Sexual Rhetorics

Jonathan Alexander is Professor of English, Education, and Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Irvine, USA where he was the founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication.Jacqueline Rhodes is Professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino, USA.

"Sexual Rhetorics moves beyond an engagement with the gendered and sexual subject. The sexed rhetorics animated in this collection will move readers to confront and consider the pervasiveness of sex/uality in structuring social life and discourses in public/s sphere/s. In bringing together a range of sexed methods – from archival research to textual and rhetorical analyses to ethnographic-style inquiry and case studies – Alexander and Rhodes effectively argue that to fully understand rhetorical action in contemporary (counter)publics, we must also know and understand the primacy of sexual rhetorics." -- Adela C. Licona, University of Arizona, USA

• Introduction: What’s Sexual about Rhetoric, What’s Rhetorical about Sex? Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes Section I: Sexed Methods 1. Promiscuous Approaches to Reorienting Rhetorical Research Heather Lee Branstetter 2. "Intersecting Realities": Queer Assemblage as Rhetorical Methodology Jason Palmeri and Jonathan Rylander 3. Consciousness, Experience, Sexual Expression, and Judgment Jacqueline M. Martinez 4. Hard Core Rhetoric: Gender, Genre, and the Image in Neuroscience Jordynn Jack 5. Historicizing Sexual Rhetorics: Theorizing the Power to Read, the Power to Interpret, and the Power to Produce Meta G. Carstarphen 6. Milk Memory’s Queer Rhetorical Futurity Charles E. Morris III Section II: Troubling Identity 7. The Trope of the Closet David L. Wallace 8. Sex and the Crip Latina Ellen M. Gil-Gómez 9. Affect, Female Masculinity, and the Embodied Space Between: Two-Spirit Traces in Thirza Cuthand’s Experimental Film Lisa Tatonetti 10. The Unbearable Weight of Pedagogical Neutrality: Religion and LGBTQ Issues in the English Studies Classroom G Patterson 11. The Story of Fox Girl: Writing Queer about/in Imaginary Spaces Martha Marinara 12. "As Proud of Our Gayness, as We Are of Our Blackness": Race-ing Sexual Rhetorics in the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays Eric Darnell Pritchard Section III: (Counter)Publics 13. "Gay Boys Kill Themselves": The Queer Figuration of the Suicidal Gay Teen Erin J. Rand 14. Consorting with the Enemy?: Women’s Liberation Rhetoric about Sexuality Clark A. Pomerleau 15. Sex Trafficking Rhetorics/Queer Refusal Ian Barnard 16. Sexual Counterpublics, Disciplinary Rhetorics, and Truvada J. Blake Scott 17. Presidential Masculinity: George W. Bush’s Rhetorical Conquest Luke Winslow 18. Liberal Humanist "Rights" Discourse and Sexual Citizenship Harriet Malinowitz