Path-breaking research on women and literacy in the past decade established conventions and advanced innovative methods that push the making of knowledge into new spheres of inquiry. Taking these accomplishments as a point of departure, this volume emphasizes the diversity--of approaches and subjects--that characterizes the next generation of research on women and literacy. It builds on and critiques scholarship in literacy studies, composition studies, rhetorical theory, gender studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies to open new venues for future research.
Contributors discuss what literacy is--more precisely, what literacies are--but their strongest interest is in documenting and theorizing women's lived experience of these literacies, with particular attention to:
*the diversity of women's literacies within the U.S., including but not limited to the varying relations that exist among women, literacy, economic position, class, race, sexuality, and education;
*relations among women, literacy, and economic contexts in the U.S. and abroad, including but not limited to changes in women's private and domestic literacies, the evolution of technologies of literacy, and women's experience of the commodification of literacies; and
*emergent roles of women and literacy in a globally interdependent world.
This broad, significant work is a must-read for researchers and graduate students across the fields of literacy studies, composition studies, rhetorical theory, and gender studies.

Path-breaking research on women and literacy in the past decade established conventions and advanced innovative methods that push the making of knowledge into new spheres of inquiry. Taking these accomplishments as a point of departure, this volume emphasizes the diversity -- of approaches and subjects -- that characterizes the next generation of research on women and literacy. It builds on and critiques scholarship in literacy studies, composition studies, rhetorical theory, gender studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies to open new venues for future research.
& nbsp;
Contributors discuss what literacy is -- more precisely, what literacies are -- but their strongest interest is in documenting and theorizing women ' s lived experience of these literacies, with particular attention to:
*the diversity of women ' s literacies within the U.S., including but not limited to the varying relations that exist among women, literacy, economic position, class, race, sexuality, and education;
*relations among women, literacy, and economic contexts in the U.S. and abroad, including but not limited to changes in women ' s private and domestic literacies, the evolution of technologies of literacy, and women ' s experience of the commodification of literacies; and
*emergent roles of women and literacy in a globally interdependent world.
& nbsp;
This broad, significant work is a must-read for researchers and graduate students across the fields of literacy studies, composition studies, rhetorical theory, and gender studies.

A picture is worth a thousand laughs. Wise-cracking wedding photographer Zest Renald has just been served divorce papers when she agrees to accompany a lesbian softball team during their elopement to California. She's doesn't know anything about gay marriage, and her only exposure to lesbian culture is an addiction to the talk show Ellen. But with her assets frozen and her husband claiming their house for the Other Woman's Love Child, she needs the job. Zest's gaffes and notoriously bad gaydar endear her to the brides, as well as Bradford, the beautiful male stylist who travels with them. Just when Zest is figuring out how to manage her attraction to the unattainable "safe" man, they arrive in California amidst the worst anti-gay protests San Diego has ever seen. When the minister the women hired turns out to be a Prop 8 zealot hell-bent on preventing the wedding, Zest and the brides are chased across the city in a hilarious yet poignant attempt to foil the protesters and tie the white knot.

Throughout history, determined individuals have appropriated and reconstructed rhetorical and religious resources to create effective arguments. In the process, they have remade both themselves and their communities. This edited volume offers notable examples of these reconstructions, ranging from the formation of Christianity to questions about the relationship of religious and academic ways of knowing.
The initial chapters explore historic challenges to Christian doctrines and gender roles. Contributors examine Mormon women's campaigns for the recognition of their sect, women's suffrage, and the statehood of Utah; the Seventh-day Adventist challenge to the mainstream designation of Sunday as the Sabbath; a female minister who confronted the gendered tenets of early Methodism and created her own sacred spaces; women who, across three centuries, fashioned an apostolic voice of humble authority rooted in spiritual conversion; and members of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who redefined notions of women's intellectual capacity and appropriate fields for work from the Civil War through World War II.
Considering contemporary learning environments, other contributors explore resources that can help faculty and students of composition and rhetoric consider more fully the relations of religion and academic work. These contributors call upon the work of theologians, philosophers, and biblical scholars to propose strategies for building trust through communication.
The final chapters examine the writings of Apostle Paul and his use of Jewish forms of argumentation and provide an overarching discussion of how the Christian tradition has resisted rhetorical renovation, and in the process, missed opportunities to renovate spiritual belief.