Shon in TCR Land

Idea for Rhetoric Paper October 9, 2009

Finally nailed down a topic for Kemp’s 20th Century Rhetoric. Found an African American orator/feminist from the 19th century that interested me: Maria W. Stewart; I’m always interested in “the firsts” – those people who seem to be a voice for a generation of others to come along and promote an agenda. Stewart was one of the first – if not the first AA woman to speak out on women’s rights.  As I did preliminary research on her, I noticed that there wasn’t much on her. Some, but not a lot. Decided I wanted to do a rhetorical analysis on one of Stewart’s speeches, but the key is I have to frame this paper within 20th century rhetoric. What does this mean for me? Reading and delving into more Woolf, Foucault, Burke, and others to get my grounding for the paper.

Last night, while in 20th Century Rhetoric, I was skimming through our textbook when I noticed that Stewart was in the book. Kemp mentioned something like, Well, we at least know she’s known if she’s in this book. Which of course, made me worry. One of my biggest issues has been not wanting to reinvent the wheel with projects I do.

So I skimmed the introduction of “19th Century Rhetoric” in the textbook and it speaks of Stewart, briefly. What I found interesting was that she and other women of color were lumped into “The Development of Women’s Rhetorics” section of the introduction; whereas, men of color received their own section: “The Rhetorics of Men of Color.” Significant? Probably not, but it’s something that makes me go, Hmmm.

My worries of reinventing the wheel, somewhat, have been abated. In reading the introduction leading into Stewart’s work in the textbook, there is still not a lot of work done on Stewart, so I’m sure I can lend my voice to the discourse on this extraordinary woman.