The present volume of essays examines women s communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became gossip girls and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women s literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women s communication in the technology-rich 21st century."

Fabricating the Body: Effects of Obligation and Exchange in Contemporary Discourses is comprised of nine chapters that revolve around the body, and more specifically, issues related to identity. The text draws on a variety of criticism-including disability, gender, and psychoanalytic studies-to theorize aspects relevant to the human body historically. For example, Rachel Herzl-Betz's A Paratactic 'Missing Link': Dorian Gray and the Performance of Embodied Modernity uses disability studies as a lens through which to examine Oscar Wilde's literary debt to the atavistic discourse of...