Educational History
Ph.D., 1984 University of Colorado, Boulder, Communication
Research Interest
Rhetorical histories and theories; philosophy and rhetoric; feminisms, women, and political communication in the United States.
Biography
I have a doctorate in communication from the University of Colorado, Boulder. As of June 30, 2018, I am professor emeritus of communication arts and sciences at Pennsylvania State University. As a scholar and author, I focus on the problem of women’s neglect and exclusion from the history of communication and rhetorical theory. Watch a brief overview to see how rhetoric, women, and politics are connected to vital questions of equality.
Paradoxes intrigue me. I am currently writing a book about women and the presidency. Today, many Americans believe a woman president is an idea whose time has come. Why we have not yet had a woman president is a bit of a puzzle. Women have been seeking the presidency for almost 150 years. AMERICA’S PECULIAR PROBLEM: WOMEN AND THE PRESIDENCY tells the untold story of women’s attempts to be elected president.
I serve on two editorial boards: Advances in the History of Rhetoric and the Journal of the York County Heritage Trust.
View my curriculum vitae (pdf)
Books
The House of My Sojourn: Rhetoric, Women, and the Question of Authority. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010.
Reviews
“This is an intriguing, inspiring, imaginative, and deeply courageous excavation and rebuilding of the house of rhetoric. My advice to readers: prepare to read on the metaphoric edge of your seats; you’re in for a great ride.” —Andrea A. Lunsford, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English at Stanford University and author of Writing Matters: Rhetoric in Public and Private Lives
“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
A Revolution in Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2015.
Reviews
“Alloiostrophic Rhetoric is indeed a tropic revolution for rhetorical studies. Sutton and Mifsud provoke the discipline to turn toward difference, to enact a rhetorical choreography that moves in concert with the alien, that embraces radical diversity, and that invites a space for otherness. Returning rhetoric to its tropological force, Sutton and Mifsud make rhetoric rhetorical.” —Michelle Ballif, University of Georgia
“The concept of the trope is easy to summon forth but hard to understand. Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud have put forward an engaging and inventive examination of this intriguing rhetorical concept. Uniting similarity and enforcing difference, A Revolution in Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric productively adds to our understanding of what we do when we use language.” —Scott R. Stroud, University of Texas at Austin
“An original and thought-provoking approach to rhetoric.” —Maurice Charland, Concordia University
“An original advance in the study of rhetorical theory. Highly Recommended.” — CHOICE
“You’re going to like this book.” Jamie Lane Wright, St. John’s University, “Book Review of A Revolution in Tropes: Alloiostrophic Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Public Affairs 21, no. 3 (2018): 567-70.