Faculty Talk with Prof. Alexander Slotkin, "Constellating Jewish Rhetorics: A Call for New Directions"

 

Rhetoric and composition scholars often teach and cite the work of authors who happen to be Jewish without explicitly discussing Jewish meaning-making practices. At the same time, scholars who take up Jewish rhetorics as their subject of study tend to focus on white, Western, and European worldviews, usually (and unintentionally) at the expense of non-European Jews and Jews of Color. This article takes a cultural rhetorics approach to Jewish rhetorics to open a new avenue of rhetorical inquiry that recognizes how Jewish meaning-making practices emerge from political, racial, cultural, and religious contexts. At the same time, this article discusses Iraqi Jewish traditions and histories to illustrate what we stand to gain by constellating non-European Jewish voices and practices in our scholarship.

image by GDJ; licensed under CC0 / public domain declaration

image credit: brown paper bag by clikr, licensed under CC0 / public domain declaration