Cristina Ramirez

My research interest centers on the developing investigations into undiscovered voices in rhetorical history that have been overlooked by scholars, mainly, Mexican women journalists from the turn of the twentieth century. My dissertation, Claiming the Discursive Self: The Rhetoric of Mexican Women Journalists, 1876-1940 will be among the first rhetorical histories that focuses solely on Mexican women. Because there were a number of women to chose from, I specifically chose 3 women writers, and one group of women on which to focus my research. My dissertation answers

• How does the historical consideration of turn of the century Mexican women journalists contribute to a discursive identity, theory, and history of rhetoric within the Americas?
• More specifically, how do journalists Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1846-1896), Hermila Galindo, Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1876-1942), and a group of women las mujeres de Zitácuaro/the women of Zitácuaro (1900), contribute to an understanding of mestiza rhetoric?

My dissertation’s first chapter, a forth coming publication in a special 2009 edition of Rhetoric and Latinidad in College English, develops and extends the definition of mestiza rhetoric. I claim mestiza rhetoric is a discourse that emerges from a cultural background that recognizes its multiple subjectivities, adapts ideas and logics from various cultures, and “creates a symbolic space beyond the mere coming together of two halves” (Baca 5). Mestiza discourse can represent this symbolic space by calling on their indigenous cultural symbols, but my perception of mestiza rhetoric does not necessarily depend upon the explicit discursive recognition of indigenous or cultural roots. It results in divergent, subversive texts by representing an intertextuality of cultures and ideas while resisting assimilation to a linear articulation of logic. Women such as Wright de Kleinhans and Gutiérrez de Mendoza fall under the idea of mestiza rhetoric because their writings were on the cusp of a historical era in Mexico whose society was struggling to articulate a true identity, one that sought not to be dominated by European or indigenous influences, but one that would reflect the plurality of their cultures.

This study into rhetorical mestizaje, the confluence of cultures and ideas, especially those of Mexican women writers, has great potential for publication in the field of rhetoric and writing studies. My archival research, which has taken me on three trips to Durango, Mexico and one to the Latin American collection at the University of Texas at Austin, has uncovered several primary documents that are at the center of my dissertation work. This ongoing research is in collaboration with Joel B. Pouwels, a scholar out of the University of Central Arkansas in the field of Latin American Studies. We are planning work on an anthology of Mexican women journalist’s writings of which Pouwels would complete the translation of the women’s writings, and I would focus on the analysis of their writings. An anthology of Mexican women journalist’s writings would fill a space in women’s rhetorics, while reaching across to various disciplines such as Latin American History and Literature, and Women´s Studies.