About
“Rhetoric was a verb before it was a noun—an act and then a place. This means you must make the gesture, the effort, the real effort to communicate with another human being and then you must have a house to shelter for the sun and storms in your life. People have asked me why I chose to be a rhetorician. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a rhetorician, and with that, I live my life.”— Jane S Sutton
Author Bio
Jane landed on rhetoric after participating in debate during high school and college and eventually earned a doctorate in Communication and Rhetoric from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
She is Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences Emeritus at Penn State whose academic career delved deep beneath the foundations of rhetoric and moved relentlessly through its intriguing, heartbreaking, and inspiring past. What she found led her to look backward and forward at the same time, always circling around the question of authority.
Though an academic by trade, her metaphoric style brings her audience to a breathtaking boundary where the vagaries of authority are visible. The House of My Sojourn: Rhetoric, Women, and the Question of Authority (2010, U of Alabama Press) won the Bonnie Ritter Book Award.
Jane’s Involvement
Publications Committee for the Journal of York County Heritage
Board of Directors for the York County History Center
Editorial Board Advances in the History of Rhetoric 2000-2019
Past President - American Society of the History of Rhetoric
Curriculum Vitae
“Though an academic by trade, [Jane’s] metaphoric style brings her audience to a breathtaking boundary where the vagaries of authority are visible.”
Published Books
A Revolution in Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric by Jane S. Sutton , Mari Lee Mifsud
The House of My Sojourn: Rhetoric, Women, and the Question of Authority by Jane S. Sutton
Currently Writing
Alice Marshall Women's History Collection, Postcards, AKM 91/1.2. Archives and Special Collections at the Penn State Harrisburg Library, Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
WOMEN & THE PRESIDENCY: DIALOG OF A NEW ERA, 1870-2016
Jane’s advice to readers: prepare to read an untold story on the metaphoric edge of your seats. You’re in for a remarkable ride through the ways Americans have thought about human equality and freedom.
Just Published
“Sewing machine postal cards not only advertised the devices in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, but they also communicated opposition to woman suffrage.” Courtesy York County History Center Library and Archives
Journal of York County Heritage September (2020)
REVIEWS
“Sutton employs tropes of architecture and the house of rhetoric to demonstrate that over time room was made for women in public and rhetorical spaces, but authority and agency were denied them. … Useful for philosophy and women’s studies as well as rhetoric, this volume supplements and moves beyond earlier work. Highly recommended.”
— CHOICE
“My advice to readers: prepare to read on the metaphoric edge of your seats; you’re in for a great ride.”
—Andrea A. Lunsford, Professor of English at Stanford University and Author