Jewish Rhetorics: History, Theory, Practice

Product Description This volume, the first of its kind, establishes and clarifies the significance of Jewish rhetorics as its own field and as a field within rhetoric studies. Diverse essays illuminate and complicate the editors’ definition of a Jewish rhetorical stance as allowing speakers to maintain a “resolute sense of engagement” with their fellows and their community, while also remaining aware of the dislocation from the members of those communities. Topics include the historical and theoretical foundations of Jewish rhetorics; cultural variants and modes of cultural expression; and intersections with Greco-Roman, Christian, Islamic, and contemporary rhetorical theory and practice. In addition, the contributors examine gender and Yiddish, and evaluate the actual and potential effect of Jewish rhetorics on contemporary scholarship and on the ways we understand and teach language and writing. The contributors include some of the world’s leading scholars of rhetoric, writing, and Jewish studies. Review “Sweeping in its historical range, provocatively eclectic in its archives, and wonderfully inventive in its approaches, [this] collection is a valuable guide to an increasingly important scholarly field. Together, the essays build an expansive definition of the book's title, showing how the term ‘Jewish rhetorics’ encompasses a rich variety of texts practices, performances, theories, and thinkers. This is one of those books that, in its own graciously learned way, unsettles standard models of the Western rhetorical tradition, alerting us to ways they must be revised.”—John Schilb, professor of English, Indiana University, Bloomington About the Author MICHAEL BERNARD-DONALS is Nancy C. Hoefs professor of English and the director of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. JANICE W. FERNHEIMER is associate professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital studies and director of Jewish studies at the University of Kentucky.