1st Edition

The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric

Edited By Jacqueline Rhodes, Jonathan Alexander Copyright 2022
    500 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    500 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric maps the ongoing becoming of queer rhetoric in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, offering a dynamic overview of the history of and scholarly research in this field.

    The handbook features rhetorical scholarship that explicitly uses and extends insights from work in queer and trans theories to understand and critique intersections of rhetoric, gender, class, and sexuality. More important, chapters also attend to the intersections of constructs of queerness with race, class, ability, and neurodiversity. In so doing, the book acknowledges the many debts contemporary queer theory has to work by scholars of color, feminists, and activists, inside and outside the academy. The first book of its kind, the handbook traces and documents the emergence of this subfield within rhetorical studies while also pointing the way toward new lines of inquiry, new trajectories in scholarship, and new modalities and methods of analysis, critique, intervention, and speculation.

    This handbook is an invaluable resource for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students studying rhetoric, communication, cultural studies, and queer studies.

    1. Introduction
    2. Jacqueline Rhodes (University of Texas at Austin) and Jonathan Alexander (University of California, Irvine)

       

      HISTORIES, RE-HISTORIES, ARCHIVES

    3. Undoing Happiness with Pleasure: Rhetorics of Affect in The Ladder
    4. Clare Bermingham (University of Waterloo)

    5. Retroactivism and the Institutional Archive
    6. Jean Bessette (University of Vermont)

    7. Bisexual Invisibility, David Bowie, and the Prospects of Queer Memory
    8. Thomas R. Dunn (Colorado State University)

    9. The Ready-Made Queerness of Greco-Roman Rhetoric
    10. Erik Gunderson (University of Toronto)

    11. Printing a Queer Identity: Edward Carpenter, Ioläus, and the Affirmation of Same-Sex Desires in the Nineteenth Century
    12. Jason Lajoie (University of Waterloo)

    13. Re-Storying Trans* Zines
    14. Vee Lawson (Michigan State University)

    15. An Archive of Disposability: Gender and Sexuality in South Africa
    16. Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki (African Gender Institute—University of Cape Town)

    17. Re-Historicizing the "Lacking South": Archiving Queer Memory and Sexual Visibilities in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia through the Invisible Histories Project 
    18. Keshia Mcclantoc (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

    19. The Trans Rhetorical Practice of Archive Building
    20. K.J. Rawson (Northeastern University)

       

      METHODOLOGIES

    21. Wobbly Words and Transnational Queer Slippages
    22. Ahmet Atay (College of Wooster)

    23. Queer Topoi: Writing "Like" Sedgwick
    24. Allen Durgin (Columbia University)

    25. Methodologies Not Yet Known: The Queer Case for Relational Research
    26. Wilfredo Flores (Michigan State University)

    27. Blake Brockington’s Rhetorical Afterlife: Fugitive Black Trans* Data and Queer Kairotic Methodology
    28. Joe Edward Hatfield (University of Arkansas)

    29. Histories in (Trans)lation: Xie Jianshun and the Potential and Perils of Trans Historiography
    30. V. Jo Hsu (University of Texas at Austin)

    31. Subatomic Literacies and Queer Quantum Storytelling
    32. Shereen Inayatulla (York College, CUNY)

    33. Between the Sheets: Gavin Arthur’s Sexual Circulation
    34. Philip Longo (University of California, Santa Cruz)

    35. Queer Ecovisual Rhetorics
    36. Anushka Peres (University of Nevada, Reno)

    37. Queering Spaces
    38. Fernando Sánchez (University of St. Thomas)

       

      COMMUNITIES

    39. "Let’s Get Some Family Chosen": Refugees, Homonationalism, and Queer Family Rhetoric
    40. Murat Aydemir (University of Amsterdam)

    41. Queer Memes as Rhetorical Scenes
    42. Abbie Levesque DeCamp (Northeastern University)

    43. Womyn’s Words: Rhetorical Practices of the Lesbian Community in the Tampa Bay Area
    44. Tyler Gillespie (University of Mississippi)

    45. Mountain Dirt(y) Queer Rhetorics: Making Appalachian Queerness Visible
    46. Hillery Glasby (Michigan State University) and Caleb Pendygraft (Massachusetts Maritime Academy)

    47. Queer Rhetorics of Resistance in HIV Healthcare
    48. Cree Gordon (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) and McKinley Green (George Mason University)

    49. "People Can’t Say I’m a Man, They Can’t Say I’m a Woman": Reality Expansion in the Kewpie Collection
    50. Ruth Ramsden-Karelse (University of Oxford)

    51. Converging in a Room of Our Own: The Ladder, Autostraddle, and Queer Convergence in Online Communities
    52. Josie Rush (University of Pittsburgh at Bradford)

       

      IDENTITIES

    53. Prescribe for Me, Doctor, for I Have Sex: Rhetorics of Empowerment, Queer Shame, and the Confessional in PrEP Prescribing
    54. Zachary Beare (North Carolina State University)

    55. Making Nothing Out of Something: Asexuality and the Rhetorics of Silence and Absence
    56. KJ Cerankowski (Oberlin)

    57. The Queer Potential of Bisexual Rhetorics
    58. Elise Dixon (University of North Carolina Pembroke)

    59. Fuck (Gay) Racism: Queer Asian American Rhetorics of Abe Kim’s TikTok
    60. Austin Miller and Shinsuke Eguchi (University of New Mexico)

