Acting Director of WGS Shari Stenberg has recently published Persuasive Acts: Women’s Rhetorics in the Twenty-first Century. The collection, which is co-edited with UNL alumnus Charlotte Hogg, gathers and contextualizes women’s persuasive acts from the first two decades of the twenty-first century. These rhetorics include new technologies and repurposed old ones, engaged not only to persuade, but also to tell their stories, to sponsor change, and to challenge cultural forces that repress and oppress.
Persuasive Acts has deep ties to Women’s and Gender Studies at UNL. It is a follow-up to the anthology Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s), which was edited by Joy Ritchie, former WGS director, and Kate Ronald. Theirs was the first collection of women’s speech and writing spanning from ancient Greece to 1999. Persuasive Acts captures the shifts in technology that extend the availability and reach of rhetoric; new political and civic issues of concern to women; and changing conceptions of gender in the twenty-first century.
"Persuasive Acts gathers women’s voices in 21st-century theories and public writings. Assembling a chorus from Malala Yousafzai to Michelle Obama to Kimberle Crenshaw to Marjane Satrapi, this collection invites readers to contemplate women’s engagement with education, labor, identity, bodies, politics, civic protest, etc. Extending recovery work of 20th-century scholars, Persuasive Acts is a significant resource for students, teachers and general readers." -- Krista Ratcliffe, Arizona State University
"The ‘persuasive acts’ smartly gathered here just might save us. These 21st century women’s voices come just in time. I (almost) regret retiring—I would love to teach students with this book." -- Kate Ronald, co-editor of Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s)
Learn more or purchase the book at https://upittpress.org/books/9780822966135/
