Portnoy, Alisse 1969-

PERSONAL:

Born 1969. Education: Cornell University, B.A., 1990; University of Maryland, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, 3187 Angell Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003. E-mail—alisse@umich.edu.

CAREER:

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, assistant professor, 1999-2005, associate professor of English, 2005—, faculty associate of Program in American Culture, 2000—.

MEMBER:

American Studies Association, Modern Language Association, National Communication Association, National Council of Teachers of English, Organization of American Historians, Rhetoric Society of America (board of directors, 2002-05), Golden Key International Honour Society (honorary member of University of Michigan chapter).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cornell Tradition fellow, Cornell University, 1989-90; Curriculum Infusion Grant, University of Maryland, 1994-95; Media Union Resource Grant, University of Michigan, 1999-2000; Carl Bode Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature, University of Maryland, 2000; Rackham Summer Interdisciplinary fellowship, University of Michigan, 2000; First-Year Seminar Arts and Cultural Funding Grants, University of Michigan, 2000, 2003, 2005; Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies Research Grants, University of Michigan, 2001, 2003, and summer research fellowship, 2001; Center for the Education of Women Faculty Research Grant, University of Michigan, 2002-03; Multimedia Teaching Grant, University of Michigan, 2005; Reicker Undergraduate Research Fund grant, University of Michigan, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Also contributor of articles to professional journals, including Journal of the Early Republic, Philosophy and Rhetoric, and Rhetoric and Public Affairs. Managing editor, Teaching and Learning News, 1992-99.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates, Alisse Portnoy examines the ways in which American women explored a public persona during the controversial decades of the mid-nineteenth century. Although some prominent women of the Revolutionary period (including Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren) had urged action on granting public rights to women, such as the right to vote, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that a women's rights movement gained momentum in the United States. Women saw themselves as part of the larger political community and drew on enhanced resources, such as the widespread availability of newspapers and near universal literacy, to make their views public. "Alisse Portnoy's analysis of the rhetoric of European American women in the debates of the 1830s over the forced removal of Native Americans from the South, the abolition of slavery, and the colonization of free African Americans in Africa," stated Women's Review of Books contributor Jacqueline Bacon, "… will compel others to rethink the much-studied histories of abolition and of nineteenth-century women's rhetorical efforts."

One of the strengths of Portnoy's work, Bacon noted, is its understanding of the importance of the ways in which different groups influenced one another in the great debates of the nineteenth century. "Portnoy's convincing demonstration that ‘one of discourse's most powerful functions is the constitution of political agency,’" Bacon concluded, "should generate a renewed and invigorated interest in rhetoric among scholars studying women from various disciplinary perspectives."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 2006, Beth A. Salerno, review of Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates, p. 1514.

Journal of American History, September, 2006, Mary Hershberger, review of Their Right to Speak, p. 528.

Journal of the Early Republic, fall, 2006, Michael D. Pierson, review of Their Right to Speak, p. 502.

Women's Review of Books, July 1, 2006, Jacqueline Bacon, "Gender and Everything Else," p. 24.