History of Rhetoric and Composition

I'm not sure if we are required to post a blog about the "brief" history of rhetoric, but I figured it wouldn't hurt in any case. I would like to quickly consider the social and historical approaches to rhetoric and their exclusion of women's issues throughout history. As the article points out, in the 1980s "composition scholars focused on the social nature of writing" (The Bedford Bibliography). Finally we see a time when rhetoricians gave a voice to many groups previously excluded from the mainstream discourse. For many years the voices of women remained silent as academics focused on traditional facts and their "ability" to preserve our nation's history. Now, however, women's studies and gender studies discourses break the silence about inequalities between (and among) the genders, while challenging gender bias in the English language and in the field of composition studies.