Silence: A bibliography for composition and rhetoric


Rebecca Moore Howard
The Writing Program
Syracuse University



Please note: I'm increasingly using CiteULike and del.icio.us for my bibliographic work. (On both sites you'll need to click on tags of interest.) Browse what's on this page and then check out CiteULike, del.icio.us, CompPile, and the MLA International Bibliography (requires SU ID) for more. A list of all the static bibliographies that I've put online is here.


Please email suggestions, corrections, or additions.


Last updated 4 August 2007

Aminzade, Ronald, et al. Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Beason, Larry, and Laurel Darrow. "Listening as Assessment:  How Students and Teachers Evaluate WAC."  Assessing Writing Across the Curriculum: Diverse Approaches and Practices. Ed. Kathleen Blake Yancey and Brian Huot. Greenwich, CT: Ablex, 1997. 97-123. 

Belanoff, Pat.  "Silence:  Reflection, Literacy, Learning, and Teaching."  College Composition and Communication 52.3 (February 2001):  399-428. 

Bokser, Julie A. "Sor Juana's Rhetoric of Silence." Rhetoric Review 25.1 (2006): 5-21.

Bramblett, Anne, and Alison Knoblauch, eds.  What to Expect When You're Expected to Teach:  The Anxious Craft of Teaching Composition.  Portsmouth, NH:  Boynton/Cook, 2002. 

Bruce, Heather E.  Literacies, Lies, and Silences:  Girls Writing Lives in the Classroom.  New York:  Peter Lang, 2003. 

Clair, Robin Patric.  Organizing Silence:  A World of Possibilities.  Albany:  SUNY P, 1998. 

Crenshaw, Carrie.  "Resisting Whiteness' Rhetorical Silence."  Western Journal of Communication 61.3 (Summer 1997). 

Eades, Trent.  "Plato, Rhetoric, and Silence."  Philosophy and Rhetoric 29.3 (1996):  244-58. 

Fiumara, Gemma.  The Other Side of Language:  A Philosophy of Listening.  New York:  Routledge, 1995. 

Gere, Anne Ruggles.  "Revealing Silence:  Rethinking Personal Writing."  College Composition and Communication 53.2 (December 2001):  203-223. 

Glenn, Cheryl.  "Silence:  A Rhetorical Art for Resisting Discipline(s)."  JAC 22.2 (2002). 

Grace, Victoria.  "Reading the Silent Body:  Women, Doctors and Pelvic Pain." Bodily Boundaries, Sexualised Genders and Medical Discourses.   Ed. Marion de Ras and Victoria Grace.  Palmerston, New Zealand:  Dunmore, 1997.  85-98. 

Grijalva, Michelle.  "Teaching American Indian Students:  Interpreting the Rhetorics of Silence."  Writing in Multicultural Settings.  Ed. Carol Severino, Juan C. Guerra, and Johnnella E. Butler.  New York:  MLA, 1997.  40-50. 

Hollihan, Thomas A., and Kevin T. Baaske.  Arguments and Arguing:  The Products and Process of Human Decision Making.  New York:  St. Martin's, 1994.  Chapter 9, techniques of listening.

Jaworski, Adam.  The Power of Silence:  Social and Pragmatic Perspectives.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage, 1992. 

Joseph, Branden W.  "John Cage and the Architecture of Silence."  October 81 (Summer 1997). 

Kalamaras, George.  Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension:  Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric of Silence.  Albany:  SUNY UP, 1994. 

Levin, Richard.  "Silence is Consent, or Curse Ye Meroz!"  College English 59.2 (February 1997):  171-90. 

Lovering, Kathryn.  "Listening to Girls' 'Voice' and Silence:  The Problematics of the Menarcheal Body." Bodily Boundaries, Sexualised Genders and Medical Discourses.   Ed. Marion de Ras and Victoria Grace.  Palmerston, New Zealand:  Dunmore, 1997.  69-84. 

Lu, Min-Zhan.  "From Silence to Words:  Writing as Struggle." Dialogue on Writing:  Rethinking ESL, Basic Writing, and First-Year Composition.  Ed. Geraldine DeLuca, Len Fox, Mark-Ameen Johnson, and Myra Kogen.  Mahwah, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002. 

Montiglio, Silvia.  Silence in the Land of Logos.  Princeton UP. 

Mutnick, Deborah.  "From Silence to Speech:  How the 'Dialogic Imagination' Saved Me."  The Personal Narrative:  Writing Ourselves as Teachers and Scholars.  Ed. Gil Haroian-Guerin.  Herndon, VA:  Calendar Islands, 1999. 

Schenke, Arleen.  "The 'Will to Reciprocity' and the Work of Memory:  Fictioning Speaking out of Silence in ESL and Feminist Pedagogy."  Resources for Feminist Research 20.3-4 (1991):  47-55. 

Sontag, Susan.  Styles of Radical Will.  New York:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969. 

Wilson, Matthew.  "Research, Expressivism, and Silence."  JAC 15.2 (1995):  241-60.