edited by Mary Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda Dove, and Karen Nelson

Winner of the 2000 Award for Best Collaborative Project from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women

In Tudor and Stuart Britain, women writers were shaped by their culture, but they also helped to shape and reproduce culture through their writing, their patronage, and their networks of family and friends. Through the lens of cultural studies, the editors explore women's material culture, women as agents in reproducing culture, popular culture and women's pamphlets, and women's bodes as inscriptions of culture.

In addition to essays by the editors on Mary Queen of Scots, poetry and gift-exchange, Lady Mary Wroth's anti-absolutist sonnets, and Elizabeth Cary's portrait of the queen in Edward II, the book includes Georgianna Ziegler's description of Esther Inglis's gift books; Margaret Hannay on class in Pembroke's psalms; Mary Ellen Lamb on Aemilia Lanyer and patronage; Elaine Beilin on Anne Dowriche's Protestant history; Ilona Bell discussing the Maydsens of London; Barbara McManus on the pamphlet controversies about women; Esther Cope on Eleanor Davies; Marilyn Luecke on Elizabeth Clinton's Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie; Carole Levin on the assimilation of female saints into reformation England, and Kathi Vosevich describing the rhetorical training that Mary and Elizabeth Tudor received.