Description
Book SynopsisThis project analyzes how political women rhetorically performâdiscursively, visually, and physicallyâtheir positions of power and how these performances are read, time again, against and with other women who have held similar positions in different geopolitical locations.
Trade ReviewTransnational Feminist Rhetorics and Gendered Leadership in Global Politics offers an important contribution to and promises to spark new conversations about transnational feminist and rhetorical scholarship. Richards demonstrates a distinctive ability to sustain and focus on the potential of the discourses and practices of women world leaders to serve as radical departures from the assumptions about leadership in and across nation-state contexts, as well as re-instantiations of neoliberal logics underpinning the nation-state. Richards moves elegantly from the narratives of power produced by and about individuals to collective considerations of political women in order to identify structures and strategies that frame and promote the naturalness or inevitability of women leaders, and the public histories they animate in transnational contexts. -- Adela Licona, University of Arizona
Rebecca Richards’ insightful and compelling book, Transnational Feminist Rhetorics and Gendered Leadership in Global Politics, is a must-read for audiences invested in feminist rhetorics and women’s leadership. Richards’ astute analysis of a range of multimodal texts reveals the impactful rhetorical strategies that shape identities of women world leaders and their work. Besides the major contributions Richards makes to feminist rhetorical scholarship, she intervenes significantly in conversations relating to transnational, citizenship, genre, and media studies. Situated in the recent past and contemporary moment, Richards’ study has much to say to our current situation as well as to the future prospect of women in leadership positions around the globe. -- Jessica Enoch, University of Maryland
The Oval Office, like its equivalent in other nation-states, has traditionally been viewed as masculine rhetorical space. In this insightful study, Rebecca Richards explores how women world leaders navigate these spaces, and, most importantly—explains why their presence on the world stage is so rare. Anyone interested in the gendered dynamics of political office will be fascinated by this book. -- Roxanne Mountford, University of Kentucky
Table of ContentsTable of Contents Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Confronting the Doxa of the Nation-State: Transnational Rhetorics and Women World Leaders Chapter 2. Daughters of Destiny: Narrations of the Nation-State in Autobiographies of Women World Leaders Chapter 3. Rewriting Public Histories: Political Women, Embodied Mimicry, and the Biopic Chapter 4. Access Denied: Creating a Corporate Rhetor for Women World Leaders Chapter 5. Will the Real “Iron Lady” Please Stand Up?: Cyborgian Politics from Margaret Thatcher to Hillary Clinton Conclusion Epilogue Appendix A. List of Women World Leaders Appendix B. Brief Biographical Information of Political Women in this Book Bibliography Index About the author
