The Erotic as Rhetorical Power offers a queer feminist history of rhetoric that recovers the civic contributions of women teachers in same-sex romantic friendships. Extending perspectives from ancient rhetoric to nineteenth-century progressivism, from Audre Lorde’s Black lesbian feminist theory to its present-day uptakes, Pamela VanHaitsma theorizes the erotic as a distinctly rhetorical power that fueled women’s teaching, writing, and speaking toward both transformational and troubling ends. The Erotic as Rhetorical Power thus illustrates the erotic’s significance as a conflicted site of power that is central to rhetorical theory and history as well as feminist and LGBTQ+ studies.

Pamela VanHaitsma is the author of Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education (University of South Carolina Press, 2019) and The Erotic as Rhetorical Power: Archives of Romantic Friendship between Women Teachers (Ohio State University Press, 2024). Her work has been recognized with awards from the Rhetoric Society of America, the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and the National Communication Association’s Caucus on GLBTQ Concerns. Currently, Pamela serves as an associate professor of communication arts and sciences and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State.