    61. Anthos, Bottoms, and Anal Sex in Troye Sivan’s "Bloom"
    62. Cory Geraths (Eureka College)

    63. How Much Does It Take: Persuasion and the Stakes of Will in The Transformation
    64. D.T. McCormick (Purdue)

    65. Irreversible Damage: Transmasculine Affectability and the White Family
    66. Liam Randall (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

    67. Disidentification (as a Survival Strategy for Religious Trauma)
    68. Mari E. Ramler (Tennessee Tech University)

    69. Resilient Closets, Addressivity, and Opening Pandora’s Box
    70. David Wallace (California State University, Long Beach)

    71. Rhetoric of the Invisible (Or, How Bisexual People Demand to be Seen)
    72. Olivia Wood (CUNY Graduate Center)

       

      PROVOCATIONS & INTERVENTIONS

    73. Sexual Assaults, Queer Panics: Gemma Watts and Reynhard Sinaga
    74. Ian Barnard (Chapman University)

    75. Anti-Normativity Under Duress: An Intersectional Intervention in Queer Rhetorics
    76. Marco Dehnert, Daniel C. Brouwer, and Lore/tta LeMaster (Arizona State University)

    77. Lettering me Queer: An Open Letter to Gurlesque
    78. Ames Hawkins (Columbia College Chicago)

    79. Chronicity Rhetorics as Queercrip Activism
    80. Adam Hubrig (Sam Houston State University)

    81. Rhetorical Work: Genre Fluidity as a Queer Rhetorical Practice of Activists -- A Play/Chapter in Multiple Acts
    82. Ruby K. Nancy (University of Minnesota Duluth)

    83. On Taking the Bottom’s Stance, or Not Your Typical Submissive
    84. Timothy Oleksiak (University of Massachusetts Boston)

    85. "Soft Armor" for Ugly Bodies: The Radical Visibility of QueerCrip Fashion
    86. Erin J. Rand (Syracuse)

    87. Dear Queer Memoir Writers…
    88. Jonathan J. Rylander (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire)

    89. Queer Rhetorics as Intervention Methods: The Curious Case of Conversion Violence
    90. Travis Webster (Virginia Tech University)

       

      SPECULATIONS

    91. The Fabulous Rhetorics of Queer Inhumanity: Speculating with Queer Inhuman Figures to Restory Queerphobic Histories
    92. James Joshua Coleman (San Jose State University)

    93. The Queer Babadook: Circulation of Queer Affects
    94. Michael J. Faris (Texas Tech University)

    95. Rhetorics of Gay Future and Queer Futurity: Strategies of Disruption
    96. Dustin Goltz (DePaul University)

    97. (Queer) Optimism Ain’t (Im)Possible
    98. Gavin P. Johnson (Christian Brothers University)

    99. Between Queer and Digital: Toward an Understanding of the Rhetoric of Digital Queerdom
    100. Trent M. Kays (Augusta University)

    101. Queering the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine: Bodies, Embodiment, and the Future  
    102. Katie Manthey (Salem College), Maria Novotny (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee), and Matt Cox (East Carolina University)

    103. Cuir-ing Queer: Speculations on Latin American Notions of Queerness
    104. Alejandra Márquez (Michigan State University)

    105. Queer Hauntings, Queer Renewings
    106. Aneil Rallin (Soka University of America)

    107. Pathological Desire, Perverse Erotics, and Paraphiliac Entelechies

    J. Logan Smilges (Texas Women’s University)

     

     

    Biography

    Jacqueline Rhodes is the Kelleher Centennial Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work on queer and feminist rhetorics has been published in journals such as College Composition & Communication, College English, Computers & Composition, enculturation, JAC, PRE/TEXT, and Rhetoric Review. Her co-authored and co-edited books have won a number of awards, including the 2014 CCCC Outstanding Book Award and the 2015 Computers & Composition Distinguished Book Award (for On Multimodality); the 2016 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship (for Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self); and the same award in 2017 for Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics. Her award-winning documentary feature Once a Fury (Morrigan House, 2020), which profiles the members of a 1970s lesbian separatist collective, is currently streaming on tellofilms.com.

    Jonathan Alexander is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. The author, co-author, or co-editor of twenty-one books, Alexander writes frequently about queer culture and conducts research in the areas of life writing, lifespan writing, and the rhetorics of popular culture. His most recent work has been in creative nonfiction, consisting of Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology (finalist for a Lambda Literary Award), Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot, Bullied: The Story of an Abuse, and Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir.

    "The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric does exactly what a handbook should do: it challenges the boundaries of the field while providing parameters, it provokes, it intervenes, and it offers something of interest for almost everyone. Smart, naughty, and cutting edge, both new and established voices come together to create a queer and trans rhetorical theory agenda that will be impossible to ignore for many years to come." - Karma R. Chávez, author of Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities and The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

    "This handbook will be the definitive overview of the fabulous, diverse, and rigorous work in queer rhetorics for years to come. Contributors are well-attuned to the important ways in which identities and communities materialize in and through rhetoric, while simultaneously—through provocations, interventions, and speculations. Queer futures like the ones José Esteban Muñoz imagined when he encouraged us to cruise utopia are on full display in this indispensable volume." - Robert McRuer, author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability and Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance

    "From the erotic to the fabulous, the resilient to the radical, this comprehensive collection maps the current landscapes of queer rhetorics as it also makes space for an un-imagined future. Queer rhetorics emerge here in all their varied possibilities." - Lisa A. Flores, University of Colorado Boulder