This open invitation calls for authors to submit 500-750 word abstracts for Peitho’s Summer
2024 Special Issue: “Small and Subtle Feminisms: Reconsidering Who or What Is Feminist
Enough.” This CFP is available at https://tinyurl.com/subtlefeminisms.
The extremity of violence and dehumanization especially toward queer folk, trans folk, women,
and BIPOC demands action that is radical. In other words, these ongoing injustices require
feminist rhetorical action that recognizes the systemic nature of oppression and how people’s
experiences within patriarchal systems are also affected by race, class, and sexuality. As such,
radical action has recently been prioritized as loud, visible, and big–it’s in the Women’s
Marches, the BLM protests against police violence, and the #MeToo movement. Volume and
visibility contribute to radical change, but we hesitate to dismiss feminist acts that are small,
subtle, or quiet.
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards provide an early exploration of this
tension in Manifesta (2000), explaining “We dedicated it to the people who say ‘I’m not a
feminist, but. . .’ and to the people who say ‘I am a feminist, but . . .’ It was our observation that
many people felt like they were “disqualified” from feminisms because they hadn’t worked out
all of their shit” (qtd. in http://signsjournal.org/bad-feminist). Inherent in their observations is the
notion of being a “good feminist” or “feminist enough,” which Roxane Gay explores in Bad
Feminist (2014). Qualifying feminism and what it means to do feminist rhetorical work has been
an ongoing conversation, one worth revisiting in the face of proliferating injustices and
increasing calls for transformation. This conversation resurfaced in a keynote talk at the 2019
Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference with Lisa Melonçon’s talk on “Quiet Feminism,” which
triggered strong responses about the importance of being loud and visible in order to make
change. Melonçon’s notion of quiet feminism sparked our curiosity: Where does quiet feminism
fit with radical feminism, and how are we understanding different enactments of feminism? This
special issue calls for contributors to engage with the question: What constitutes “feminist
enough,” particularly in feminist rhetorical acts that are considered small, subtle, or quiet?
More than 30 years of feminist rhetorical scholarship has grappled with recovering, remembering,
enlarging, and amending women’s lived experiences throughout history (see e.g.,
Bizzell; Enoch; Ghimire; hooks, Ratcliffe; Rawson; Moraga; Anzaldua; Jarratt; Royster; Kirsch;
Logan; Wu; Lunsford; Glenn). What is “feminist enough” persists in fourth wave feminisms, and
postcolonial scholarship challenges the Western, democratic assumption that activism must be
loud, fierce, and visible (Koggel). Western feminisms have not only ignored the differences
between women, they have also privileged the same patriarchal tools to make equitable changes
that have oppressed many women (Lorde). Scholars argue that gender relations and practices are
deeply embedded in cultural, economic, and political institutions that necessitate a better
understanding of the many forms of feminist action in the West and across the world that can’t
look the same in place and time or satisfy a monolithic notion of “feminist” (Mohanty). In recent
years, scholarship has been published on feminist material practices, embodied rhetorics, and
feminist practices of remembering (e.g., Boling, et al; Clary-Lemon; Gruwell). Small and subtle
feminisms might be seen across a range embodied and material contexts: from women in sports
who hesitate to call themselves feminists, colleagues in rhetorics of science or technical
communication who have felt on the periphery of the Coalition, and LGBTQIA+ students who
are both vulnerable and called to take risks to exist on campus.
Contributors will be asked to rethink the potential of small, subtle, and quiet feminisms, even
when our moment seems to call for big, radical action. We are a Coalition because each of our
smallness adds to greater possibilities. Even as we turn up the volume; even as we dismantle
harmful stereotypes such as the so-called “angry Black woman”; even as we wave rainbow flags,
stand with/as trans folk, and chant “live loud and proud”–how do we also maintain and create
spaces for the small, the quiet, the subtle? What are the rhetorical choices we are making in how
we talk about feminist identities, experiences, practices, and activisms that call into question
what is and is not enough? A former student, of intersecting marginalized identities, once
explained that they created pockets of resistance in chats with janitors and whispered friendships
at the back of classrooms. This special issue seeks to recognize, recover, and reconsider these
pockets, these moments of small and subtle feminist rhetorical action that may not be loud but
are every bit as crucial–and are “feminist enough”–for our collective survival and movement
toward transformation.
Possible questions and trajectories:
• How do we hold space for small and quiet feminisms alongside big and loud activism?
• In what ways might we invite a diversity of feminisms–disrupting the system from
without and from within, being loud and quiet, acting both overtly and subtly, locally,
nationally, and globally, and engaging in ways that are big and small?
• How might we value small and quiet feminisms while recognizing contributions across
differences in race and class, which have been historically mischaracterized and
dismissed as “too loud” or “aggressive”?
• How is the notion of “feminist enough” linked to identity, performance, and politics?
• How might feminist rhetorical practices look different across different fields (i.e.,
technical and professional writing, rhetorics of science, medical rhetorics)?
• How might we more effectively describe the radical nature of mentoring and
administrative work if we recognize small and quiet feminisms?
• How might craftivism and other material/embodied feminist rhetorical practices work
alongside louder activisms?
• How do we engage in small, quiet, and subtle feminist rhetorics without being silenced,
rendered invisible, and/or dismissed?
• If all feminisms are inherently radical, then how do we reclaim the parts of it that are
small, quiet, and subtle?
Texts will be accepted based on reviewer guidelines for Peitho, including evidence of feminist
and rhetorical scholarly foundation, readiness for publication, and commitment to feminist
practices and methods. We welcome a range of genres associated with the special issue’s theme,
such as scholarly articles, essays, organizing/advocacy frameworks, creative works, or
multimodal works. Please submit queries and abstracts to Tammie M. Kennedy and Jessi
Thomsen at subtlefeminisms@gmail.com.
Timeline
• Abstracts with Working Bibliography due by November 1, 2023
• Acceptance notifications by December 1, 2023
• Full manuscripts due March 1, 2024
• Estimated date of publication September 2024
Bibliography
Baumgardner, Jennifer; Richards, Amy (2000). Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the
Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Boling, Brooke, Laura R. Micciche, Katie C. Monthe, and Jane E. O. Stone. “‘Go and Love
Some More’: Memorializing and Archiving Feminist Grief.” Peitho, vol. 24, no. 4, 2022.
https://cfshrc.org/article/go-and-love-some-more-memorializing-and-archiving-feminist-grief/
Breyer, Abby. The Blanks at Our Beginnings: A Graduate Student’s Reflection on Peitho’s
Contributions to New Scholars. Peitho, vol. 24, no. 4, Summer 2022
Clary-Lemon, Jennifer. “Selvedge Rhetorics and Material Memory.” Peitho, vol. 24, no. 3, 2022.
https://cfshrc.org/article/selvedge-rhetorics-and-material-memory/
Ghimire, Asmita. “Yogmaya Neupane: The Unknown Rhetorician and the Known Rebel”
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and-the-known-rebel/
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