Claudia Severa's Birthday Invitation
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SPRING/SUMMER 2016 VOLUME 18, ISSUE 2 The Journal of the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition Editors Jennifer Bay, Purdue University Patricia Sullivan, Purdue University Associate Editor Wendy B. Sharer, East Carolina University Editorial Assistants Cover Design Design and Layout Liz Lane, Purdue University Carrie Grant, Purdue University Production Assistant Erin Brock Carlson, Purdue University Rebekah Sims, Purdue University Trinity Overmyer, Purdue University Jennifer McVeigh, Purdue University Editorial Board Lindal J. Buchanan, Chair, Old Dominion Barbara L’Eplattenier, University of Arkansas, University Little Rock Katherine H. Adams, Loyola University Andrea Lunsford, Stanford University Nancy C. DeJoy, Michigan State University Kelly Ritter, University of Illinois, Jessica Enoch, University of Maryland Urbana-Champaign Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Georgia State University Shirley K. Rose, Arizona State University Cheryl Glenn, Pennsylvania State University Aparajita Sagar, Purdue University Tarez Samra Graban, Florida State University Wendy B. Sharer, East Carolina University Nan Johnson, The Ohio State University Hui Wu, University of Texas at Tyler Peitho seeks to encourage, advance, and publish original feminist research in the history of rhetoric and composition and thereby support scholars and students within our profession. For submission guidelines and requirements, please see peitho.cwshrc.org. Peitho (ISSN 2169-0774) is published twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. Access to back issues of Peitho are part of the Coalition membership package. Coalition membership is $10 for graduate students and $25 for faculty; more information is available at cwshrc.org. Copyright © 2016 by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition Cover Image: Vindolanda Tablets Online II. Used with permission. Gentium Basic: Copyright © SIL International, 2003-2008 (SIL OFL 1.1) Gentius: Copyright © SIL International, 2003-2014 (SIL OFL) Open Sans: Digitized data copyright © 2010-2011, Google Corporation (Apache License 2.0) The Journal of the Coalition of Women Scholars in Peitho the History of Rhetoric & Composition Volume 18 Number 2 Spring/Summer 2016 Editors’ Welcome and Farewell 2 Jennifer Bay and Patricia Sullivan ARTICLES Claudia Severa’s Birthday Invitation: A Rhetorical Analysis of the 4 Earliest Artifact of Latin Written by a Woman’s Hand Richard Leo Enos and Natasha Trace Robinson We’re Creating Ourselves Now: Crafting as Feminist Rhetoric in a 25 Social Sorority Faith Kurtyka Recognizing the Rhetorics of Feminist Action: Activist Literacy and 45 Dr. Jill Stein’s 2012 Green Party Campaign Virginia Crisco Forget the Master’s Tools, We Will Build Our Own House: The Woman’s 67 Era as a Rhetorical Forum for the Invention of African American Womanhood Katherine Fredlund Finding the Grimkés in Charleston: Using Feminist Historiographic 99 and Archival Research Methods to Build Public Memory Amy Gerald BOOK REVIEWS NeCamp, Samantha. Adult Literacy & American Identity: The 124 Moonlight Schools & Americanization Programs. Jane Greer Eble, Michelle F and Lynée Lewis Gaillet. Stories of Mentoring: Theory 130 and Praxis. Lisa Ede Harrison, Kimberly. The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries 137 and Confederate Persuasion. Molly Wertheimer Eldred, Janet Carey. Literate Zeal: Gender and the Making of a New 141 Yorker Ethos. Sean Zwagerman Editors’ Welcome and Farewell Jennifer Bay and Patricia Sullivan We welcome you to Peitho 18.2, an issue that highlights the gamut of what is available to women who seek to invent, hone, and wield rhetorical pow- er. Each essay provides a different perspective on research methods that al- low for feminist scholarship, both on individual women rhetors and on larger women’s groups. Richard Lee Enos and Natasha Trace Robinson introduce us to “Claudia Severa’s Birthday Invitation: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Earliest Artifact of Latin Written by a Woman’s Hand,” an article that expands our knowledge of women’s contributions to the earliest forms of epistolary rhetoric. Amy Gerald’s “Finding the Grimkés in Charleston: Using Feminist Historiographic and Archival Research Methods to Build Public Memory” shows how we might use the archive to lead to feminist inquiry, which ultimately allowed Gerald to build a public memory of the Grimke sisters in Charleston. In “Forget the Master’s Tools, We Will Build Our Own House: The Woman’s Era as a Rhetorical Forum for the Invention of the African American Woman,” Katherine Fredlund examines The Woman’s Era as a publication in which African American women found both personal and political strength through its various networks. Each of these pieces