The conflation of women with oral culture has long been scrutinized by scholars. This volume traces this historical critical tendency and analyzes the negative connotations surrounding this association. These fourteen interdisciplinary essays disrupt the hierarchical binary, which privileges traditional print communication over non-traditional oral communication. Topics include the evolution of gossip, the convergence of print and orality in women's writing, the construction and performance of gendered behavior and the way communication is mediated through current technologies. Altogether, these essays explore how oral communication can be an empowering, subversive act capable of working against the mandates of patriarchal discourses in the 21st century.