Communicating Gender Diversity: A Critical Approach

"Shortlisted" for the IGALA Book Prize 2008

"Communicating Gender Diversity succeeds in its goal of inviting readers into a conversation on the topic of gender and communication. Amongst the broad range of areas opened up to ongoing critical engagement, upper-level undergraduates may find a wealth of topics to pursue into further study —GENDER IN MANAGEMENT:AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

Communicating Gender Diversity: A Critical Approach examines the variety of ways in which communication of and about gender enables and constrains people's intersectional identities. Authors Victoria Pruin DeFrancisco and Catherine Helen Palczewski place an emphasis not on how gender influences communication, but on how communication constitutes gender. Operating from a gender diversity perspective, Communicating Gender Diversity explores how gender is constructed through interpersonal and public discourse about and in the institutions of family, education, work, religion, and media.

The book equips readers with the necessary critical analysis tools to form their own conclusions about the ever changing processes of gender in communication. This comprehensive gender in communication book is the first to extensively address the roles of religion, the gendered body, single-sex education, an institutional analysis of gender construction, social construction theory, and more.

Key Features

• Offers an intersectional approach: The text does not essentialize gender, but recognizes the way identity ingredients intersect with, and influence, one another.
• Integrates social scientific, critical/cultural, and rhetorical analyses: This is the only text that expends extensive time on the work of Judith Butler as it theorizes how gender is something people do and perform, not something they are.
• Moves beyond an individual, personal understanding of gender: Gender is not something over which people have absolute control, therefore social change is not something for which a particular person is responsible, but something in which all must participate.

Accompanied by High-Quality Ancillaries!
Instructor Resources on CD contain a detailed conceptual outline of every chapter, discussion questions, extended quotations from key sources for the chapter, additional exercises, and cultural resources to be used as in-class illustrations, such as Web pages, music, and video examples.

Intended Audience
This core text is ideal for courses exploring gender, diversity, and communication as found in departments of communication, women's studies, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies. By providing the latest feminist theorists' views on the topic of gender, sex and communication, and offering an interdisciplinary approach especially useful to disciplines in communication studies, rhetoric, women's studies, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, this is much more than a textbook; it is a resource book necessary for any library's collection. The extensive literatures cited in the book make it a comprehensive reference for anyone studying gender/sex in communication.

"DeFrancisco and Palczewski's book is wonderful. I knew that they were trying to do much more than the previous books, but I hadn't realized just what high goals they had set for themselves -- such extensive reviews and fresh analyses. This will be adopted in many courses and they will be doing many editions of this book.

What they do with single-sex classes is so very readable, sensible and smart. It's great that they included the chapter on religion; it's about time that that language gets attention..... and they did it in such a way that the chapter calls for attention and consideration rather than resistance. Just very impressive. Many, many thanks."
—Cheris Kramarae, Center for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon, Eugene

"College-level collections strong in gender studies and psychology will find "Communicating Gender Diversity" an essential key to understanding how communication facilitates how people do gender."
—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

Victoria Pruin DeFrancisco, PhD, is an emeritus professor in the Communication & Media Department and affiliate faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of Northern Iowa; studied and taught courses in gender, intercultural, and interpersonal communication; served as director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program; coordinated the National Coalition Building Institute, a university-wide diversity inclusion program; and has received the following awards: Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, the UNI Outstanding Graduate Faculty Teaching Award, and the Iowa American Association of University Women Distinguished Faculty Award. Victoria is married and has stepchildren and grandchildren who call her Nana and remind her every day why she wrote this book.

Catherine Helen Palczewski, PhD, is a professor in the Communication & Media Department, past director of debate, and affiliate faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of Northern Iowa; teaches courses in the rhetoric of social protest, argumentation, gender, and political communication; is a past coeditor of Argumentation and Advocacy and director of the 2013 AFA/NCA Biennial Conference on Argumentation held in Alta, Utah; and has received the following awards: the Francine Merritt Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Lives of Women in Communication, the Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, the University of Northern Iowa College of Humanities and Fine Arts Faculty Excellence Award, the George Ziegelmueller Outstanding Debate Educator Award, the American Forensic Association’s Distinguished Service Award, and two Rohrer Awards for Outstanding Publication in Argumentation.