focus on historiographic approaches that can expand or limit our ability to highlight women’s contributions to rhetorical history and theory. Faith Kurtyka brings us into the 20th century to examine how one contem- porary women’s organization, the sorority, serves as a site of empowerment. Kurtyka describes how a group of sorority women “adopt a creative and criti- cal approach to sorority life, explore alternative roles as sorority women, and theorize their sorority as an alternate formation of sorority culture.” Finally, Virginia Crisco’s ”Recognizing the Rhetorics of Feminist Action: Activist Literacy and Dr. Jill Stein’s Green Party Campaign” comes at an appropriate moment as we debate candidates for the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. Crisco demonstrates the rhetorical strategies that Presidential candidate Jill Stein used in her 2012 campaign and argues for an activist literacy that lever- ages feminist possibilities for action in a neoliberal democracy. With this issue, we bid you farewell as editors of Peitho. We want to thank all of the people who have helped us grow the journal over the past 3 years: the journal’s first editorial assistants, Carrie Grant and Christine Masters; our current editorial assistants, Trinity Overmyer, Rebekah Sims, Erin Brock Carlson, Jenny McVeigh, and Elizabeth Lane; Coalition webmistress Caitlan Spronk; our Editorial Board, led by Lindal Buchanan; Associate Editors, Lisa Peitho Journal: Vol. 18.2, 2016 Editors’ Welcome and Farewell 3 Mastrangelo and Wendy Sharer; and all of the many manuscript reviewers and Advisory Board members who have reviewed for the journal over the past three years, especially those who reviewed as part of Volume 18: Kate Adams, Risa Applegarth, Lisa Arnold, Sara Arroyo, Anita August, Jean Bessette, Christine Blair, Lindal Buchanan, Kelly Cameron, Erin Frost, David Gold, Melissa Goldthwaite, Jane Greer, Laurie Grobman, Lisa Mastrangelo, Kristen Moore, Kelly Pender, Staci Perryman-Clark, Clancy Ratliff, Krista Ratcliffe, Thomas Rickert, Hui Wu, K.J. Rawson, Kristen Seas, Lisa Shaver, Eileen Schell, Don Ungar, and Shirley Wilson-Logan. We thank you for your assistance as we have built the infrastructure to continue publishing solid feminist scholarship. But perhaps most of all, we thank all of the graduate students and junior faculty who read Peitho, attend the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference, and submit their scholarship to the journal. You continue to build up the work of feminist scholarship, pushing it beyond its limitations and challenging all of us to create new spaces of rhetor- ical power for all peoples. We wish Jen Wingard all the best as she continues this work as the journal’s new editor. Peitho Journal: Vol. 18.2, 2016 Peitho Journal: Vol. 18.2, 2016 4 Claudia Severa’s Birthday Invitation: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Earliest Artifact of Latin Written by a Woman’s Hand Richard Leo Enos and Natasha Trace Robinson Abstract: In the last few decades our discipline has greatly benefited from research focusing on the recovery of women in the history of rhetoric. This same research has made major contributions, but has also exposed the limitations of our histo- riography, calling attention to the need to reflect on our methods of analysis and the retrieval of our sources. A striking example of this need to discover new primary sources and new methods to analyze these sources emerged in 1973 when artifacts of ancient Roman writings were unearthed by archaeologists from a garbage dump whose damp, natural environment had sealed off oxygen and thereby miraculous- ly preserved over 850 writing tablets from a remote Roman garrison in northern England. Among these priceless artifacts is evidence of the wives of Roman soldiers writing to each other as a normal feature of everyday activities. These artifacts of epistolary rhetoric provide a new perspective on the written rhetoric of women in c. 100 A.D., revealing yet another dimension of rhetoric undertaken by women in the history of our discipline. One particular artifact, Tablet 291, is especially relevant to our purposes, for it reveals a correspondence between two women concerning an invitation to a birthday party. Of special interest is the post-script that provides convincing evidence of the earliest specimen of a Latin text written by a woman’s hand. Benefiting from the inclusiveness of multi-modal research, this essay first summarizes and reviews archaeological and palaeographic research that provides a context for understanding the environment and conditions from which this arti- fact emerged and by which it was preserved. Subsequently, a rhetorical analysis of Tablet 291 is offered in order to lay groundwork for a more thorough and sensitive perspective of women and their uses of rhetoric in the history of our discipline.